It is very strange to be a man, schooled in the acts of love by the writings of Anais Nin and Pablo Neruda, living in this place. So absurd to be told by women expecting savageness that he is gentle, that he is kind, that he is something other than what they have known before and yet...this very tenderness is what drives them away in the morning. I am not an idiot, I know what a seeming contradiction this is. Perhaps I have some failing I'm not aware of, perhaps my guess at what the women I make love to really want is a complete falsehood. I suppose that is probably correct, considering my experience and what I'm told men should do to women. "Yes, a good, swift and utterly meaningless **** in a bathroom or a car, just give it to them ***** like an almost ****, that's what the girls want...your **** and nothing else."
Yet the women I've spoken to purely platonically want and need the exact opposite, but seem to have given up on anything beyond it. I'm at a loss, completely befuddled by what I feel in my heart, and what I've experienced.

What sick process turned a man's tenderness into closet homosexuality?
What terrible ******* turned a woman's need for warmth and love into a weakness?

As good as I may be at spitting out poems about injustice and social rage, as tough as I may sound or pretend to be, as cynical and jaded as I may talk and walk, none of that is really who I want to be. I don't want money and fame or power to remake the world as I see fit. Wouldn't be able to handle the responsibility of political power anyway. Honestly I don't even really want to be the person my 18 year old self wanted, and yet have become, almost without realizing it. He would envy me, my younger self, of the life I live now. Beholden to no one, doing basically whatever I want as long as I can afford the rent and make myself go to work after nights full of pointless hedonism. But that entire veneer, yes even some of my writing, is just to make up for this hole that runs right through the middle of me. All I really want, is to return from whence I came. Be a teacher or something, write a bit on the side, have that mystery called true love and family, maybe own a bit of land just for us, somewhere on the edge of a small town full of artists and good honest folk. Coastline or mountains make no difference to me, the language spoken not really that important either. I'll go anywhere and do anything I can to find this dream that I tend to not ever talk about, since it is the one true thing that I have ever really wanted deep down inside, even if my younger self would've denied it.

I just realized that no matter what I do
or say
or conquer
or love
or ****
or create
or ****
or consume
or throw up
or give..........

It will never be enough.

"Mary, why is it that thee comfort me so, when mine twelve
and the multitudes of Judea, plead for me to grant them
aid and succor in this world, when I can only promise them
peace in the next? Do ye not also wish from me things I have
not the power to give?"

"Ieshua, I have loved you all the long years of our lives, since the
moment we played with sticks and sand upon the shores of Galilee. We were children and even then I knew that my love would be filled with sorrow and longing for you. Your Father, even in those gentle times held sway over you. We were very young and I sought to kiss you when your earthly father and mother were away at the market. Our lips touched and our hearts turned to fire, and you lept away, banishing me from your sacred heart."

Years passed and Jesus the carpenters' son, Prophet and Savior yet to be
never forgot Mary of the Magdalene, she who held sway over his heart
while his Father in Heaven guided His Son upon a path unforseen.

The moment that Jesus of Nazareth, and Mary of Magdalene
may have indeed lay down together as man and wife,
matters not at all, in spite of what those angry priests say.

She and He, their Love, guides me.

She had bid unto him, that a garden should be built. And he, with all the art he possessed, driven on by fire, had done so. He stands there now, alone in the dark, aching for her as he has never ached for anything else. Remembering the stories he had told her in the beginning, how it made him fill with light at the request. And he thinks of the strangeness of it, this soul that speaks as if it has walked out of the East on the heels of Rumi. How he can not ever seem to say these things aloud, how he fears the past has more power than the future. He wishes that he could have been given a book about her, so as to be all he can for her. This is how he communicates the deepest parts of himself, afraid that she will flee at too much tenderness, or think him weak and effeminate. Belief alone in her, and of what they share, is all that propels him forward. Knowing they have only begun, that his experience of her is merely a taste of what may be, he writes.

Unlike some in this world, Simon was not afraid of loneliness, had no need to feel needed, in fact had often wondered how these two women had come burning out of the desert into his private world. He had been a solitary man most of his life, wandering or running from something he wasn't sure. What he was sure of was that he loved these two people whom God or Allah or whomever had placed in his path one day in Tangiers.

He had read the book by Mitchener titled "The Drifters" when he was young, and remembered it now as Ta'ra wept in front of him. Torremolinos was on the other side of the Iberian sure, but the irony of the similarities seemed so poignant that he couldn't ignore it. He put out his hand to this woman, who had travelled so far and for so long she was afraid of what permanency could mean. She made as if to slap him again, and stopped.

"Please. I don't want it to be like this". A bare whisper.

She touched his hand. A hand girls had once thought smooth and soft. No longer.

"I'm afraid."
"I know."

Sitting back down, she picked up the orphaned guitar, and gazing out over Alfalma, she again sang her childhood lullaby. “Çevrem, etrafım şen mutlu iken. Ben yine hüzünlüyüm”.

A girl in France uses a razor against herself in the bathroom between classes, an orphan in Delhi does what he can to provide for his sister, two wanderers find some sort of peace on a balcony in Portugal, and a broken ex-soldier writes about them in America. Where we began, does not have to be where we end, and the lives we touch may never be known to us. But that doesn't mean that who we are, and the joys or the sufferings, are meaningless. We are human, and to be human is to be searching.....

Premises:
1. Identity (or virtue if one wants to be an old-fashioned stoic) takes primacy in questions of morality and judgment. Concept is highlighted by Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy, ca 534. "She (Lady Philosophy) contends that happiness comes from within, and that one's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune."

2. If this supposition is true, then it stands to reason that, as the struggle for identity has been one of the overriding conflicts in my life, all decisions made must be deferred to my own concept of right and wrong.

3. Why? Because to compromise one's beliefs is to compromise one's self. In doing so, one betrays that which defines them.

Problems which arise as a result of this perspective:
1. Openness to new experience and ideas is somewhat curtailed.
2. Tendency to stagnate.
3. Conflict with other pillars which make up my belief system, namely radical acceptance of loved ones.

In other words, I hold my identity to be the one inviolate thing that no one can take away from me. However, I've had to fight tooth and nail to figure that out, therefore I'm extremely reactive to perceived threats to my belief system. Source of Cognitive Dissonance > trying to reconcile absolute judgments on good vs. bad with acceptance.

By no means am I trying to pawn this off as an idea of my own. But I haven't run into a literary version of Doctors Without Borders yet (if there is one, please tell me so I can join). Seems like a good concept to me though, probably one that could be put into practice relatively quickly too with a little support. After all, no matter the nature of the substance or what it's origins are, Medicine can't deny that there is more to humanity than just the body, more to health than just the absence of disease. If we can pull together to combat illiteracy and contagions in all corners of the globe, shouldn't self expression come along on the heels of that? We here on this site, mostly, come from the "developed" Western world. But I've also heard rumors and seen a few trails leading off into the non-English speaking corners of the web with the same basic beliefs as our own. I've got no clue if this is a viable idea or not right now, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Please let me know what you think and toss around ideas, maybe float it on facebook or something, let's get a dialogue going hopefully. There are so many voices in this world, so much that could be said, so much that could be written, so much that could enrich all of our lives. It just seems to me that there ought to be something humanity could do to facilitate that sharing.

Ex Nihil
Warning!
This site contains explicit pictures
of someone you know.

So is this it,
the Magic Theatre
supposedly advertised
for Madmen only?

Explicit indeed,
bad dreams and sensual whispers,
perhaps just a breaking;
a dissolving of one self.

Where you go,
I dare not follow,
for I am not of those people
and moreover
they know it.

Where I go,
you don't want to follow,
for reasons I don't understand
and which you
won't explain.

You want the city,
the newness and the lights,
adventure being a new bar
every night?

I want the forest,
the oldness and the twilight,
adventure being a new song
every night.

Halloween night
this last year;
I saw a relative of yours
run alone down the middle
of your street;
Red Fox in the City.

Smoking on your balcony,
with a bear of a man
we yelled inside that your
family was at hand.

I sat on your couch
and talked with you,
watched you watch others,
and I can't remember
anything you said.

I do remember,
when you took me to your room
in search of cards
because I needed to be
doing something with my hands.

You pulled boxes from
your closet and I met your cat,
(I hoped he liked me; he was pretty cool,
didn't enjoy the noise of a party,
same as me in that regard)
we didn't find cards
but we did find a vase of flowers.

You laughed when I asked
who gave them to you,
as if you buying them for yourself
wasn't something I
should be sad about.

Perhaps that's why
I bought you carnations
when your Grandmother died.

I can't help but feel
that I didn't meet you by accident,
but knowing that we will
never love each other
merely adds to my confusion.

There's a low roar in my ears
as I sit here now,
knowing that I care about you
for purely selfish reasons;
as if by being good to you
I could erase selfishness and
ignorance from my past.

In a final note
of outright anguish,
I wish that I in my childishness,
had the courage to show you
the things I have written
for you...my friend.

Hmm, good ***** is what all you guys want right?
Yeah, ******* and a bubble ****.
Get her white girl wasted, twerk'n hard,
drunk enough so you can put it in her ***.

She never had it up there before and she's
drunk enough or rollin good and strong so that
she thinks hands and ***** equal romance.

Speak a lil French or German...just a couple words
Francais or Deutch and she'll be begging for you
to fill her up with your crooked sausage right?

Yeah baby **** me good but don't
*** in me because I don't love you,
I just wanna be ******* to take my
angry thoughts away.

We all have had that one person we
really loved, but that **** fell apart,
so go ahead and pretend that it wasn't
your fault or hers or his.....

Oh man when you *** it's magnificent,
but you leave her there empty,
while you think you've given her
the best lay of her young life right?

What you don't understand is that
she wasn't in it for the ***, she
wasn't letting you do what you want
because she felt good, no matter what she said.

She only wants what you want,
which is real love,
but you two are too scared
of what that really means.;

Explain to me, dearest Muses, about dualism.
Yes, dualism, the light and dark, yin and yang,
contradictory nature of all us mere humans.

How is it, verily, that a man (or boy)
such as I, may keep a copy of Rumi
which I read from almost sanctimoniously,
yet also drink like a ***** Irish fiend,
spouting profanity thirty seconds
after writing a hymn?

Do you remember the days when we first met?
The tides that brought us together,
and the thoughts that maybe,
just maybe,
we could be free together?

And how we lived with passion,
slept with and ate of it
passion for a world with no hatred,
deriving sustenance from our love
so long ago?

I tell you now
what I should have told you then
of the enemies you would make
by speaking aloud
of your vision for a perfect world.

When they come for you,
you will be asleep in the wee hours
and they will not have uniforms
or identification
or a warrant for your incarceration.

You will be blindfolded and beaten,
held for 24 hours
and beaten again to soften you up
so that you won't be lucid
when they ask for your confession.

You will not be killed,
you will not be a martyr.

You will simply disappear.

I sit here, night after night, pouring myself into the cracks of history, bathing in obscure knowledge for the sake of trying to aquire some sort of superiority. Pointless. I've been burying myself in dusty scraps of information since I was a boy, and none of it has prepared me for you. You throw the beauty of an experience across my shoulders like a blanket and I shrug it off with mere facts and annotations, as if I'm afraid of what it would mean to accept the simplicity of you reaching out to me, not to explain but to share. The simple fact is that I withdrew from things a very long time ago and now I don't know how to come back. Always I must explain and analyze, pry up old tombstones thinking that if I can only find some kind of secret that I'd be able to step back into life. You told me that I hold too much back. You're right. I hold most everything back, bury it in the mass grave where I dumped the corpses of many selves. I don't know how to participate in life anymore, only to observe and calculate. And I'm afraid that if I can't figure out how to change that, it will strangle us.

Lived my whole life
near water or mountains
and lemme tell ya,
there's nothin like wakin up
next to something beautiful.

I spent all of this weekend drinkin,
partyin and just havin an all around
great time with people I love.

This past month, man oh man,
did I seriously have to revisit
some things that I thought I needed
to stay the hell away from, but
whoh how wrong I was.

Jimmy Buffett songs and
Brand New shows,
takin life as it comes
and givin up everything
for a chance at love.

I can write about God
and morality and whatnot
but if I really dig deep down,
what really matters to me
are the quiet moments.

Those seemingly insignificant
memories, such as teaching
my very young cousin #3 how
to fold toilet paper, so that
his *** didn't itch, evidently
his dad couldn't teach him that.

Am I still a boy?
Hell yes I am, and hopefully
always will be, never giving up
that magic, that wondrous sense
of possibility.

Is it a bad thing, that in moments
of forgetfulness I greet my grandmother
as Wendy Lady and she replies, "Hello Boy."?
Do I still watch the Goonies with rapture
and bliss and yell "Hey you guys!!!"

And yet I have walked through fire and death,
seen darkness in all his guises,
lived and ate and breathed horror
as only Conrad can recount.

I can cook, and clean, and provide for myself;
having lived off and on alone for years
so dare you not think me a child,
but my god I'll never give up that
sense of life, that belief and hope
that any and every day may yet be
and adventure worth the telling.

"You can afford to be a romantic because you're self-sufficient." I wish that had been told to me years ago, before I turned in on myself. Slowly I'm coming back, having reduced myself almost to nothing. Hollowed out and worn, looking straight through people when they talk to me.
I don't have a narrative for what brought me here. Just images, silent pictures, exaggerated expressions. I was somewhere else, and now I'm here, with no bridge between. I was someone else, and now I'm this other person and I don't recognize either of them. Living a life that has no anchor to it, nothing to wrap my soul around.
I bought new tennis shoes today, laced them up and ran. I haven't done that in years, but my body remembered, fell back in to the smooth rhythm that used to eat up miles almost effortlessly. Only a couple for me today, and my cartilage bereft knees hating me, but it was worth it.
Friday I walked through a forest in the rain again. Smelled it, tasted it, was moved by it. An old friend not spoken with for many years. An old magic I thought I had lost forever.
I am being brought back to life by something I don't understand, like I'm being willed into an existence by some force I don't have a name for. My hands itch. And I know this feeling, this wanting. A desire to create things, to plant trees, raise up fountains, give joy. As if by some transient alchemical process I could refute cruelty, transmute pain into happiness, heal broken hearts. I know I can do none of these things though, have tried before and failed, many times. Maybe whoever it is that brought me here can.

What she said to me sitting at that bar
sipping God's own overpriced whiskey
was the truest thing any one has ever
managed to tell me about myself.

And the drive up to town after
the ribbon of freeway stretching
on into forever and the radio full
of Bukowski's guts blaring with
her feet on my dashboard.

That room with wine colored
walls and a taste reminiscent
of some novel I know I've
read somewhere, somewhen.

Tiny bed I'm constantly trying
to not fall out of sweetly
forcing me closer to her
in the early morning grey.

Something unspoken and
something unseen but somehow
un-needing to be clarified
for once living on feeling
only what there is now.

What do you want from me?
Do you want my love or my history?
Shall you accept these pieces of a man
living a life made of rusted ideas?

Are you willing to make love to an effigy?

I can give all that I am to you in a
single moment of purple ******,
but when the dawn comes,
my body turns to ash upon your bed.

Waking and you find the pieces of my
soul I left for you...my heart a burnt offering.

I am not a poet, not a man, not a person...
not the idea of love you were given.

I am pieces of a broken boy left to give you,
a love shaped and broken by the idea of love.

Pretending that there is something worth
hunting for deep within what I may have given.

I have nothing to give save emptiness.....
nothing but the desert sands.

I am going to make you love me,
but it will hurt.

I.
Quid Nomen Est?
Thus spake skeleton eyes to we upon the forest path,
the long woe of you and me and we upon that gravel path
with those tired trees baring their naked selves to us
in dead questions all the crooked way.
Lo the **** shall crow thrice indeed on the morrow morn
but for now we who have not yet forgotten
must needs cleave to the bidding at hand,
must make do with cobwebs in our eyes
and the ashes of the Archbishop in our mouths.

II.
"Torches, torches! Have we none, for long
grows the hallowed eve and our task not yet done?"
Indeed no light have we, and our destination lying
still somewhat far off among the ancient oaks.
Haven't forgotten have you, those skittering stories
from bedtimes long ago, warnings to travelers by night
through ragged copse and brooding glen?
Yes, those whispers old of those gone further into
twilight never to be seen again by mortal eyes.
Quid Nomen Est?

III.
Up sprung the pale lights all about us,
yes the torches of those unaging.
"My name, my name, you shall not have it
for given by others to me it was!"
Silence greeted us with open arms and a
light snowfall as we, trembling and withered
continued toward our loathsome errand.
They did not try and delay us nor lead us into sorrow,
merely followed with us unto an open hollow.

IV
There the stones, the faery ring standing older
than the memory of a time when the world
was young and beast and man lived as one.
Not a dead leaf stirring, nor cold wind blowing
as we and our silent companions tread upon the sacred earth.
At last our destination reached, though the journey not yet done.
One thing left to us before the peace of sleep.
No longer cold, no longer withered and old
but become again the man who loved you once.
We lie down together there between the sky and the earth,
with none to bear witness save the standing stones,
the silent torches and always the naked questioning trees.

V*
To the din of Thunder and Battle I awoke,
still within the ring of iron grey stones.
There above the wailing trees the Huntsmen and
Hounds rode reckless, beckoning me as expected
to join the Wild Hunt forever away from Love.
I held up my hand and at once they stormed toward we,
a curse riding forth, fierce and fell till the end of time.
Lo before they caught my upturned hand for me to join forevermore,
I searched one last time for your face among the faery mound,
and found no memory of you in the bones scattered upon the ground.

Wakes up
texts good morning
eats last nights tempura
drinks coffee
and is empty

Tries to read
tries to think of other things
and can't quite find
comfort in old things that used
to bring some slight relief

Makes a passing remark
and is told that if one won't forgive
one will be nothing but bitter
and alone
forever

Doesn't try to explain
that one can forgive
and possibly even forget
but that doesn't mean the same
as setting oneself up
for another betrayal

Misses dad
reminisces about some good times
long past and best left alone
and is irritated for that
***** in crumbling armour

Is a bystander
in a one sided tongue lashing
over pointless frustrations
chemically based
and promptly exits the scene

Is at work
burying half formed anxieties
underneath never ending problem solving
solving all problems encountered
except for one's own

At the grocery store
staring catatonic
through rows of frozen meals
uninterested in actually eating
merely performing a chore

Back at work
typing out nonsense and noise
not really caring for response
simply needing to affirm something
anything

And then I got to talk to you

Symbols of personal myth,
your transient biography
etched into your bare back.

Weeping burning tears
into long cold ashes
as if to rekindle the sacred.

****** footprints in the sand
accompany the path of
selves shed on your journey.

Take this breath from my chest
and take this flame from my hand
find yourself again in the circle.

There lay the skins of lions,
and the grey mantle of wolves;
comport yourself in them
and dance once again.

Shuffle up and get down low,
the calender says it's a different day
and a different year,
but it only ever feels like it
during the day.

Sitting here tonight, I'm typing
into a different phone,
drinking at a different bar,
but somehow it's essentially the
same night that I've been living
for ten years...maybe more.

The same words, the same feeling
of a knife in the heart, the same
Irish jigs playing through busted speakers, and what I think I'll find somewhere in the haze still eluding.

All flowing back into a night so often repeated in so many places...Virginia, Washington, Arizona, Florida, even the night in Nogales I never mention.

It all comes back to girls with razors in their purses, the boys who put them there, and the unseen hand that has pushed them all.

It really ****** me off when what I say and intend is turned into something horrid and cruel by someone because of what others have done to them.

That's it. I'm done passively digesting all of this garbage. it's time to stand up and start doing. Stop whining, stop blaming the things you don't like about your life on other people (Muslims, Republicans, Liberals, Rich People, Young People etc). The world is not unchangeable, and instead of bemoaning how powerless you are to change it, take action. We all have the power to make this life more than it is, and it doesn't start in the halls of Congress, it doesn't begin with other groups conforming to fit your world view, it begins with YOU. Today, right here, right now, YOU have the power to influence the world around you in a positive, meaningful way. Even though it doesn't seem like it, real change starts with the individual, deep inside, an active decision to not accept things as they are and to take part in changing them for the better. The same old human frailties and insecurities are the REAL opposition. Not the people who want to come here and live better lives, not the people who want the violence to end, not the people who go to church on Sundays, not the people who just want a chance to see their children prosper and be left to live their lives. Many of you will say,"BUT that's exactly what WE want! It's those OTHERS that won't leave us be, so we have to be reactionary to DEFEND ourselves." That is complete ******* and you know it. It's bad logic and it's the kind of crap governments have been using to justify wars of aggression since the dawn of civilization. Hate, Greed, Fear, Jealousy, these are our real enemies, and all the actions we take that are based on them are invariably marred by their origin. With the whole country choosing sides, and trying to force me to choose one or the other, I refuse. I don't accept either party's world view, I will NEVER accept the xenophobia and horror that they propagate to further themselves. Their ONLY purpose is to make us believe that WE NEED THEM, but in fact it is we who should reflect on just how absolutely THEY NEED US. Now, I'm not asking any more of you than I do of myself. I don't expect people to drop everything and go start a revolution, or to become monks and attain Nirvana, or whatever highest attenuation of your belief system. What I do expect, is for all of us to remember that we have unimaginable power to affect those around us in our daily lives, just by simply giving hope and encouragement, by building each other up, instead of insecurely hoarding affection because we think there's not enough of it. Don't be discouraged, don't believe the lies that are fed you everyday about your fellow humans and their intentions, don't ever forget that WE MAKE THE WORLD AS WE SEE FIT, SO DON"T MAKE IT ******. Times are dark, but the odds aren't insurmountable by any means, there is real, positive action that can be taken, workable solutions that can be achieved. I hope to see you on the other side.
‪#‎AUTONOMYNOW‬

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going out on a limb and guessing that you've always been the one to be there for people when they needed you. But, it's really, really hard, to let anybody be there for you. I'm not talking about needing money or anything either. But just talking, and having somebody listen. You told me that's what you wanted, that's what you needed, and yet every time you get a bit too close to the heart of it, you stop speaking. You need somebody to talk to, and I need somebody to listen to. You don't have to trust me, just know that I understand how incredibly hard it is for people who usually do the listening, to be listened to."

At one time, seemingly lifetimes ago,
I felt as if I could take the pain experienced
by those who crossed my path and
somehow, maybe by empathetic magic or
good old fashioned love, turn it into
something useful to them...but now
I admit that I know better.

God or Allah or Buddha or Luck
placed people in my path and also
placed me in theirs, sometimes for a
few minutes or a day or months or years
but the mechanism and the time are irrelevant.

Knowing now that no matter what I do
I will never be the person that the few I've
loved actually need is a cold, cold understanding,
the kind or understanding that makes a person
age ten years in a month, yet it's something
worth realizing for it's own sake.

Look at this mountain of empty sins piled
around me, these bottles full of regrets,
you see now why when she looks at me
I wave and pass her by, knowing that
all I have to offer is a mere attempt at love.

I have nothing to give to anyone but my heart,
here take it please this beating wounded thing,
take it from my own keeping and do what you
wish with it, for I no longer wish it to be my own.

Take that heart given, and keep it close, but not
too close, for it won't help you when you're happy
and life is grand, no that heart is only in your
keeping for one purpose and one only....
as Dante said, eat of it and take strength for your own.

Everything I say, I don't just say for me.
Or because I think it matters more than what others say.
Or so that I can get in your pants.
Or to make myself feel better.

Everything I say, I don't just say because I'm sad.
Or because I think you're sad.
Or to make a philosophical point.
Or so I can make you love me.

Everything I say, I say because if I don't, I'll die.

Long ago I crossed the sweet river
that marked the outer border of your heart.
I filled my empty skins from that river
and sang the song for going away.
In that cold water a part of me was
carried from my shoulders by the current.
Perhaps you watched me slide from the back
of my weary pony and gaze across the years toward you.
Mayhap the wind carried some of my
long forgotten words to your ears.
I have not spoken the old words aloud
since that day I crossed your border
and disappeared into the waiting day.

When I look at you,
I don't see beautiful legs,
or a gorgeous face,
I don't see perfect *******,
or eyes worth drowning in.

When I look at you,
I see through the material
captivating as it is,
and into a mystery
beckoning to the immaterial.

When I speak with you,
the rest of the world doesn't stop spinning,
but it slows down,
and the doubts and history,
fall away into the nothing
from whence they came.

When you touched me,
there was no ecstasy,
nor a beautiful pain;
just a simple warmth
which I never thought
I'd be able to feel again.

Go ahead then baby,
**** that guy good,
**** him like you wanted
me to *******.

Sorry I couldn't just
be your weekend man,
sorry I'm more interested
in your heart and soul
than I am your ******.

It's the same old story I guess,
playing the role I was given,
doing what I do best,
from a serious distance.

All or nothing is a bad game to play,
and I'm still playing it though,
but this time it's with you.

This is in fact a story, one worth
telling or writing or living,
but it hurts, it hurts to the point
of me wishing it weren't true.

Pulled out an old journal of mine,
on a whim to read empty words.
I found her pages inserted in the
front of my ten year old book.

She gave me her soul on paper,
and I was too much of a fool to read
the love that she wanted to give.

Now, I think, thanks to you and your very timely astral projection,
   I'm going to stop writing about deserts and mountains and winters for a time,
And instead start writing about gardens and forests and summers,
   golden days full of laughter and adventures and honeysuckle.

I've been wandering around in this guilty haze for so long,
   walking to and from Damascus and back, that I nearly forgot how to go home.
But that's what friends are for aren't they? For showing you how to be gentle with yourself,
    for showing you the way back to the beginning.

I sincerely hope that you aren't reading the things
I've been writing about you, praying that the
one poem of mine you read about someone else
is the only time you've come here looking.

Because this, this is my soul ripped open and
weeping before God and everybody,
and the things I say here about you
would be better heard spoken to you aloud.

I don't want to fall in love with you, can't come
so far wrapped up in my own past and find
you waiting at the end of it, wanting to explore
secret paths in the woods and build castles in the sand.

I'm not the kind of person that believes in happily
ever after anymore, gave up on an inclusive life,
gave up on bliss, and yet here you are dancing
across my mind, the memory of us together that night.

I'm not there yet, not quite in love with you, not to
the point of me taking sustenance just from your smile,
but I'm quickly on my way I'm sure, otherwise I
wouldn't be so concerned with how many times I use
the I word instead of the You word when we talk.

Dearheart, where have you gone?
Where is the girl who rode the bus with me all those years ago?

Tears don't stain a screen the way they do paper,
but even If I wrote this with a pen I'd have nowhere to send it.

I'm doing everything I can to forget you honey, but I know that I'll never be able to. How could I, when you own so much of my heart?

You've left pieces of yourself behind;
strands of hair, a pair of shorts, a shirt, your smell upon my pillow.

Tell me now, memory of my love, how now shall I continue without regret at what ought to have been?

How may I lay next to another,
and not think of you in your need?
To the more prosaic, how can I taste another woman without wondering what other fire may consume her after all the terrible things you've taught me about needs?

You have died to me, and I mourn your passing. And a part of me...perhaps the best part, died with you.

Looking further into dusk
as the soft light fades;
looking backwards into time.

Oil lamp and india ink
an unmarked page waiting;
waiting for you to inscribe
marks of your being.

I want you to spill
words all over me;
let the ink get into
my blood.

My body is the paper
meant for your pen,
your heart beating out
the rhythm of brush strokes.

Strip off your care-worn mantle
and bleed your sadness into
the arms of a welcoming page.

There are some people who like history as an interest or read it for a hobby, maybe go to reenactments and museums and such. Interested they may be in it, for those people history is still an external thing, dead and gone, merely entertaining or knowledge giving. For others, we experience the history and it becomes a part of who we are, the flavor of what we learn imprints itself somehow. For us, there is no such thing as an attic full of "stuff". There are attics full of stories, of connections between ourselves and what brought us here. The stories and pasts of others, are also reflections of our own.

Lost again down those empty hallways,
music in my head and your heart in my mouth,
footfalls echoing from the otherwise silent walls.

To turn about, grasping at shadows just out of reach
knowing that they have something yet to teach,
but of what and for whom they will not speak.

Brought down by hands and hearts and eyes,
hands to break, hearts to bind, and eyes to lie.

In what language do you want me to say it?
Or would hating you be more appropriate,
more in line with your appetite?

And who is that over there,
just beyond your shoulder half shown,
bearing a cowl and a mirror?

We cannot go back and we cannot get out
and who is it that shall carry whom
through the horrors of this night?

I will stay here with you though
and carry the lamp forward
as you try and ****** your own minotaur.

Today, today.....

Did I not stand beside the shores of your river, weeping the ink my pen should have used for mere words of regret or shame or longing.

Longing for a kiss of flowers, did you not witness me writing calligraphy in the sand with the shard of a broken sword?

Today, today.....

You deigned to visit again in the small hours, a lotus from the Ishii valley, whirling in drops of incandescence.

Did I not wince with a longing for something I can barely remember save in dreams and flashes, that mystery you write of?

Today, today.....

Pieces of paper are all that may remain as proof that what I experienced was something that actually existed once.

Did I not realize that these Revolutions in my heart are only the absence of having someone near to pour my love over?

I feel like an alien, descended from another planet and viewing humanity for the first time.

What dark tempest drives us to do the things we do to each other, and to the world we live in? We create monuments to our greatness while selling our children? What justification do we have to sell our own kind for our ****** pleasure? What lack of understanding drove our sadistic forays into torturing each other in the name of progress? Why do we do the horrible things that humanity is capable of? And at the same time, how are we able to create beauty out of nothing? What kind of sense does it make for some of us to turn inward and love, and others to turn outward and destroy?

To bring it back to a more personal level....

Why is it that I can take all the good and bad I've lived, and still make myself get up in the morning?

What is it that drives me to go to a bar knowing what I'll find when I get there? Why do I see so many lonely people, men and women, girls and boys, seeking...and not finding?

Excellence indeed,
mind shorn of the heart
and it's incessant nagging.
You didn't ask why I drink
but I'll tell you anyway
because I want to.
Keep in mind though,
I'll never make the mistake
of asking why you drink.
Don't think me selfish
or magnificently uninterested,
it's just that I think I already know.
Maybe it's different for you,
presumptuous of me to assume.
Truthfully I'm not happy
with the ***** itself,
but it's the only thing
that takes me outside of myself,
the only thing that turns
off the terrible inner dialog.
Jesus Christ, all I need is one question, one sentence from you.
"What makes you think it meant nothing?"

Boxes

God in heaven how I hate Frank Lloyd Wright's creations. Not aesthetically mind you, just how his vision makes me feel. And deeper than that, how you act when you're in one of his buildings or stare at his work for too long. You lose a little vitality when you spend too much time staring at boxes arranged in different patterns. You start trying to arrange everything else into neat little lines and clearly defined delinations. Too long, and you start doing it to me, to us. You start acting how I did before we came together. And it scares me.

Death*

It's always strange watching people's reactions to death. Most of the time they get cold. They get analytical. The whole stages of grief thing I guess. Circumstances of the death play a part, as well as how close the dearly departed is/was to us. Leftover's from our Hellenistic roots maybe? A good death is one earned in pursuit of something. A death in battle, a death by drowning at sea, one earned in struggle. But deaths by freak accident seem too, Dickensian I suppose. A boy drowns in a pool while his dad is in the bathroom, a woman is crushed by a tree randomly falling on her kitchen in high winds, a man falls from a wooden ladder while cleaning a chimney, a church roof suddenly caves in on a whole congregation for no reason. Let's keep it all bottled up inside and pretend like there's some other option besides acceptance.

Some hours later, night having fallen over Lisboa, It was Clara who sat in the loveseat while Ta'ra was asleep. Simon kept graveyard hours, partly from work, partly from an ingrained watchfulness that only ever left him in the small hours before dawn. So it was a usual occurrence for the two woman to sleep and wake and find him still active and awake, cooking or writing or at work, sometimes just staring aimlessly at the skyline of the Almafa. Clara was speaking of her loves and loyalties to him, no guitar for her though. Her gifts were the brush and her voice, both of which had always held a power over men. Her life had been one of passions only half felt, half lived, an object to be possessed by those she enraptured with a whisper in the ear or a sketch on a napkin.
"You speak of passion with such...disdain. As if it's something one could do without and be better off..." He looked up at her from the tile floor of the balcony where he was sitting crosslegged like some aesthetic. She smiled her full, rich smile down at him and then turned away, knowing this was a man she had tried to conquer, and failed. She had known he couldn't be swayed the way most were the first night in Tangier while waiting for the ferry. It had been her intention to barter passage from him for what most men think of as passion. Instead he brought them both to his apartment here as roommates, gotten papers for them, helped them start a life that wasn't that of a hunted thing. "Passion is a weakness that brings us away from ourselves, and presents us to someone else's lusts and wants and needs. In the end, we give all we have, and are emptied of life," she whispered, more to herself than Simon. He sighed as one who isn't sure whether he should speak or not. "You say that, and yet I'm attracted to that word, its implications, its many meanings to us. What you think of as passion is so different from what I think of it as, or Ta'ra for that matter." Clara gave a sharp ha! as response, as if she could divine something we mortals were ignorant of. "Isn't that what you two share," he asked, "passionate love? For eachothers' bodies? Your souls? I hear the two of you, envy it sometimes you know. I haven't been lost within someone completely like that in a very long time." Turning back and staring at him hard before speaking, she slowly and precisely told him that he would never understand what that really was between the two women, because he was a man.

I think I've realized that my words are just that:
  mere words.
I may have yearned for them to convey more than sounds,
  hoped that through them I could help others see,
and feel,
as I do.

But now, I think I've come to understand that even if
I did have that power once,
   I can wield it no longer.

To the more pragmatic:
  why I ever thought anybody would care or want
to see and feel as I do,
  is a mystery to me.

So I think I should go in silence then,
   unselfishly,
  as when I speak, it seems that I light fires in holy places,
and when I sojourn in some tranquil space
  I carry horrors with me.

As the saying goes, "All who wander are not lost";
  I wandered far and long and very nearly was lost.
I would have been if not for signs you left for me;
  markers on the road to you, lanterns in the dark.

I knew, and always have known, that I was seeking for you,
  though I nearly surrendered many, many times.
It was always then, in the moments before I abandoned the quest forever,
  that you would whisper to my heart: "Not yet. Not yet."

And with these hands, and your love, I would rise again;
   but to what end, and for what purpose, forgotten long ago.
That clear morning where we stood together for the last time,
   had all but vanished, barely a memory, a whisp of a dream.

It was an empty land I sojourned in, but beautiful,
  so beautiful my heart would have been broken.
But no longer, for I have journeyed far enough in such places
  that I have become like them, unable to recall even your name.

But one thing in me shall never die, shall never grow old and wither,
  shall never sigh and fade into the twilight of this desert.
My heart will not forget, nor my soul abandon, nor my hands forsake
  that which gave me destiny: my love for you.

Restitution*
Even now, I think that perhaps we followed each other,
dogged each others' steps for many years
before stumbling upon the ocean our love became.
As people who seemed divorced from the world we live in
maybe Nature drew us together, or more likely it was Nurture.
No matter.
You touched me that first night, for the first time, in the first room,
whispering "hush" as you put your fingers to my lips. Always you are
embarrased of your hands, "Rough" hands, "Not at all like a
woman's" hands should be, and I never could fathom who gave you
that ****** up idea. When you touch me, when I remember the feel
of them, I always think of driftwood, and smile. Powerful and utterly
lacking in self-conciousness, your hands knew their origin,
remembered the glory and the majesty of making fire, of making a
meal, of making love, of bringing forth light and life out of the
depths. I hated it when you apologized for such wonderful things.
For it was with those hands you brought something back in me,
something lain dormant and whimpering the dark, dying of thirst in an
empty land long forsaken. Holding you in my arms brought strength
back into them, your teeth on my skin ripped a growl from my lungs,
just remembering your voice crying out in surrender and triumph
makes me want to tear off my clothes and dance naked around a
roaring bonfire, howl like a wolf into the night for the sheer joy of it.
After so long being dead, you kissed me, and I was again alive.

There is no map for me to follow here,
no signposts
no magic theatre
just the forest and the rain.

Whatever it is that is pulling me toward you
must have some purpose
some design
a love worth believing in.

I'm an explorer pushing back through time
pulling chunks of stone from old walls
brushing dust from mosaics
piecing together what I can of your soul.

It is what I'm good at
and what I think you may need me to be
an archaeologist of the heart
rediscovering you for the first time.

It's dark here and lonely
though I can hear you whisper to me
out of the pages and words and symbols
ushering me forward into the night.

Whatever I find at the center
must be something beautiful
something grand
but I won't make it through the twilight
without you to hold my hand.

When the music stops,
It's time for me to get up
And walk on out.

And when the sun sets
Over this beach we live on,
I've always got to go on.

For five years, it was OK
Being alone, being needed
But not doing the needing.

Guess it doesn't really matter,
Since I sure can write like
It does, but writing is just words.

These days though, after the last
Year spent belonging somewhere,
Being part of a crew and a crowd....

Someone throws on the Stones,
In walks the ghost of where I know
I'm headed no matter what I do.

Yeah, here I am now, exactly who I
Thought I wanted to be, living my
Own rules, beholden to no one.

And ya know what, it's made a great
****** story, something I always wanted to read, the kind of story your's is too.

Sure hasn't been as much fun
Living it as I thought it might be,
Finding you in your driveway,
And I was too drunk to be who
You honestly needed me to be.