Curl up against me
Lay your head upon my chest
And listen to me
As my syncopating heart
Beats a song of love for you

so we undressed
and I didn't finish
and you felt self-conscious
and refused to read to me
like you did the night before
so I didn't sleep
but you did
and your brow was a shelf
and I wiped it off
like I did the night before
so the morning would feel clean
yet I missed a spot
and you said no one loved like me
and that wasn't a good thing
like a songbird that was more showboat
so I'm sorry lukewarm newspapers
and two wine glasses
and too empty
and you bit my lower lip until blood was drawn
like a misery, like a static radio song
so I bit your lower lip until blood was drawn
but that wasn't an anchor
but that wasn't a tether
but that wasn't criminal
like the soap operas and the 51st shade of grey
so we undressed
and turned on the history channel
and it didn't go anywhere
and you said history was for the historians
like ******* was for lovers
so we dressed
and you were a child in my clothes
and I talked down to you
and you took one last drink of my cologne
like a closing hymn collapsing on a dime

cliche, boring, bland and weak
based upon a foundation of chic
pseudo-intellectual

you distract from your lack
with your apathetic crap
entomology and intonation
i call it character *******

you do it too often, many of you
just be who you are so we can shine through

i just have to get this off my chest...
your subject matter concerns love
who would've guessed

it rhymes and chimes and deliverance isn't best
and if one skims just beginning and end
there is no need for the rest

lacking originality
either resolve or contradiction
not cryptic nor a riddle in sight
not an original thought nor display of risk

you can learn here from this one write
what you could never tell east from west
and even though, you'll be better so
it will never be
as clever as thee
so just hide behind your traditional text

its not that i seek to pick on the weak
its quite the contrary-

start over with command
so you understand
it is the fraudulent that i detest

it is lack of interest and tact
and i won't take it back
your technique is as the rest.

you slack in approach
you couldn't hold my attention
from the first line
to the next

no captivation
no eccentricity
no enigma
flooding, you are, a pest

parasitic in your relentlessness
attention seeking for all the wrong reasons
leading poetry to its death

you bore me truly
insincerely yours,
unafraid to best.

my bed became a sanctuary of nothingness.   But I fear emptiness.  Its close.  A paralysis of indecision permeates like frigid winter through drafty walls.  I decide to sleep in.  

Occasionally turning to see the clock- minutes, hours pile up like ***** dishes.

During broad daylight, the distant noise of a cessna impedes into my room, defining a vast separation.  One, maybe two people up there have an interesting life, an important destination.  Listening to their flight gives me something to do.  When they are gone, I have nothing left but a fingerprint stained glass of water.

By late afternoon, the lost day vaguely disturbs like seeing one shoe on a highway.  
Either painful or a waste, nothing good about it.  

Finally light dims.  A broken clock is right twice in a day, but since I'm the one who stopped, the clock catches up with my uselessness in bed.
The period on the sentence that I have, truly, accomplished nothing.  

Darkness justifies my nap.  A relief as I can finally end the day with some sleep.

I dream of being infinite, traversing the universe a narrow beam of light.  You pass me by a little faster, but turn around so we can create time together, to become here.

I dream of when we camped by a river's waterfall.  Half awake my eyes can see the tent filled with soft green light.  No light source but bright enough to see by, everything in the tent and you sleeping peacefully. Logic corrects me, says it a New Moon and I shouldn't be able to see anything.  My eyes agree and slowly darken, blind to the color of love's aura that I can still feel.

I wake.  Pour one bowl of cereal instead of two, remembering when you looked up from breakfast and said, "let’s ride our bikes across the country," just like that.  And just like that we did, halfway anyway.  1500 miles was just the beginning.  I love the places you take me.

I call you up.  "Let's not call them dealbreakers, ok?"

"There are fixed points through time where things must always stay the way they are." - The Doctor in "Cold Blood" (2010)

"You're my fixed point."
She claims, face hidden
by geography and hands
that cover tear-brimmed eyes
like a spacesuit.
All self-contained and protected.
All exoskeleton and isolation.

Someone gave me a round metal button with a picture of Ghandi spinning thread.  He says the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.  This is true.  Finding the depth of life, what love looks like, was the most substantial, amazing gift my daughters gave me.

Even before each was born, I found myself tying my heart to each life, their future.  Before, I had always revolved around me and my survival, what was best for me. Now even what I ate and drank affected someone else directly.  Babies born so vulnerable they needed everything I am and needed the best I tried to be, with them first.  Their needs decided when or if I slept, when or if I left the house, where or if I would go.  But in return we both merged into the same clock, the same life for a few years, and I could see the world through brand new eyes.

A Preening Ego, fluffed from a career's fleeting recognition, is told to sit down for awhile.
Timorous Self-Esteem, a façade validated by producing the world's tokens, is put away awhile.
Resentful Self-preservation's ******* up importance, first in line grasping time, is ignored awhile.
Gratification never satisfied by a quick rush from the temporary is told to wait awhile.
Self-centered Goals, a calendar filled because empty is worthless, is taken down awhile.

The Grand Illusion is cleared away.

They grow so fast, I treasure their company.  The afternoon sun shines warmly through the living room window, skims over the top of the couch, reveals some lazy dust floating peacefully in the quiet house, and lights up my 9 month old daughter's baby fine brunette hair.  She has been studying a tiny colorful empty double sided box, the same size as her tiny palms, for 20 minutes. Little fingers working the top, figuring this all out;  I am so impressed with her attention span; this moment is so much more important than a schedule.   My younger daughter was born with brilliant blond curly hair, and tomboy laughter; so laid back nothing phases her.  She is a toddler, standing in front of the toy jeep driven by her older sister, who sits knowing she has all the power right now.  The younger is daring and knows she stands with all the power right now.  I hope they both remember they always do.  When they were in school, Iwas pleased getting notes from the teacher, telling me one is talking in class, or the other can't sit still, interrupting, because I knew they are happy.

Both of my daughters walk around with my heart in their hands and all I can do is pray for their well-being.

And that so happens to be the point of it all.