My head’s
Six feet
Underwater

I’m trying
Hard
Not to drown

Bubbles
Trailing
From my lips

You’re
The air
Keeping me alive

Like I was missing something
that was never there,
something created in my mind -
  a feeling,   a friend,
  just pretend.
                      Comfort.
                       Trust.
                       Care.

      peace .
All parts inside me,
perhaps a 'second set of eyes'
helped ta reveal
what was difficult to see -
  in me,  by me,
but, mirrored in another's eyes,
I have.  finally.


and now a bud grows on my windowsill from something I truly thought I'd lost -  the one I thought I'd killed.
but there it is:  Beauty,  Hope,
in dawn's orange light.
what was gone, now is New,
by no fault of mine.

the,  potentially,  "Best Day Ever".
    i meditate,   prepare,
then shower  and step out.
         Here we go,   again
              we shall see
          I'll take notes
              for what could be
            
             the "best day ever"
one More time,    again

  again
..
shedding skin.


shedding skin.
out with the old
in with the truth -
Finding who I am
when I don't have  a  'you'

again.
   Shedding skin.

to Original colors
stripped down past the blue,
revealing the real me,   set free
not just    what I've been through.

Finding myself   all over again.
shedding skins

i watch myself on the grainy reel
the boy already drowning in the first act
his fists raw against the wall of some impossible climb
every cut of the film a scar that never closed
yet i know the ending already
the champion survives
because i am here watching
i see the paths i never could explain to him
the false light leading into enemy hands
the friends who fall in slow motion
their mouths opening but never finishing the sentence
i want to shout into the screen
there is another way turn here do not trust them
but the projector runs on and my voice is swallowed
i took the harder road because it looked like fire
because pride is a cruel director
and i thought rebellion was the only language i spoke
and so the story kept breaking me into shape
until i stood at the summit with everything
and still felt the black hole circling
still felt that gravity of not enough
i wish i could reach back and stitch his wounds shut
wipe the sweat before it blinds him
but the truth is i would only ever be reaching for myself
the boy and the man and the ghost the same
all of us turning in the same orbit
and i know now
i was sculpting this image with my own hands
chiseling toward my own ruin or redemption
alone in the light of my own making

most winter mornings
i see the prints in the new snow

pursing up and down the street
and around our house

always busy
always following

some scent impulse curiosity
always returning

to the dark mystery
of the mountains

once                                                 once
when i couldn’t sleep                   snowshoeing
i looked                                           up the mountains
out the predawn window            it came bursting out
and saw it                                       of the forest
walking up the street                    and into the deep snow
without a care                                just before me
in the world                                    

                                                         it looked
                                                         at me
                                                         turned away
                                                         and quickly bound
                                                         up the trail
                                                         all bright flamed tail
                                                         and fun

Eyes are not rivers
And yet they too flow
Heart is not a mirror
And yet it also breaks
Man is not climate
And yet he changes too
So do not be fooled
By people who promise the moon
For you will be disillusioned
Very, very soon