I posted this poem  a few days after I joined HP.  As  is oft the case, poems you are especially proud of, fall to the wayside, under the onslaught of the constant waterfall of new submissions.  With the usual exception of Ms. Lori C., one of the two unofficial High Priestesses of HP, in my estimation, this one, was pretty much overlooked.  Despite some comical jaunts of late re bras and beds, real inspiration has escaped me ever nice I penned "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay (Razor Blades, Pills, & Shotguns" last week.  So, with your hoped for solicitude, I resubmit it, hoping it finds a wider audience and dedicate it to those of you who I number as friends (you know who you are!), despite the fact that our only shared embraces have been techno~electronic, and yet the quality of your kindness is beyond measure.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Numerical Quality of Friendship

The quality of friendship is non-quantitative.
Yet, I ask you to number it, and me, this way.

With tape measure, determine that:
The length of my arm's embrace will always be
longer than long enough, and when distance magnifies sorrow's gains,
my shoulders measure wide enough to pillow your wearied head.

The depth of my pocket is finite for by definition,
a pocket is but an open doored, three walled shelter.
My pocket of shelter is forever open, forever deep,
and forever is infinite.

Trust that when bowed and bent,
upon my shoulders climb and together we will be tall enough
to touch the season's new fruit upon the tree of life,
and with one tongue, taste the unimaginable!

Do u think that mercury can measure
the warmth of my tears when love sears my heart,
or the heat of thy skin when it heals and cauterizes
wounds salted by the mistreatment, by the bitters of the weak ones,
who rejoice when they scald others?

Size me up.
What is my volume?
What are the boundaries that
length X depth X height
state must limit my capacity to cherish, to heal,
and even to forgive those who deserve no forgiveness?

If you measure me well and proper,
if I meet the standards that qualify me to be called friend,
then friend me here, friend me now,
friend me for the qualities I posses,
and number us a unity among the few
who are truly blessed
by a quality of friendship that cannot be measured,
for there is no scientific instrument that can quantify
limitless.



March 2012

Can I tell you a secret?
It is the secret I protect very fiercely, all the time, all throughout my life.
It is this,
That I want nothing from anybody else.
I want
Only from you.
I don't know how else to put it.
The words don't mesh the way they should.
Maybe it's because nobody is supposed to say that,
And so a graceful way to word it was never uncovered.

You are the only one
Whose smile
Whose touch
Whose love
Whose attention
Whose respect
Whose trust
Whose soul
I have any yearning for.
And I have all the yearning for it.

All.

Others pass me like falling stars, and I feel their pull casually,
Weakly.
I notice.
But you...
You are the sun. You are my constellation,
My supernova.
My black hole.
You pull all else into your depths,
Distort the edges of my world
Bend them towards you no matter their features.
I cannot tell whether you are light or whether you consume it.
You are so inevitable.
So inescapable.
So vital.
Everything is swallowed by what you... are to me.

There's no way to say it fully.
I've spent words like pennies trying to.
Hundreds of thousands, thrown away in glittering meteor showers,
In hopes that one will hit with a clang
And find... purchase, perhaps,
In heaven.

You are indescribable. Vast.

I am unimportant.
People are unimportant.
Life is unimportant.
The universe is a dust mote.

But you...
You are the sun.

When you touch my face with golden beams
I glow with some of your light
And when you turn from me
I am so cold that I feel dead inside
Like a glacier- untouched and lonely and hard,
Diamond dark tomb for long deceased souls
That might moan were they not encased in silent glass.

When you rise in the morning
And throw off sheets like daybreak clouds
And stretch your fingers like reaching rays toward the ceiling
I swear the room is warmer than it was a moment before.
Brighter
...Better.

And when at night you close your eyes to dream,
Your skin still glimmers softly, bronze and gold,
The way the moon echoes the sun's glory
On the most perfect summer night.

No one can truly turn out the lights on you:
You make your own.

Darling, I think I'll go blind if I ever look away from you.
Everything else is so dark, so bland.
Because it's not you, nor have you yet touched it and made it perfect with your fingertips,
Or your gaze,
Dark eyes like whole galaxies, winking with the purest starlight, drawing the world in with magnetic gravity.

"Why look elsewhere?"
Is what whispers in my mind whenever I try to leave you for a moment.
And I know not why I've tried. But I do know.
I will always try, just a little.
Even though I am happy enough to fail and remain bathed in your incandescence,
I know I will try just for the sake of it,
Like the planets pull out against their orbits even as their hungry faces linger, glancing back with longing toward their radiant captor.
Because you see,
The sun is the sun:

The sun cannot love me.