I feel lonesome hands approaching mine
to walk me through the desert.
I tense my arms against the open night sky
which cannot be pushed away.

I want you to love my grey skies,
my pensivity that rolls across mountain ranges -
the same to me as sunshine igniting streams.
Just a different lens
through which my creature plays with light.
She is elemental
and sloughs skin off the earth like lava flowing
into the ocean to close its eyes.
I'll eat my own tail
to discover what I already know.

Sitting such as a sentinel
After countless nights of watch
Upon hardly a throne,
Small garnet spheres finally dive
After some days of thorny signalling
        and uncertainty.
Today, a wreckage of dropped things
I tried half-halfheartedly to juggle, each
Pushed harder on my ****** from the inside, each
Taking up space within me, no room
To let go my clenching muscles and let it all cascade.
Now, worn and mellow,
I finally release the warm inner potion
That must renew itself to hold magic.

I have bursts of disbelief
        at the beauty of this life
        
        followed by pangs of confusion
        at its paradoxical discord
        which orders itself
        into thousands of noises
        that pummel my ears
        all at once.

Some moments,
        I receive one heavenly tune
        and I am almost saved -

        they come between time's ticking,
        nearly unknown
        like ghosts somehow both
        made and not made of me.

They know my fate
They are not worried
        at the thousand sounds
        I cannot help but hear
        because I am still listening
        for the single tune
        that is mine.

I live with a fear that slowly burns
Of the discord that swells within those I love
Made suppressed until a high tide
Splashes the serene coast. This is denial.
I am so easily disrupted
At the turn of wind from sweet to slapping,
The soft dole of a grey sky cracked by lightning,
Your melted honey-brown eyes snapping to black –
I don’t even know how to ask, just stumble back aghast,
My sweet little receptors blasted –

I wish I were made of more bone
And less pink ****** tissue
That secretes revealing fluids
Of naiveté and woe.

It’s silly to me now
The time I spent training myself
To adorn in ways they asked of me, ways
That seemed inarguable and sacrosanct, yet
The voice rose from no lone nor supreme source.
It is partly my wrong to have placed those
Fashionable tones in such an order
On my plate and to have eaten them,
Wholeheartedly expectant of nourishment.

Those infectious suggestions of
Curled strands and trimmed outlines,
Distilled traits and clothing bait,
Burned skin kept thin and a curtain
To cover what is truly mine, tucked behind
A clear line in dim light –

These witless insistings
Were never uttered from my bones.
My flesh came forth without a list
Of how I could best fit it, only drove
Life into limbs I was
Already fitted in.
Those demands never sparked
A fire inside my furnace, only
Stole from that which keeps me burning
For true things and tiny, unknown springs.

From inside, I hear more beautiful voices
That sigh and sing forms into being from
Places of unabashed inspiration –

They are the humming variety of
The sound that takes place in me
Which wells and swells and tells me
Stories of all it finds peaceful and lovely
Without and within me.

I sit beneath trees
Because I am treeless
        though I have limbs
        and a soft smile,
        eyes twinkling like shaking leaves
        ahead of afternoon sunlight.

I smell the flowers, push them to my face,
Because I am flowerless
        though I embrace colors
        and shake in a gentle breeze
        and shyly greet visitors
        by opening up sometimes.

I draw in the sunrise
Because I have a familiar light
That wakes within me.

I give time to the countless plants I pass
Because of their grace and oneness
        and selflessness
Because I know these are possible within me,
That pure magic,
Only sweetness.

Meditation or medication.
There seems to me to be one track to freedom
        and we're all on it,
But what multitude of obstacles
        we choose to face
Is up to "us."

This clay figure that radiates energy
  
Was scultpted over eons of time by the gentle presses of nature's thumbs

Life is meaning expressing itself,
How we choose to guide it
Is up to us -
Our emotions are but an interpretive language
That pulses with each breath, mingling memory with intellect,
Feelings are filters, like our eyes and skin,
Meant to figure dreams of chemistry
        into being.

Who we are within
Is as formless as a hazy dream,
Only suggested, imagined to be.