For goodness sakes, put a bigger smile on your face.
You look like you’re trying, and I’m not buying it.
I use to lament the miles that separate us, but now i rejoice in the distance.
Stay over there, and I’ll be here.
I’ll live in the light, and fight fight fight back the memories of your hands on my body.
I’ll push away all the butterflies, and sweep them into the corner where they can decompose and slowly fade away.
I’ll let my insides, layer by layer, forget your voice. Forget your laugh. Forget even the way you move.
Because now, it’s her turn.
Now she gets to discover, each flaw, each tear in your integrity and character.
You’ll play the part, and act like it’s not hard for you to be okay with yourself.
Will she know as much as I do? Will she explore the places I had been before, and came to love more and more?
Will she get to whisper words we once shared under the summer stars and grassy fields?
Will you sing her songs by the shores and sunsets, while she sings along, better than my voice could muster.
Because I wonder.
I wonder if this will really last. I wonder if it’s just a cover, because God knows I’m not over-
Alright, you got me. I almost said it.
But I have to remember that your way of believing is a way of deceiving those you love into thinking you accept them, when really they are less than.
I look at the faces we grew to know together, I listen to the hearts of the ones who differ.
I can’t, you said.
With a stern mouth and fake face plastered on the man I once loved is now a little boy running scared for the corn fields.
You hide behind home baked pies and lies of an American Dream, an archaic stream, slowly drying up in a drought of reality. Of God calling us to look forward. Let’s walk through the desert. Let’s stumble through nothingness until you find it’s there that God speaks.
God speaks not to gender, not to race, not to attraction. God speaks to our bodies, God speaks to our communities, God speaks through our hearts.
Do not shame yourself for loving yourself. Do not tell me that I’ll shine brighter on my own. Do not tell me how to be, because I thought we were a team.
Secret glances and awkward run ins left me in the cold while you’re warm in the frosted lands. Stuck in the middle of worlds moving forward, caught in the eye of the storm where everything is the norm.
But the storm is coming. It’s gunning you down. I pray it hits you hard and knocks the doe eyed look out of your sockets. I hope it stirs the fire that once burned brighter, and I hope you find all the answers. I hope you know that life isn’t in one place. It’s the wind, blowing through trees, making the leaves sing. It’s the endless rhythm of the ocean caressing shores, and checking on it’s lovers. It’s the sound of still waters on a sunday afternoon.
Pull the grace from your face, and see that others need your help. Pull your head out from behind your own ambition and ammunition, and see that what we hold is not a weapon, but an endless procession of hurt and misrepresentation.
You see, there’s a book we would read. We would read it together, and marvel and wonder. But soon it turned into poison. I ran away scared and you held it closer.
But that poison is the same kind that courses through veins of anger. It’s the same poison that courses through veins of pain.
So I’ll be careful. I’ll study the parts that seem too venomous, while you dive right in and let it take over.

Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant *****.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
******* on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes),
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

You're an old leaf
  from a bygone season

     f
     a
        l
            l
           e
              n

from your place
       within my life

I tried to sew you back on
     your brown and old
  fragile, gold
   your moth-like
 and shadow-webbed
                        frailty

but the
winds and weathers
  that loosed the tethers
and let you distant
                    from me

remind me there's no place
among my branches

The space
Between us
Grows wider
When you pull me closer

Your eyes
Like your soul
Are too tired
To catch my own
You catch my hand
Instead
In your own
Isn't that just so much easier..?

I am a contradiction
But I am not

I am shadowed
By a cloud of mystery
My intentions
Are as clear as glass

My soul
Is captured and dark
My soul
Is pale and free

I believe in the things
That don't make sense
I don't believe in the things
That do

I find my heart
A tide of feelings
And then empty
At the next heart beat

I believe in love
And being ruined by its power
I doubt its existence
And demand happiness and freedom
In its stead

I want all the words
Rhyming with reason
The meanings
Echoed in my favourite words
Defy logic
Exclusively

I savour
The feeling of a shattered heart
Held against a stilling chest
The knowledge it brings
I demand
With avid recklessness
The happiness I remember
Before
After
It comes
Longing for the knowledge
Of my tear's absence

I am broken
I am not
I disagree with my soul

Dark floats out into the silence
Crashing on the banks of Prometheus's wings
Opening a velvet-silk curtain.
To a fabric of shadowed stars
Cloudy fingers sew it clean
While invisible hands stitch pearls back in.
A ghost flits on the hallway stair
Reaching for the last shafts of sun
Tumbling off a silent dream
Blind as black with a lullaby hum
Filling the gaps in an empty line
Somewhere between dusk and dawn.

Big Bear swims tonight-
    Stars reflecting on water
    Painted by van Gogh
    
r ~ 1Mar14