There's a ghost in the machine
A distant heartbeat
An echo
A recollection of tides pulled by the rhythm
Of the moon
A lunar cycle
Of leaves swirled
And now settled
By the whisper
Of the breeze
A message repeated
But not audibly heard
Remembered and understood.
You are in the right place
Where you need to be
All you need now
Is to breathe and be.

i am not
all-together
much of anything,
really.

i am driven,
and lazy.
running water,
and ash,
baked into the earth.

i am both
undeserving,
and
the only one
worthy of
Love.

i am flotsam,
and bubbles,
and that coin
which sinks once
tossed Into the
fountain.

i am grass
heaped high !
to feed cattle.

and discarded
watermelon
seed.

but you !
you're the same.
and then,
not the same.

you're flourishing
flowers,
and wilting
autumnal Leaves.

both witness the scythe.

you are living inspiration,
and monument
to entropy.

and if you have veins
then let me be
the salt in those veins.

and if love dies,
then let it die in me,
first.

i couldn't stand
to see it
the other
way around.

Same.
Not Same.

if you are the mirror
then am i
not the frame?

but all of This:
the prose,
aggregate metaphor,
lonely night,
cold morning,
wine drunk alone,
the joy of Longing,

not
all-together
much of anything,
really.

except maybe;
to display.

tonight is strange.
you see,
i slept today
at a friend's house.
but now, cannot
sleep.

and when i say "slept"
i mean;
i laid there
in her blankets,
and thought of you.

and when i say
"thought of you"
i mean;
i wondered if
at that moment
you missed me too.

and when i say "wondered"
i mean;
i imagined your lips
against
my eyelids.

and when i say "against"
what i meant to say
was;
that i wished you
were held against
me.

and when i say "held"
i meant;
that i'll take your problems
and shoulder them
as My own.

but dear,
when i said
"problems"
what i meant to say
was that your
ink-stained fingernails
are god-crafted.

and by "ink"
you know
that i mean;
you've forever
left your mark
on me.

and by "mark"
i mean;
that you've drawn
in all the sides of
all the best poems.

and by "drawn"
i offer up;
that this is not
the first or last
time we fire one another
and scald the oceans.

tonight is strange,
indeed.

it's a good thing
You always know
what i'm really
trying to say.

I think it quite strange living here walled by this house
when I was wilder than now I lived in nature
stalking birds and pollen laden things
always my toes in sands or hot footed in summer.
I was in love with the sky, no matter the weather
in storms I hid beneath branching cedars
sleeping on mossy pillows, in the woods of my backyard.
I never gave much thought to houses then, I only went there
to sleep or eat and waited to leave again
waited for an inkling of sun to warm the cold grass
spent days climbing trees, red plums and cherries
I imagined that's how life would always be,
living outdoors under the sun or clouds
wet with rain, always picking flowers.