I've been drinking all the time,
I've been poisoning my wine,
take a pill to send me off to sleep.

And I've been spinning you a line,
whilst bawling out my eyes,
the grain is fast becoming
a desert-island heap.

There's a mantra in the ground,
lay your ear to the quick-sand crowd,

to hear all commonalities
expressed in forms of symmetry,

expressed in half-formal letters,
in aboriginal dance,
in the fated glance of
a bus-stop stranger;
a romance of happenstance.

Through a discourse with my loss,
I feel that finally I have won:
I just want to feel happiness for once.

a learning experience
- the detailed
timing and precision

- a certain etiquette
in the rise and fall
of hands and feet

i learned the walk
- mirrored on the toe
of a spit-shined boot

shooting imaginary doves
in white gloves -

the proper fold
of the cloth
- tight and taught
with stars above

the tri-fold - not
a trifling thing we're told

the color of a mother's tears
and grip of a father's grief -
the why in the cry of a child

- sad song of the bugler
on a windswept hill
standing in the detail.

r ~ 10/29/14

Within this solitude,
I have grown in ways I never knew possible.
I have delved deeper into the caverns
of each chamber
of this sacred abode
we call the Heart,
and discovered there is no end..
It is a perpetually incessant journey.

I continue to swim,
propelled through this bloodstream, ~ this heart’s dream..
my tears becoming one with the ocean
within the vessel that carries me forth.

Guided by a gentle hand, the inward immersion continues..
It is dark.. warm..
it envelopes me.
I cannot see .. rather I feel,
moving by the sight of faith.

There is safety in this sanctuary,
the guiding hand a cord,
the darkness a soothing, protective womb.
I inhale deeply –
as I hear the voice whisper:
everything is allegory
      pain is a sculptor (it keeps us upright)
         love is a painter (his brush divinely guided)
            lust is a cello… (but what good is an instrument without a song to sing?)
and I am ecstatically transported to Tagore:
“I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument
while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

I exhale cathartically –
Releasing..

It seems an eternity between the inhale ~ and the exhale..
a lifetime between each breath.

Mourn not seeking the shades
For shadows are light and light shades
Fear not fearing cowardice
Cowardice is you, fear is a tale

Live not your lived past
Past was yours, you are present
Shed not the pearls from ocean deep
Pearls are precious, save for crescent

Breathe not in scented air
Scent is delusion widely sprayed
Adorn not in ornaments
Life is a play, set and staged

Hear not music nor whispers within
Dust is everything and dust within