again your words garner tears
i am fought from within
between wretched smiles aching with the shame of words i've shared
listened to, copied, written, "shared"
and yet never truly shared

those doors are gone: i have shared
and one has listened, shining love as hot to bear as sun...
refracted in my tears the warmth
is as a solar flare of unexpected love--
distrusts flung of self for undeserving care,
i waver-wallow, sing another cracking grasp,
slurp my sniffle-ramen soup to comfort ten-year wounds
all open now, shining, wincing in the sun.

i would bare my bones, it seems,
in urgent need to stamp the world an honest love.

what have i waited for? better words to come and scare us into final sum?
a final balance done, as if a math could send us there?

where? where has the daylight gone and come?
how old this starlight sinking from
i try to laugh and fail,

giving fame another final finger-flipping off
as that one girl said once, long forgotten, "cradling
her last fledgling flying ****,
and kissing it on to fated final flight"

yes. discovered now by one, i heal in single sun
i beg from those in shade or hurting from my blindest words a balm
a balm of knowing deep i seek to undiscover harm...
a balm of knowing deep the wholesome love of self that overflows to all...
Mokume told me, "love them" as i struggled with their hate,
he asked my love as to her love for me,
he asked me of my love i held for her--and which was more,
the love of self or love of her
and so i wavered in the meanings love has come to bear
while he taught stridently the meaning of Yoruba masks,
the bowl atop the symbol-studded head
the brims so overfull they shower all who look,
or dare to touch its bursting river-majesty

intolerant at--
at words that don't work
and hating these

that cover just enough--
words revealed as shade

Since those long ago days in Latin class,
I have endeavored to speak your echo, Crystal.
How I longed to be amongst your trusted inner circle!
Alas, I had no voice then to speak these things to you.

Mrs. Tinkler must have sensed my blocked emotions;
always coupled we two to do textual translations.
I deferred and let you be the intellectual leader
feeling wholly given over to being your infatuated scribe.

It was always your property to be simpatico;
you were the giver of kindness and smiles,
your latent brilliance subsumed by outward caring.
What forlorn chance did my jejune heart have?

And now, at length, I can finally speak these things,
trusting in the smiles that touching substance brings.

slowly  carefully
as i might an ancient diary
still full of young dreams
and even  perhaps
the salt of young love

it hurts
to carry adolescent obstacles
given my age
and all those hateful skeptics
it hurts how they gleefully profane

yet settled dust is yet dust
i sit willing to love
amid my dust
i sit in ever deeper vasts of love
in existential sacrum wag
kindled crown and fullness breath of all the scents of varied forms of love

lighthouse toes inspire seas ancestors swam
lyric feet to message myth of travels won
my calves and shins  knees and thighs
  crawling climbing walking running jumping kicking at the start
physiologies of courage ****** ahead
as future unmade moulds invite
caress the bodied length intent provides

singing fingers scale my world in chords of gliding love
tips of arcing sensate dawns
diverse as nightsky suns

my palms divine an ever giving gift
no futures could unveil--
the toucher's touching touched
aligning novel insights  wordless as the womb of time:
perhaps a symbol flare could squint
and grant a vision of horizon's end--
another pleasure game
a bonsai love to soften age
another twisting meditation's emptiness in form
as motion stillness spaces words
to perfect pitches  tempos   sound
though all of which will never meet
and never meeting meet
as one