She asked him, "What are you trying to be?"
and his silent answer told her he didn't know.

Sometimes it's enough
to raise your kids well,
to kiss your wife goodnight
in the house you built,
not just with hammer and nail
but through years of love,
affection, and living.

Sometimes it's enough
to grow old like your parents did,
to work towards the wrinkles around the eyes,
like your grandfather's,
molded by years of smiling and easy
laughing.

And, sometimes, it's enough
to be a good man.

I have slowly rid myself of her remnants,
so that, at last,
all that remain are memories,
to become as distorted and blurry
as they may.

While I have much gratitude for my memories,
I have never trusted them,
and only now does she begin to fade.

I've known
her body
before.

Every curve,
every
.f   .     .
.  .r   .
    .e     .
.    .c
   .    .k  .
.    .   .l
   .        .e
that dimly dot
her shape,
like the faint
night sky
of the city,
I've known.

But,
her body
is hers
and hers
alone;
I, nor
any
of her past
and
future lovers
can lay claim.

I will
never call her
min_e,
even should I
hold her hand,
happily,
into eternity.

If you're lucky
you'll bury your roots so deep in a place
that in leaving it'll keep a part of you,
and you'll be changed.

There are parts of me
scattered everywhere,
and sometimes
I can still feel their heartbeats.

I stand in the shadow of giants
humbled, daily,
by what this earth can do.

They rise, one after the other,
a procession of elders
who's refuge I enjoy, both cautiously
and peacefully.

I thank the earth for its gifts,
receding quietly into it
and away from its people.

Terror is the tool of the weak,
inflicted in the hopes of turning a cut
into an infection.

And here it is,
sound the alarm to cut off the arm
for a wounded finger.

It is easier to be cowardly in the face of danger
until the moment the fear-mongering subsides
and introspective reflection reveals a collective shame,

the shame that we steeled our hearts out of fear,
and did not double down on our compassion,
as the prophet Jesus Christ of Nazareth did
in sacrifice of something bigger than just a god.

There's evil in the bunch, they say,
so the quickest solution is to burn the bunch.
You better pray to your god, then,
that no one survives,

for a hand reaching out for assistance,
in being rejected is a sin on both the aggrieved
and the denier, to be carried in the hearts
of our children like molten lead.

The surviving generation will remember, of course,
and the terror will be realized.

Flowers are less beautiful than your hand
softly in mine, though I find myself planted
firmly to the ground
each time I pass under cherry blossoms.

That the smell of rain on a spring morning
draws me out of your arms and into
my early morning walks is only a means of
understanding you as a part of the whole.

You will always be
the first and last most beautiful thing
I will ever see.

Gracefully
the wind causes the willow leaves
to brush the ground, as gently
as I'd sometimes find my fingers
running themselves across your skin.

There is peace here,
as there has always been.
I'd like, when my years have expired,
to meet you here

ultimately, in shallow graves,
to let time and Miss Mother Nature,
the only god I know,
cover us in moss and wildflowers.

Our love grew from a seed,
so there is no reason not to plant it again.

What a shame
to call on god
when he has fallen, too.

There are no gods left!
So here we stand, again,
mankind left
to its own devices.

Come, brother,
let us see what good we can do.

I'd like to be to you
as the sun's rays,
shimmering through the mist,
are to the souls who
know life
for what it is.

Now that we are consumed by fear
we can turn to hate
and strike down anything that
does not look like us.

Us, the most powerful
nation on the planet,
with the biggest military and the
god-given dollar
in fear of a boy

with a clock.

And middle-America
lives in fear of any Muslim,
though I don't think they particularly like
'others'.

I've seen a call for the new crusades,
because the best answer to slaughter
seems always to be slaughter,
indiscriminate and brutal.

Our fear will destroy us.

There is a pair of sisters,
Serendipity and Tragedy.

I enjoy the company of Serendipity,
but I favor Tragedy above all others;
I will carry her in my heart,
laughing, to the grave.

In loving you
I've come to realize that my heart
has the capacity
to love infinitely,

so now that you're gone
<you, the only being capable of singly holding
infinite love>
I have the duty to fill the world with it.

I am only a man,
but like us all,
I have the ability
to give more than myself.

It’s lonely, where I am,
where you are, a lover’s leap
and a stone throw away.
But thrown away is the stone,
the key to your heart.
It beats slowly,
and cannot match mine’s pace.
Catch up, Catch up, it says.
I cannot hear you, yours says.
I’ll wait, mine says.
I do not love you, yours says.
And when have we not listened to our own hearts?

The orange horizon blossoms
over the solitude of this moment,
the salty waves gently removing the sand
I dig my toes into.

I miss you, of course,
the ring weighing more heavy now
pushed against my clenched palm.
We all have promises we can't keep, I suppose.

"I'm sorry" was what I heard last,
though I wonder why.
Sorry is for something we don't mean;
your mind being made up, it's not necessary.

I'd prefer something like,
"I did love you, once.  More than anything."
without an explanation as to what happened
between then and now.

I cannot blame you, and I should not feel
too badly.  Having been loved
is one of the ultimate gifts, second only
to being loved forever.

I etch your face one last time, many times,
in the persistent waves, endless and constant.
I trace the outlines of your smile
in the sand, again and again.

Finally, when the orange glow faded to pink,
then black, I dug my fingers into the sand
one last time, and buried the ring.
There is not always shame in walking away.

I wish I could see the world again,
through the eyes of a child.
It is the gods we build in men that crash the hardest,
and it is only after the fall that we learn
the demise of man was inevitable.

Right and wrong are terms of innocence,
easily defined by children.
I try to do right now, but it mostly settles
like a fog.

The best I can do
is to act
as I've taught my children to.