It's not about me
They are busy

Making ends meet
Chasing a hidden dream
Digging out of depression
Caring for their wife's cancer
Raising three children alone
Watching parents lose their minds
Raising a child with epilepsy
Grieving a suicide in the family
Recovering from an accident
Sleeping next to an unloving husband
Coping with social anxiety
Waiting for death
Being afraid

That's why
A call isn't returned
The bill wasn't paid
They showed up late
Their part wasn't prepared
She snapped at me
He cut me off
They didn't answer.

They put up a good show.
Competence is their cover.
So when they slip,
It must be about me.

When did we call become so

Infuriated by the rain
and the sunshine

Impatient to run
and wait in line

Insecure of space
and empty time

In days where the end
was made by the farmer's hand
pinching the flame out

There were only rows
the sun and rain made
over a season grow

While plucking, prodding, pulling
Defacing the nature
Of our own wildernesses

Hold on tightly
Then let go
A top spinning
Grateful pirouette
Above, in the sky
Til one toe lands
Unto the earth
Twirls into dust
A blurred joy
Of balanced brazenry
Unto ***** knees
And bloodied palms
Beckon downward
Until your hands
Pull the string again

I can see through
The way you put it
In drab olive tones
Like sketches of people
Drawn in invisible ink
Where the page is the only color
And the lines are a haze
of forgotten notions
and history

Today lets make a line
Perhaps only in pencil
H8 with light strokes
And erasable mistakes
An outline of your heart
On rosy-rolled papers
Create soft perspectives
until the day
We draw in ink.

I don't ever see
the reasoning
behind your knee
or the beat you'll be
in reckoning
when you come to me

But bent in holy
parsoning
S wept in time
Along the trees
reasoning
but not in mind

Keep me here
Begging
Beckoning to be
in houses of the holy
longing
to be free

Is there any thing that holds so dear
With the constant clucking in my ear?
In a coursing heat pumping through
Till fills my chest when I see you.

Nothing so much tho brave engendered
To gaze upon this curve so tender
Where the force of life and living grows
Behind thine eye and ears and nose

Supple sheet of melting wax caress
In covered stone beating now in excess
The moment and means of all my fill
Joined and released in a silken still.