Sweet, kind and thoughtful.
Those are the words you used to describe me that day,
the day I almost told you too much,
the day I almost broke my own rules again.
I may be those things, but you can tell,
somehow, sense somewhere,
that it's a barely maintained show
I put on for you, and all the rest.

You know, and I know, that I don't belong
in your bed, or in your heart.
Ask the ones who've come before what it's like
to wake up in the middle of the night
and find me sleeping on the floor,
or to have me claw my way out of a heart.

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

You know, and I know, that I don't belong
in your hands, or even on your street.
With my body in your hands I still
won't unfold from my ol' time contortion,
waiting for the dream to end and the bomb to drop.
And you'll spend nights wondering at four in the morning,
while I'm wandering down your empty road with my soul on fire.

I'd love you with all I am, in my fashion,
the way that keeps half of me always away from you.
There are doors that I'll never open for you,
secrets you'll never tear out of my throat,
rooms in my heart walled up and left for those
long after to come and break into.

It's alright though, since you're movin along,
and I'll be movin on too soon, but I guess it's good,
good that we met each other since you've exorcised
one of my ghosts, and I hope that maybe I've helped
in giving you a little bit of hope for all that's left out there.

There are some moments
which bring true clarity,
whether by song or by
substance or merely by
the warmth of a human
touch against fluttering
fingertips grasping.

Those moments after
the heat of good ***
lying quiet and perhaps
content or maybe not,
staring at the ceiling
and listening to the
perfect rise and fall
of your lover's breathing.

The few minutes of
the workday paused
to take in the grandeur
of a sunset over a lake
with the simple open
happiness of a smoke break.

That one point in a
song when the world
dissolves around you
and there is no past
nor a future but truly
the here and now filling
you up with all you
feel has been lacking.

There's that singular
point of intoxication too,
when all things that
seemingly make no
sense at all when sober
suddenly come together
into one complete whole
to be lost upon waking
next morning hungover.

There are some people
who say that love is a
mere illusion, the same
as an acid trip or the
endorphins women
experience during birth,
mere chemistry that makes
us all that we are.

And there are also
those who preach
that all we are is
simply an experiment
by some divine personage
to see if free will works.

I don't have it in
me to believe that all
we are is anything that
can be quantified by
any singular theory
or description encompassing
all of human experience.

I don't have it in me to hate
anymore either, though I
have been given many reasons
to do so, it just seems so
adverse to everything I
have ever been taught by
people who loved me.

Yes there has been pain
and yes there has been suffering,
personal as well as that of
our nations', as well as that
of our understanding of
what humanity is as a whole.

We have done terrible,
unspeakable things to
each other in the name of
some rancid idea or another
and yet, others of us have
given all that we have
in the name of something
called empathy, maybe passion?

All I know for sure is
that I should have been killed
two years ago by my own
idiocy and yet I was not.

My Love, where have you gone? Where is the jewel that shone so brightly in your heart when we were young? I was away from you for years, campaigning across mountains and deserts, called by duty to my sardharan. Though never did I forsake you, nor our love. And now at last that I have come back, laden with the riches of far lands and strange peoples, enough to provide our family for ten lifetimes, you have grown cold. What happened in those years? Why won't you embrace me the way you once did, with such passion? It was that fire that drove me through war and death and sickness, those memories of our life before. Why does my own daughter fear me now? The day I returned you wept and she ran into the house as if from a ghost. When I embrace her now she cringes, as if expecting a whip. Our own Fatima, why should she be so afraid? I chased butterflies with her when she was but able to walk. Why should she now stiffen when I touch her? And where is your family? Mine were long dead when we were wed but yours loved and cherished our union, always some cousin or aunt was around to talk or invite us to dinner with them. Why won't you speak to me? I was nobody when I left for the war, but now I am returned, a deghan in the service of our lord, one of his trusted bodyguards, the commander of a hundred lancers and yet, my stallion Hafez was hamstrung in our field last night! They left him in misery for me to find this morning. My Love, what has happened to our home?

I guess it's a hard thing to break down and accept, this understanding that one has burned that white picket fence and one story ranch home down. This septic knowledge that the woman who loved you is now, at this very moment probably snorting another line of fantastic yay. I'd like to think that I did well by her in the years since we first met. But I know I'd be wrong. The truth is, I'm too much of a broken child to understand love when it snaps it's fingers in front of my face. She trusted me, needed me, and I ran as far and hard as I could to get away from what we meant to eachother. I thought I was brave and strong, but I was just a coward in the end. I know, deep inside

There it is!
Vague memories of a night
at a Brand New show,
when the truth hit as hard
as the ***** and the music.

I'm only good for the people
I love, and that love me,
when things get to the point
that crisis appears.

I can dance Irish jigs in the street,
but only when I'm drunk,
I can spit in the face of people
much bigger and angrier than me,
but only when I'm drunk,
I can live how I believe I should,
but only when I mix the right amount
of alcohol and/or other things,
and only for that night.

The rest of the time I am
a slave to memories and
intrusive thoughts, states
of agitation based on a
chemical and experiencial
**** up in my head.

When you need me to
pull you out of a crack house,
or be fierce enough to keep
you from shooting up one more time,
I'll be there of course.

But happiness and bliss,
when everything is going
exactly the way it should...
I'm bad at that.

Sometimes there are only the small things
left for us to cling to when all else
has receded into the folds of the past,
or the mists of an uncertain future.

Merely a moment remembered perhaps,
or a burning hope for what may come,
but it is in this, the power of the heart
to derive what strength it can,
in which I place my life.

It is always Autumn in that moment
for me, golden leaves falling
and making the raking of them
an almost daily chore.

But I wouldn't trade the trees
they fall from for anything,
their beauty being worth the work.

Nor would I trade the journey
that has brought me here by
so many crooked paths,
painful as it may have been.

It has all been worth it,
every wound and every tear,
all those nights spent empty
and searching, looking backward
and in love with memories.

This is worth all the pain I
could ever suffer, all the money
I could ever make, all the
great adventures I may have had.

This moment, looking up
from raking leaves in a yard
and thinking long thoughts,
to see her watching me.

She was pouring love into her
garden, lavishing it with care
as if it were the height of May
and the plants were exploding
into bloom all around her.

It's overcast today, and quiet,
that quiet right before a light snow,
the first snow of the year a few
days before Thanksgiving.

She told me last night about
a Buddhist concept that I had
some trouble wrapping my head
around, something called
loving-kindness, which I have
been thinking on as we go.

I think I understand what it means
now, when our eyes meet in that
moment during a pause from routine.

I'll have to try and ask about it later
when we go inside and eat supper,
but for now, with us as we are, in this
moment I understand.

"Had Paul of Tarsus been convinced that he was nothing more than a wandering weaver of carpets, he certainly would not have been the man he was...The myth that took possession of him made him something greater than a mere craftsman." -Carl Jung

Drums in the distance
as the multitudes groaning
beneath the heels of power
are beginning to realize
that they have a Voice.

Too long have we waited
silent and obedient
as we have been stripped
and beaten
and murdered.

Without fanfare and trumpets
a simple slogan
shouted through tear gas
as workers march on the Arch
and the bombs continue to fall.

"HANDS UP!
DON'T SHOOT!"

Will the people of peace
prevail over such reckless
fear and hate
crawling through the bowels
of our once great nation?

Or will there be fire
raining down from the sky
children with rifles in the streets
a prophet born in a diner
become a martyr?

She said to me, that first night,
"You've been touched, deeply.
But in all the worst places."

War is a machine, make no mistake.
Insert money here, and add soldiers there
and in the end
all we receive
is blood and soil.

Where was it born,
  this fire-bird's song,
  this diamond thread,
  spanning lifetimes?

A great turning wheel,
  eternal change,
  this love-journey,
  returning to you.

Nearly dead from exhaustion,
  hallucinating with thirst,
You can barely remember the face of the Beloved.
Don't give up now, not ever!

For this love-work is the only labour
  worthy of we pilgrims.

Oh don't gimme that look again babe,
that sideways glance you sneak through
those curtains of grapevines you cultivate so well,
kinda like you got some sort of suspicion
that maybe I used to be a blues player
or a James Bond villain.

I sure as **** ain't no Nick Cave
but I got a couple of bad seeds
you might have been lookin for.

Think of this as a forwards backwards
inside out message to you
and maybe I'll show it to the future,
that is if there is a future
worth showin this **** to.

I tell ya one thing though
and even though this'll make me
sound exactly like what I am,
that is to say one arrogant sonofabitch
that wants to give, I mean
really give something to you.

I want to give you whatever you'll have of me
because I don't write poetry

I live it.
And it hurts most of the time.

Except for that select couple of seconds
when you walk me back through your history
and you forget what I used to be.

I just crossed over it.
That demarcation between
who I thought I was, and
wanted to be....and actually
have become.
Behind me now
is that person I
yearned to be.
In unfamiliar territory now
and expecting imminent
destruction.
Yet there is nothing here
on this side of oblivion
save a bottle of whiskey
and pure existentialism.
After having another drink
and putting on Led Zeppelin's
When The Levee Breaks,
I remember a similar rainy
night seven years ago,
stealing two bottles of
red wine from the Publix
in St.Augustine and drinking
said wine on the beach with
Lauren and Kiki as the storm
enveloped us in some sort
of human connection.
I never ****** either one
of them but I would have
liked to, but in those days
I had no confidence even
when drunk.
In those days I didn't
realize that I had something
to give besides money and
an averaged sized ****
(even though it's not crooked).
I believed in love and truth
and was eventually shown by
the world I find myself in now
that there is nothing but the
life we make for ourselves.
It is not up to me to change
the fetid world, it is not up to
me to hunt down that *******
who pumped a nasty load
all inside of a random **** victim.
I was raised to believe that
we actually had a purpose, a
mission given to us to do
all we can to negate human suffering.
I realize now that it was all
nothing but sheer false hope.

Tonight
I took the last
vestiges of my
faltering morality
by the sweating hands
and led him
out back
to be
shot.

What if you could stand up and be more than you were made?
What if you could wake up and see the world as it really is?

What if, by the power of your love, you could mend any wound.
What if you realized that you are not merely a product of your environment?

What if you could truly believe that the dark shall not conquer.
What if you could see all of the lives you have touched with your compassion.

What if, one day, we all could do those things.

They say that one can lead a horse to water,
but one can't force him to drink.

Indeed,
this must be true.

However that may be,
I've never seen a thirsty horse
refuse good water.

I imagine that Jellaludin would have
something very witty to say about this.

I simply will say,
let your heart be like the horse
who never refuses sweet waters.

If only words had the power to rip the lies from your mouth,
or pull my heart out of the purse you dropped at my feet;
one swift motion and a heave, liquid dinner all over
grass and empty beer cans.

The stars still shone as I tried to hold your hair back,
the Earth kept spinning around the Sun,
that last night I loved you, out behind the wal-mart.

But that was a long time ago baby, ancient history
to people like you and me.

Too little and too late for me to say I'm sorry
that keeping it casual just isn't in me.

When you told me you had a thing for ****** up people
I guess I already knew, or wanted to believe,
that I was too ****** up for you.

You don't know how good you were at making me
your Quasi Modo, but you said everything right,
just enough for doubt, just enough for the hook.

I don't know if I'll ever be happier
than when you fell asleep in my arms.

I don't know if I'll ever be more lost
than when I wake without you.

I don't know if I did wrong
to say so much and do so little.

I don't know if perhaps I wanted
more than was allowed.

I don't know if you told the truth
or if I merely lied to myself.

I don't know what this is now,
only that things are different now,
after you.

This might be my last chance to write anything worth writing.

Once I stood for something tall and proud, a set of ideals and heroes.

I am no hero. No great power to wash away the shadows on your face.

I have betrayed who I am, what I stood for....out of emptiness.

I am waiting for the walls to close in on me, looking for the web to be closed over my broken limbs.  

Wake me up please, I'm tired of not enjoying this life, living only to fix those memories I see all around me.

Van Bough had something to say, and he cut his ear off in order to prove what he painted on canvas was real I think.

I am on the edge of a knife, about to find my destiny, either in hope or handcuffs.

Somehow, someway,  I have to make all this mean something, lest I give up on the world entirely.

But that doesn't matter, I am no prophet,  no wikasa kakan

I have to make myself ha e the courage to face the worst, face my soul,

Let me go home
to those green valleys and blue mountains
where bluegrass is played alongside jazz
and you can get vegan meals or a good steak
most people not really caring where you
lay your allegiance god-wise
as long as you don't go around converting folks.

I've been in this desert solitude
for far too long
emptying myself out upon rocks
and thinking to find something
transcendental and awe-inspiring
all while not realizing that simple truth:
the love I've been looking for really
could have been found anywhere.

So let me go home Father
take this useless cast net from me
especially since I'm a 'hossman
and sure ain't no fishaman
so why did you send me wanderin
to the shores of this sea?

So I could find her maybe
or realize that, like that one story
I had to leave everything behind
and journey on some kind of suffering
inspired pilgrimage to nowhere
and then come back again?

I found all of my Army papers again tonight,
and revisited who I was then.

I searched back a little farther,
and found some things I had written before.

Amongst the buried rubble of a person
that I once may have been.

Piles of books and notes and scraps of
memories peeling away from reality as of now.

Sifting through old photographs
taken 10 or 15 or 20 years ago.

I wish that the person I was then
is who actually loves you now.

Here it comes again,
that feeling known so well,
when your heart hurts
and things start to stretch.

The machine you're trying to type
on is starting to fail,
the words you're trying to speak
are sounding cheap and ill used.

There is something you know,
deep down inside,
some seriously heavy hitting truth
trying to claw it's way out of you,
a drop of strange, a hint of deja vu.

Pulling back from the lies you've told
to yourself, afraid to see what is...
and what ought to have been.

I'm afraid to go through that door,
shedding the faces and skins I've worn
for so long, but I know that I have to
open it and walk through standing tall.

There is some such music that may be played
a strange lilting tone as they say,
that no matter my condition
nor present company I find myself in
shall move me to tears....
perhaps of joy or sadness or long forgotten despair.

It's overwhelming rush of memory and hope
rising and falling upon my tired, blood-stained heart,
as the immeasurable and ever flowing tides
shall perhaps one day carve of me,
the man I was born to be.

When I'm lonely, I can't find any of them anywhere. When I'm sick of them, they're all over the place.

So there he sat
wounded and weary
spilling platitudes
***** and dreary
when first I found him
darkened and dangerous
working wounds with weathered hands
and wondering why on this worthwhile
world we stand?

From then to now and now to then
rumors of rancor and roaring
at children's feces filling
a head howling with horrendous chiding
hiding
from how near he might be to crying.

Here I am
waiting for the whiskey
to stop being coy
and finally kick in.
Rome is burning outside
but the flames haven't
crept near yet.
Front row seats
to the end of an era
that I'll soon have to pay for.
I can already smell the smoke
and see the angry glow
against the weeping sky.
But I have some time yet
before the air gets hot
and the streets become
screaming rivers of humanity.
Bearing witness now
to the weeping heart
and fate's feckless whim.
Outside, Rome is burning
as the tide of time reaches
out to find the high water mark.
All for a dream
a half formed and
half thought impulse,
the urge to conquer
not a woman or a nation
but the whispers of the psyche.
Soon now the fat lady
will sing her rusted heart out
and I'll see the last great age
fall to the caprices of a power
that I will never comprehend.
Rome is on fire
and in that destruction
might something else
be born?
The histories of nations
the folly of man
the lives of the great
replayed again within
the lives of those
whom I love.
The center is indeed crumbling
and we of the flesh,
we cannot hold.

I wish I knew why I stay here,
knowing that I should've quit
a long time ago, should've
thrown that ***** towel in
and taken off for someplace else.

And yet, maybe I've drawn the line
here, maybe gotten sick of packing
up and moving on whenever the urge
takes me to be a nomad again.

In the same vein though,
God what a good feeling it is
to just pack up an take off into
the sunset or sunrise, depending,
either way it's the freedom of
starting over that I know I'm addicted to.

So many times I've needed to just
collect whomever I'm in love with
at the time and burn off into the
night with nothing but a hope to
act as navigator toward the future.

I filled my veins with forgetfulness
to escape the knives in your eyes
and the thunder of the drums in my ears;
Empty me out
as water into a sieve
and leave me here for the jackals.

I do believe that I'm finished for a time,
tired of longing after other lands,
and other climes in search of something
I know deep within, I have known
and had all along.

That place is my home
a home that I've always known
and always measured my loves by;
green fields rolling into a valley,
and a great mountain filling
up the horizon.

I wish to know where you have come from,
wonder if you remember what New York was,
or if the death of your grandmother
meant far more than you let on.

I left a cheap vase full of white
carnations on your desk for a reason,
and it had nothing to do with the affection I feel for you,
just a simple gesture,
a minor hoping happiness for you.

There are such things as a world yet undiscovered,
and yes, I get that you refuse to date a man
younger than you, but for ****'s sake,
you don't even know me?!

I have no mighty words left with which to challenge the doubts that gnaw at me, as the ravens gnaw upon the bones of my innocence.

I have no sword with which to slay the nightmares who haunt me in the terrible hours before sleep comes.

I have not courage enough to stand and be counted among those who strive shoulder to shoulder against the dark.

To He that shapes the fate of all, I cry out in the watches of the night, I cry out in the rays of the dawn, I cry out in the blaze of midday.

I cry out that You have not kept me alive in vain.

Another soul gone elsewhere
life taken by their own hand
perhaps a kindness they showed
themselves at last to depart these
erstwhile longing shores.

I won't do his memory disservice
by attempting any sweeping ode
nor pretend that I knew him better
than some few others in my life.

But I will pray for him, though
prayer is not something I often do
nor believe in as a certain substitute
for actual action in the direction of suffering.

Had I known how deep the extant
of said suffering I would have done
more though that is indeed the paradox
that we as humans share: namely, we don't
know anything, really, about the people
we see every single day, unless we ask.

Never again will I not ask how someone is,
never will I turn a blind eye to that shuffling
gait or those hunched shoulders nor will
I ever forget that my own pain never has
been and never will be an excuse to not
be a reasonable human being.

Good-bye and Godspeed Andrew.
Put in a good word for me please
to whoever it is that runs wherever it
is that you have gone. And please know
that it wasn't indifference that kept
me from asking after you, merely ignorance.

So go on then, read to me from your sacred book full of songs
and half articulated dreams, spinning irresolutely toward a destination I have no name for.

Show me these images and portents, these slow chords and rhymes, high and low and inside and out, reaching into me and twisting the screaming infant of a heart that I need to so desperately give away.

Commanding me to step outside of my own experience and my own fear, asking me to follow you on outstretched wings of wax and gull feathers.

But I have known your kind, was one of you once, those figures of myth and meaning, swept away in an instant by the music that I hear and desire and suffer for, and yet shall not be beguiled by.

But what I write now, this sort of struggling epitaph of straight razors and crying boys, this is not a specific tirade against you, or my irritation at having been seen through, no no, none of that is really the feeling that I am seeking to evoke.

........................We Are The Sum Of All We Have Been,

The poor weeping ghost of William Blake back again to sit by me and wonder, what many things the world may hold...............taking me by the hand, we follow.

And yet we may and will continue to grow and flow through the ever changing riverbeds of soul if only we try, if only we seek, to overcome this thing, this empty hole that I can see following us all.

And yet, somewhere in the six inches immediately in front of our hearts, there seems to be this kind of faint glow, a multifaceted hum, projecting itself forward into a future where both end and beginning form a wonderful, beautiful whole.

Misty morning of time gone by,
sun bespeckled summer days full
to the brim with quiet love.

Loose collections of a rainwater collage,
woven blankets draped over
a sad man with a pen.

All I am is held within the small things,
all I love and breath
mere moments.

Old songs sung by the wind,
a whisper and a longing
please let me make something
beautiful for you.

A wind carried me into the West
   carried my throbbing heart into your hands.

And the rains you poured down upon my secret places
    filling my desert with your love.

The lands of your body like the New World to me
    though I come bearing a passion to give, not a greed to conquer.

A kiss from you drained the bitterness from my soul
    and your warmth moved me as a storm upon mountains.

As I stripped clothes from your form
    you stripped illusions and fears from me.

As you molded me like a sculptor
    I revealed your hidden power.

With my hands in your hair you whispered my name
    and the walls of my heart finally fell.

And when I could no longer tell where I ended and you began
    the pilgrim in me had at last returned home.

The place I go where they play Led Zep and don't give a ****. Basically the place I go when I don't wanna pretend anymore.

Every now and again

we understand that we have a choice

between wearing the mask

or throwing it away.

These being the words of a tired poet
desperately fighting to rekindle a dying flame.
This being the end of an era spent chasing shadows
and loving weeping ghosts.

Take this heart within your hands
before the body that belongs to it fades.
Do it now, go on and take it while
the light still breathes in this place.

My time here is ended, if I ever really
was of here to begin with, perhaps more of
a wanderer than I realized in those blue sky
days when our love had a body and a soul.

But you, your time is now and it is a perilous one,
in this world slipping away, turning inward.
So carry this heart with you into the night,
talisman of the old world, last of the fading light.

What may be marked as times full of
hate and inequity, of racial scorn and
social injustice, of a seeming end to
the world of green and good things,
perhaps a falling away of what each of
us hold dear in our hearts.

I honestly don't think that this
division is what will determine who
we are as people, I don't think that
the color of our skin or our political
beliefs or standpoint on religion
is what really has any bearing in
the long run on what we choose.

We all want to be accepted yes?
We all want a safe place to raise
a family and we all want to be able to
be able to provide for them?

Whatever the composition of our family,
however it is that we find loved ones,
should it not be that we are able to do
so in peace, in acceptance?

I was taught that it isn't where we
come from or what we appear to be,
but rather, the quality of who we are
that determines who we are as people.

And maybe I'm wrong, maybe I do
live in a nation that was "born of genocide
and slavery", but even if that is the truth,
I believe in the idea of who we are.

I believe in a place that may not exist,
a place where all are welcome, peoples
of all backgrounds and all colors and
all faiths, a place where it doesn't matter
who your father was, but who you are.

Sometimes it doesn't matter where you're going.
All that matters...is that you are going somewhere.

It's probably a not so healthy thing,
me not able to say what I want to,
when you and your heart mean more
to me than my own.

My life is in transit, in limbo as always,
and yet here I am, as walls crumble
about me, the walls I've built so tall,
falling at last to you.

It's time I admit how much I love you, how many nights I've spent
drinking myself into oblivion just
wishing for a single question.

Maybe, I should ask that question,
but I'm not sure, can't know what you want unless you tell me.

I'm trying, so hard, with everything
I am, but you're so enigmatic that
I don't ever know what to say.

Congratulations by the way, you've
achieved something no one else
has been able to do...
you are hurting me dear.

Maybe that was the first mistake I made
there at the very beginning.

I wanted all of it, everything I could glean
from whatever life had to offer.

Not only did I want the beauty of Hesse,
Dante, and all the glories of Old Florence,
I wanted someone like me to share it with.

I wanted to wake up in a room in Tangier
to the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer
and have some unbelievable soul in bed with me
wipe the sleep from her eyes and kiss me.

They say that I'm a drunk and a dreamer
and they may in fact be right about that,
but they'll never know the absolute glory
that comes from pouring your bleeding guts
out onto paper at two in the morning with
Pavarotti blaring as loud as you can make him.

I'm almost thirty and I've almost given up,
almost accepted that the finer things in life
will only ever be a dream, a fleeting glimpse
into an improbable future that may cost too much.

And then I meet people like her, Artists and Lovers
that cut me in ways I didn't think I could be anymore.
I'll be doing alot of drugs with them, maybe have some
truly Protestant shaming *** with them, trying to
reach out across that ****** abyss and touch their soul.

But I'll never wake up in Tangier with them.
I'll fall asleep listening to Netflix and wondering
who gave her the scars I can feel pumping through her heart.
It'll probably fade away relatively quickly too,
that one real moment when the walls fell.

No matter, I always knew deep in my heart of hearts
that people like me don't get happy endings or to
live our dreams out unless we die for them.
We go our own way, suffering to be who we are,
creating beauty in ****** rooms with screaming
children that reek of cat **** and regrets.

But if it ever gets too much to bear, there's
always truly running, truly giving up on
having it all, walking the **** away
and being insane and drunk in Tangier alone.

Is this what I've become?
This twisted thing in prison,
shackled to a leather chair and a computer
typing out god knows what
at 2:44 in the morning?

Is this really what I am?
This child weeping in a corner
pretending to be a man
screaming at shadows
and bleeding nothing but sand?

No.

I am not an animal in a cage,
and I am not an empty shell
scouring the world in search
of other souls to fill some hell.

Let me tell you a secret that I've never told anyone before. Here is the key to deciphering my own personal Rosetta Stone.

I can only ever write about things that have the most potential to hurt me by doing so from hindsight, or placing the events into another time and place, speaking from outside of myself.

So it is that I write of you now, as the wind whispers through dunes in this lonely, though not empty place. I am writing from the deepest recesses of my heart, where it is always twilight in a desert. Looking back now, I can see what seems like irony in the way the evening progressed. You needed an uplifting spirit you said, and I came following. I spent all night trying to pull you out of a sadness that I know well, and knew that it was a futile gesture. Since then I've been trying my best to forget how it felt to dance with you in a living room, for once in my life, completely unabashed. We were both drunk by then, and of course, both emotionally compromised. I shouldn't have been surprised how easily it was that our lips found each other, but I was. After hoping to the point of giving up hope, I walked into a mirage and found you there. It doesn't really bother me as much as I thought it would, believing that the night meant nothing to you. Even so, holding you for just that short time, means everything to me. I can still taste you, smell you, feel your body in my hands, and remember exactly the shade of your gray-green eyes. The irony perhaps is that I came to you that night to try and provide comfort, and somehow, it's you who pulled me up and out of the dark. Though we have no future, I'll carry that night with me forever, and when I'm alone with myself, as I am now, those memories you gave me will be enough.

So now, after this war has ended, I know I will never be the person whom you loved once.
You've written so much beauty, doing all you can to save what you believed in.....
This is my hope....my own piece of sorrow, since you have given more of yourself than I ever thought you could when we were together.
Beni Beni my dearest, I've lost who I was when you loved me, yet you still believe, and that....has cost me more sorrow than the children I have thrown to wolves.
How can you still love one such I? After all I have accomplished in the name of equality?
I tried to change our society, I tried to make those old Men wake up and realize that their way;
their way is the wrong way, the way that starving children have grown up with.
And I...was wrong.
You loved me, and I couldn't realize the value of that.
All this time later, I just am  now realizing what you have done for me...the person you have helped me become.
I've hurt you...terribly. And you've deserved someone that has the ability to treat you as a painter could portray you.
I love you ... always have.

At one time,
in the midst of my journey
happened I upon Emmaus
and the Pilgrims many there
lost in the ecstasy of transfiguration.

Those that lived there still,
residents in a land of many wonders
welcomed them, and myself
with strong arms and hot food
warm beds and burning love.

So many times upon this Road,
had strangers met and fed me
throwing blankets of goodwill
over my weary shoulders
and still I am amazed and overcome.

How many stories to tell?
How many loves have they loved,
and lives they have lived,
and woes they have suffered
and joys they have known....

This was the Feast of All Soul's
and so the wine began to flow
in celebration and memory
of both the living and the dead,
those among us still
and those gone from these shores.

Amidst the shared revelry
and also the quiet supplication
sat I, at home and yet alone
remembering music and happiness
such as this from many lifetimes
ago, so it seemed.

And of a sudden
without invitation of expectation,
approached a woman, garbed as a Bedouin
whom without glancing
placed a wooden rosary in my hand
and whispered the following benediction.

"Allah, Great and Glorious,
watch over him who sits alone,
lost from himself and seeking
that which he cannot find;
provide unto him with the Prophet's
(Blessings Unto Him) resolve,
and the Christ Child's compassion,
that he may find what he journey's toward."

Kissing my forehead,
as my grandmother used to do,
the great woman disappeared
into the night without a sound
and I, I sat in reverence and prayer
till at last, I felt a burden
finally pass me by.

This always happens,
somehow,
someway.

I have many things that I want to say
a feeling that if only were slightly
intensified, would be able to pour out of me.

So I will have a drink, or three,
but then, for some inexplicable reason
unbeknownst to me,
my hands start to move of their own accord
and I find myself writing
things I never had any intention of saying.

I have been reliving the same moments over and over.
I think that if I had been a better man, if I had been able to shed this fake skin I've been wearing for so long.....
Our lives might have been very different.
At the very least, I wouldn't wake up in the mornings....
wondering who you are now.

That day near Mazatlan you suddenly turned to me
and declared,"You were a romantic once, when I loved you."

I Love You.....And You Love Me
That Is All that has any worth in this world.

Eventually I'll get my **** together.
I won't be able to do it at the rate
you may want, and for that I'm sorry.

To be honest I'm just as sick of this scene as you are, maybe more.

It has a certain appeal though, a certain flavour, a cut loose and not give two flying ***** about anything taste...