My beloveds,

Please stop seeking me out
in the eyes of every stranger whose form you find appealing
In every evening’s masquerade, serenaded by dime store boom boom playing through bar room speakers

Release the idea that I’m somehow hiding inside of the lover to whom you’ve chained yourself, just waiting for you to release me from a hidden tower

I’m not.

It breaks my heart to watch your aimless searching, pressing up against writhing bodies, then torturing yourself with the notion that you somehow had the one that got away

You didn’t.

Forgive yourself the notion that your sole purpose in this lifetime is to seek someone with whom to share it as it only leaves you searching in places that I simply can not be found.

I am not the destination, I am the journey.  

I am not the answer, I am the question.

I will not find you the moment that you stop looking for me.  
I will find you the moment that you find yourself,
Somewhere along the path that leads you to who you might become 
should you begin to walk it

You seem to think that somehow we are playing hide and go seek, 
and that I am right behind the chair, eternally eluding you

But the truth is I am somewhere down the path between where you started and your potential, while you’ve not even left the living room

You did not come here seeking love.  
You are love and you came here seeking answers. 
Please start asking the questions. 
Who are you?  
What do you want?  
Why are you here? 
Why did you come?
What might you become should you decide to become it?

You, the all powerful, that came to human form, born into the maelstrom to learn, to teach, to be, 
and yes, even to love, 
though you knew that you would suffer, 
You have forgotten who you are and why you came

Brave one, made of light,
you don’t need to look any further to find me.  
You are me and I am you. 
And once you’ve left this form 
you will again remember that you are love and light 
and have never and will never be alone.

But, if only you could wake up while you’re still here, 
then yes, you could change the world.  
You would bend the universe.
And that which you are looking for would find you, 
undistracted, unrestrained, and beautiful, 
at which point I will slip my hand into yours 
and then you won’t remember a moment before I arrived.

Please stop seeking me out in the eyes of every stranger whose form you find appealing

Your life is calling.  
Please pick it up.  

You’ll find me on the other end of the line.

Some people take comfort in labels
Finding which little box to fit in
Knowing just by a glance, by a hashtag, a stance
That others can see what's within
Some people rely on their labels
On things that tell them who they are
That simplify life into boxes of white
Scribbled meaning stuck onto their jar
Now some people, they run from all labels
Afraid that they hold them down  
And losing their minds to a few words and lines
In social adhesive are bound
See people forget that their labels
Are choices, not simply assigned
Meanings can change and symbols rearrange
By those by whom they were designed

So friend, take back charge of your labels
Because You create them in the end
And if labels align, well that would be fine,
But remember that you hold the pen.

|b.g.|

I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited ******,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...

If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011