i had a dream i was rising through the trees

i had a dream i was falling through the ground
on docks calling a name i've never known
sitting in empty studies with the lord
calling mine
bad news used to sound like footsteps
down the hallway, used to be my mother's
hand turning the doorknob
and now it is a rotating hubcap
or a night without stars
full yellow moons out over the
complexes in the west
it sounds like empty milk
cartons and the tone of my own voice
it is people demanding that i be open
the most tragic of flaws--

i am meeting people just like me
telling them I want something more
can the wounded want
more?

i am sure she is
just as radiant in
the sunlight, without
trying, as herself
and you in the doorway
with a mouthful of her
name, light and lovely--

*new.

last night i dreamed my memories
were lined in quills and nettles
soaking in jars of aloe
they played on underdeveloped
film stock, across slabs of barbary fig--
out in the desert
like a burning bush.

when will history stop being
the lure i use to reel you in?
when comes the time when the line
sags and shreds, too worn to replace,
when it snaps the moment you meet
a woman more comfortable bouncing her
voice against the walls of a room than i,
i will try to remember the lengths.
the lengths we go to keep alive
the antiquated notions of what we knew
love to be, how we seek to replicate it,
coerce it into corners without the intention
of ever letting it out, and how it cries.
how love cries when we force it to be
what it was instead of what it is meant
to be, all because we are too afraid to
forget, too afraid to become acquainted with
the quiet moment before a miracle, the
rapture of reassurance after God gets
the chance to whisper i have more in store
if you wouldn't mind making room.