I drove you home thinking how about how much I did not want the night to end,
It was quiet, save for the ambient noise as we drove through the freeway,
I glanced over at you, your face, your thoughts,
a  mystery.
You said to me “Do you ever just listen to the silence?”
and then suddenly it was as if I was in a special place,
a special place I only knew of,
a secret chamber I retreat to,
and yet you so effortlessly walked into it,
perhaps you already knew of this place,
perhaps you already knew of the silence,
perhaps you had been there far before I had,
these thoughts raced through my  head,
I replied to you after a few seconds of reflection,
“yes, I do listen to the silence”

I.   I often look at your beautiful face, but that isn't why I love you.

you are looking in the mirror forty years from now,
and you have long surrendered to time,
your beauty will betray you,
it will betray us,
this you already know,
the heavens and hells tug at your flesh
slowly carving wrinkles
at the pillars of your youth.

II. The Ocean Blue

For on the surface they swim, and on the surface you look
but few so ever dive where a madman would go
to the dark chilly solitary crevices,
of where true beauty lies,
that is where I found you,
in the deep darkness
that is where I saw you,
alone, so beautiful, pristine,
cold in the dark.

Sialia, O Sialia,
how I yearn to hear from thee,
If silence be golden,
how rich hath thou made me?

An eclipse of the heart,
Sorrow celebrates,
Darkness reigns.

There I stood,
a grown man, (or at least I like to think of myself as one)
shaking her hand,
her hands; dry, rough, hard,
and my hands had never felt so soft as during that moment;  so sheltered as when I touched your mother’s hands,
her hardened thenar, those callused fingers, flooded me with warmth in the midst of a December night,
I could feel her love,
those hands that laboured all your life for you,
those hands  that have toiled for you,
your mother’s hands,
the hands of love.

"Everybody's talking at me,
I don't hear a word they're saying,
Only the echoes of my mind,
People stopping, staring,
I can't see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes,
I'm going where the sun keeps shining,
Through the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Banking off of the northeast winds,
Sailing on a summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone."

-Harry Nilsson

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

Then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear.

You, send out beyond your recall.

Go the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like a flame

And make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

-A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke   1875 - 1926
Translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

death and decay
and we sink
sink
into the soil,
into mother,
deep in her as she shreds us apart,
she meshes us,
so that we may we sprout once again,
be torn once again,
*****, eaten, consumed, and tossed into the dregs of the most unfathomable wastes,
we sink,
sink
into into the soil.

to trust in nature for it is the only truth,
in it's savagery find what is pure,
for only what is innocent can spring forth that which is truly untainted,
as blood drenches the gums,
truth and death
to trust an agony,
crimson lifeless cubs at the feet of the alpha lion,
to wallow in pain,
the taste immerses the wolf with joyous delight,
a nurturing provides
young with bone, mother with milk,
so that the solitude may go on,
the trees span,
to trust in one and only one,
for what is love if not trust?

Today I saw a homeless man with a very long beard,
filthy,
sweating in the hot sun.
He rode a bicycle with a tall flag,  
cars sped by him.
A mother waited at a traffic light;
her daughter far, far away,
yet they sat side by side.  
Driving.  

Hot was the air,
and full of smog,
In the midst of the traffic the small orange flag fluttered,
as to signal to all,
that this man too carried precious cargo,
behind him a cart he pulled, he pedaled,
he towed;
a friend, a tired friend, and old friend, a friend in need.

In the eyes of this friend,
I saw an appreciation,
a happiness that glowed, radiated at the friend ahead who so dutifully pedaled on.
"SEE MY FLAG!
I too like this mother have precious cargo".

The daughter’s thumb glides up the glass,
then the thumb arrives back to the point where It started,
the thumb glides back up again,
with each glide that drags up the glass she further drifts from her mother.

The mother stares forward ,
she waits for the traffic signal,
she lets the passing of time flow through her,
it reminds her how the only thing all her years have taught her about time is that it is
subjective,
fleeting,
and that she must kneel to it.

The daughter smiles for the glass has pleased her,
The mother does not smile,
for she is not of the glass,
the mother, remembers when the daughter was 4 years old and all the daughter wanted was to be with her.
An eternity ago,
Yet less than a decade,
but she now knows the knack,
for even now she can feel it,
time is subjective,
she knows her daughter will learn as she did,
the realization and worship of TIME.

There is a solitude and loneliness that a homeless person must endure,
I cowardly imagine a world
where I had no one,
no one who cared enough to be anyone in my life,
to live in the street,
to be nowhere.
When the entirety of the populace pays you no mind.
When you do not count.

The daughter's thumb dances,
it quickly glides up the glass once again.
Her head has not yet turned to her mother,
The person who loves her more than anything in the world is next to her,
yet the unstoppable hourglass of days seems so plump,
so plentiful,
thinks the daughter,
as her opposable thumb does nothing for her evolution,
secretions of dopamine trickle through her brain,
and the heart in the glass now shows 263.

The homeless man tows a friend,
a friend who has accepted him despite his stench,  
his addiction,
his lack of home,
food,
money, car, hygiene;
The homeless man pedals on,
burning precious calories from the food that he doesn’t have,
I see a relationship in them void of judgement,
but full an unconditional love that we ever very rarely see,
outside of our Father;
our Mother.

The light changes green, and the cars begin to move,
the traffic catches up to the homeless man, cars begin to swerve around them,
I hear a bark,
the homeless man turns around ,
to check ,
to  see,
what his only friend, his most trusted, his only bond, his reason for existing needs.  

The daughter has not yet looked at her mother,  

Driving driving driving.

"Starry
Starry night
Paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the
Darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land.
And now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen
They did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now.
Starry
Starry night
Flaming flo'rs that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in
Vincent's eyes of China blue.
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's
Loving hand.
And now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free.
Perhaps they'll listen now.
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight on that starry
Starry night.
You took your life
As lovers often do;
But I could have told you
Vincent
This world was never
Meant for one
As beautiful as you.
Starry
Starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes
That watch the world and can't forget.
Like the stranger that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of ****** rose
Lie crushed and broken
On the ****** snow.
And now I think I know what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen
They're not
List'ning still
Perhaps they never will."

a song by Don Mclean, 1971

Smitten be the man who would stare into her soul and find what the eons have so carefully hidden, tucked away safely in an innocence that can only live within her. So precious her treasure, she goes about indifferent, that there are those who would let blood, who would traverse any peril, for a short moment with her, for those who know of her gold know that all else is naught.

And so it is, the silence. For which is all completely mine,
the blank,
the nothing, neither structure, nor a void,
a solitude so profound, so great, it must be achieved,
not bludgeoned into,
A blank landscape in which I paint what I may,
undisturbed by your words I embrace your nothingness,
and I wait, and I breath,
and know,
that you do not remember me,
but I remember you,
I hold in total pristine,
your blank canvas and ponder what I may mark,
what I may paint,
what uninhibited freedoms I may to take to fulfill all things, all desires, all wants, because I know you so heartbreakingly well,
an exhaustion,
but I dare not disturb the silence,
not for a cry, not for a roar for it must be birthed of you,
But please understand, I remember you,
not your face, not your touch, surely not your voice,
the feeling you give me, I cannot bring forth through our sounds, our symbols,
it is not an understanding, but a realization,
if you only knew how the wind feels when I think of you,
you would resurrect , you would remember,
the feeling you gave me, thousands of years ago,
there is no memory of this,
only the essence remains,
the latent vibrations that exist only in the frequency that you flood me with,
a sensation only wrought forth in the breath and the stare of an old soul,
a tired soul that has loved much,
a soul has hurt much
and is all but one percent gold

That sweet breeze
I know you've felt it,
it comes about only during those times,
that particular cool breeze that you feel so much more pronounced for it chills the trails,
those trails left by drops they trickle, they run, they drip,
they find their way to the little windows of your soul, and they collect,
they swell they shine they overflow
like an uncontrollable salty dam.
And then it breaks
you bleed but not red
they spill over from soaked eyelashes, they glide over your face and you taste the salt in  your lips,
a moment when the truth has erupted out of you, for to see a truth in someone is perhaps one of the most beautiful things,
and in the darkness in the despair
like the hand of an angel it caresses
you'll feel that sweet cool breeze on your dripping face
as if to tell you it is going to be ok.

but you see my dear, my sweet,
you always stood so far away,
I've not a bow to reach you like he,
not one arrow or a sight for aim like he,
I've only this stinger which even then,
needs you to be very close to strike
but what I lack in range I gain in what lingers,
a toxin that seeks your rivers of blood,
so to be inside of you, to traverse all within you,
to pump into your heart
as you gasp from pleasure, from pain and all the realms in between
as you slip out of consciousness,
I watch you as your eyes close.

It's such a shame those eyes have never seen Paris,
a shame those fingers have never touched the ruins at Pompeii
a shame your brother has ruined what a Scorpio is to you
a shame that they all still insist on treating you like a child
inside you a woman screams, a woman only I can hear.