“Don’t forget me. Okay? I want to be remembered. Just not this way. I will remember you as a dancer who could weave patterns through the rain. And you remember me in a sailors cap and dungarees.”

“The smell of this never seems to go away. I won’t forget you, though I may over look us sometimes, just the same. I meant it when I said it. But if you wouldn’t mind. Do your best to forget me if you please..”

We are big.
Like mountains.
If I am the mountain side, you were the wild fire.
Hot. Piercing.
Rendering my solid flesh to molten liquid and then to dust.
But only that I might grow again.
And more beautiful than before.

We face our compulsion. Spinning like mad children, in a ring of rosies, dangling dolls in the infinite black of space.
My binary star. My coupled light spinning my opposite.
Twice as bright.
Twice as beautiful.
But from a distance, we seem as one.

Perhaps this soft light I imagine surrounding you are our gods. Mouths open. Shamed by your beauty, that they could not have created you. Only dreamed you into being. They seem like fate, don't they?

And I am consumed with the constant reminder
of your absence. It plays on my tongue like bitter wine.
Leaving me drunk with want and yearning.
And so much more.

And this madness. Like a force undefined. Hurling our bodies. Like freight trains destined to collide. We can be bigger than mountains. We can be the trees and the sky and the pulse and the moon. All lit by twin stars spinning.

Your lack of light is desperate. A quiet void.
If I were a black-hole. You would be the event horizon
of my unmaking.
A voiceless abyss.
Incomplete.
And slowly growing.


If my eyes were moons. You would be my eclipse.

And this pulse. This landscape caught by rhythm. This thump. Like beating bodies. In carnal rhythm. Remembering each caress like history.

You are my legend. Your touch has written confession on my body, that I read like litany. Cuneiform.
Your fingerprint, an ancient code, written on my eyelids. Spoken on the tip of my tongue that I eat like Eucharist. That I drink like communion.

And my morning prayer is a mourning dirge.
Sung like a sailor for your return.
That you might find the wind of my breathlessness
And return to me
once more.
For I am motionless without you.

Yet.
I am mighty. Like wild beasts. I am stronger then before. I grow wise. I expand my eyes to encompass the horizon, that I may see every curve of your landscape. That I may feel every burn of your wild fire.

My longing is armor, that I wear. To conceal my beast. Like desire. Hungry. Waiting.

Tame me.

I miss your mane.
I miss your smell.
I miss your pulse, beating opposite mine.
I miss your light.

My shadow was massive. Stretching to the corner of maps.
My arms, a wingspan, that crossed time. Waiting to encircle you to me.

I have no light to cast a shadow.
I have no reason to fly.
My heart is barren.
Kept vacant for your return.
If not for you then always.
A singular place that once held your step.
A precious palace that you once danced in.

Spin.
Spin, Wildfire.
Devour my skin again with your hungry touch with your wanting kiss.
I wish to be reborn as yours.
Again.

Circle me that we may light the sky again.
And grow our horizons to outstretch the corner of our eyes.
Until we are blind.

Give me sight.
Let me see.
Let me see you.

That we might see our own light.

As one.

As yours.

Burn brighter than before.

There was no storm I couldn't weather.
Until you removed a single letter.
And yet again, you removed another.
And in the place of them, you see, you set the letter h and e.
And now that storm I couldn't weather,
became a game of whether or not that storm was me.

I would inscribe her image on the front of my heart,

were her irises, ink.

And though my hands have wept and bled.

Though my tongue has sworn and stabbed.

Though my heart has hunted and prayed.

Though my lips have lied and kissed.

I haven't the knowledge to capture her.

My masterpiece, a failed rendition of  her countenance.

Put down your pen, poet.

No arrangement can rival the timelessness of her touch.

To try is folly.

Love simply.


Let my half of our kiss be the melody you harmonize to.

*“Hold me tight.”

And when the eternal optimist finds himself lapping wine from the bottom of the barrel, who then shall crush his sour grapes?


Who will be the vine he holds onto?


Who will be the cup to hold the out pouring of his soul?


And will it be too late?

For the winter is setting in and the frost has begun to steal the summers color already.

And when the bottle is empty.


And the boards of the barrel ****** dry, we will raise our glasses to the eternal optimist.

Who once was drunk on love.


But now is drunk on time.

I am learning the art of forgetting.
I am learning the art of letting go.

I am rising. I smash at you like high tide. Reminiscing about our tidal waves and yard arms, wrapped around our throats like business suit neckties. You see, I got lost, one more time, in our complicated little world and remembered that womb is not synonymous with ****. But rather with mother. And we played house together awhile. While the moon peeled off half it's dress. And I laughed at your 3rd grade poetry. And we regretted nothing, like Edith Piaf, on your couch, in the dark, entering worlds we'd torn apart.

It is worth mentioning that you were the first to ask me to your bed, rather than taken to mine, which proved prophecy wrong and wrong and wrong.

I was waiting for the kiss, like crimson stains, to ask me to say. But we muted them with burgundy.

I was willing to pay.
I was willing to show you.

But instead, we let wine separate us and bottle us up in action we didn't take, corking something perfect now, with the lie that it will be better in time. And I bought it.

Like hands raised in prayer.

And kissed oceans off of your cheeks, one.. salty.. drop.. at a time.

That was our crime.

And you. You came back, figuring you could pollute my stream. A virus set about my heart, freezing me like cold wet days when the wind cuts like goodbye. Come to sound yourself like a siren. But I can't hear your song. It no longer plays on my ears. I have forced it back into the foam that crests the waves and have drown myself in flesh and flesh.

So go ahead. Go ahead.

And we. We would have our night and it would drive you to an assumptive dissidence. Our harmony corrupted. Now an awkward, fumbling minor chord. Bleating like a lamb to slaughter.

I never wanted your soul.

I just wanted you not to leave right after we'd arrived.

Which is becoming less and less true as I run out the lines on my face and hands.

I wanted one, just one, to be there in the morning and then gone.

But I am folly.

And Gods teeth shake like parishioners in a collapsing church as I find my way back to the ******* poet I've become.

Consider these words like mercury, temperature rising.

And how I have made mistakes.

In darkened deserts. In hands on small of backs. In rain littered parking lots. Fireside. Ringside. In cold, cold water. In cleverness. In repeated attempts. In repeated attempts. Inrepeatedattempts.

I have made mistakes.

But take me in spite of my faults, Love.

Just until dawn. But be careful. Dawn breaks so easily. So lay quiet with me.

When the sun fills this echo chamber it will translate all this rich to ruin. My staggering meter to a retched stumble. And how should I finish? With a dying fall as my mentor would have me? Ragged claws and turpentine? No.

You see, I am more now than I was before.

And yet, I have never been what I could be.

Don't.

Don't let go.

Lest I forget.

I am rain streaked windows that cake with dirt, showing time veins from beneath itself, in rivulets on it's surface.

I am screaming. I am screaming. I have no voice louder than the ones in my head.

I am a stutter step tap dance down long streets that I would like to walk again because I think, but don’t know for sure, that they will lead me home.

I am dancing. I am dancing. I keep time to the rain, like millions of heartbeats on the tin roof, ticking away the days until I hang in the air.

And then we find the little cracks that let light through the dark parts of who we are and we press our mouths to them and drink the light like air. We are drowned sailors who believed what the sirens promised. We believed we could drink enough light in, to make us holy.

She is keyholes to peek through at the woman *******. My sight is the skeleton key that will open new worlds when I see that she can be more beautiful when she is uncovered. And more beautiful for not being afraid to be uncovered, because she doesn’t know I am watching. But I am. And she is more beautiful for not knowing.

And her face is a tear streaked looking glass, with make up showing the time lines from beneath the lies on it’s surface.

She is crying. She is crying. I have no way to calm her anymore.

Then is the promise of midnight love making and forever kisses that burn onto your soul and will never go away. And some will cover themselves like a tattooed man on a carnival pier, right between the fire eater and the fortune teller. There will not be room left for true kisses soon and no way to make room for them.

He is coloring book scribbles that stray from the lines with bad choices and noble intentions, autographed on it’s surface.

He is lonely. He is lonely. I have no way to teach him to trust.

Then the white sheets. Bleached and boiled in copper pots. Starched and straight and folded. She is the pillow case at the bottom of a constantly growing pile of untouched linens. And save for the closets occasional open and close, there is no light.

The pile dwindles, top down, but those at the bottom will never make it on to the bed, it seems. Just locked away in the linen closet. White and pure. And unseen. But the bottom side is darkened and settled in dust. And afraid.

And she is thread barren, white cotton that wishes to be held to the sun and seen through for all of it’s darkest stains.

She is trapped. She is trapped. And I lay my head on sheet less mattresses unable to make her my own.

I thought you should know. I thought you should know.

I am a magnet for surrendered breath and wasted youth. I am open arms that wrap you in and hold you as fanciful clothes to shield my nakedness. I am whispers of comfort that nuzzle your fears that are really just harpsichord bleats to silence my own.

I thought you should know that I am lying. I am lying.
But never about my intentions.
Just about what they become.

Push harder.

It’s the cork that keeps us from negotiating.
It is the hip lashes that are bound to the wall we are trying to move.
Like rippling beasts.

This will evolve.

Each revolution around a pixilated world are just metaphoric steps, aren’t they?
Because no one really moans like that unless they know someone is listening.

I was listening.

My body is foreign to me now. I am in a new birth.
I am fascinated with the way my stomach dips in on itself when I lay on my back.
Come. Let me show you how new my fingers have learned to see.

I am a pool. I am a spring. I am a bowl.  I offer milk on my skin.

Come drink at me.

Then we can run hands on foreign bodies and make sense of the new curves and make new the old ones.

It would be new to see the tragic swash of red smeared high up your lip and on to your cheek. It would be new to see strange eyes and strange hair framed below my strange body in the half dark.

Strange pieces with rough to smooth edges making shapes with precise intention on a thousand count canvas. Milk. And Spice. And sweat.

The only thing that is the same would be the knowing. Maybe the desire. Maybe the sound. And the scents.

I was listening.

But was it real? Can you summon your talent at will?

This will evolve.
It will evolve.

Maybe. Maybe I said it. Maybe.
Maybe I said, “I love you.”
And maybe. Maybe. It was too soon.
And maybe you panicked or I panicked or we panicked.
And maybe we should have waited longer.
For a lunar eclipse to kiss and whisper it under.
Or at least at the top of a Ferris Wheel.
Even soft neon lights of a gas station before a road trip to say… Disneyland would do.
But maybe.
I didn’t wait. And I said it the first time it bubbled out of my chest like mercury and tried to force itself out of the corners of my eyes, shining like mirrors.
And  maybe we panicked.
And maybe you’ll decide to take some time.
And I’ll think it’s a good idea.
And you’ll get around to painting your bedroom walls blue.
And I’ll finally finish that replica of… Big Ben.. made from… toothpicks.. or some ****..
And you’ll get that job for that network.
And I’ll decide to be a carnie, because my feet have always felt so much better on the road.
And you’ll laugh.
Just maybe less…
Or not as hard..

And I’ll learn to roll cigarettes and run the Ferris wheel. And wind up with an eye patch from a freak dart accident in a pub in Scotland. And get sun leathered skin. And road earned muscles.

And I’ll master all the rigged midway games.

And you’ll have a better time in France than the last time and make it back to Greece to see the oracle. And learn to play the violin.

And I’ll develop a keen sense of when to pause the Ferris Wheel to leave the couple at the top just.. one.. moment.. longer..

Or at least secretly teach him how to throw the dime to win her the really big ******* Snoopy.

And I’ll wonder if you ever wake up and look for me.
And you’ll wake up sometimes and look for me.
And I for you.

And maybe I’ll get self absorbed and write the rest of this poem from my perspective.
But probably not.
And maybe one day I’ll go to the fortune teller to find out how you are. And where you are. And you won’t be far away. But I won’t want to intrude.

And then the fortune teller will tell me not to play the game where you knock the milk bottles over anymore because fortune tellers say weird **** like that sometimes..

And maybe I’ll listen..

And maybe I won’t.

Maybe one day, I’ll forget and teach the nerdy highschool kid how to beat the milk bottle game so he can get the frosted mirror with the cheesy rose and the word ‘LOVE’ in cursive for his girlfriend, because *******, sometimes you have to help the underdog  get the girl.

And maybe the gypsy will be right..

And those bottles.
At that moment.
Were some kind of cosmic key.

And as they topple over, all hell bust loose and pours violently out of the mouth of the bottles.

And demons flood into our world in waves.

(And if she kisses him at the top of the Ferris Wheel? Totally worth it.)

And in time, the world would have to notice.

What with the Leviathan coming out of the ocean and the dead rising from their graves and the four guys on horses and all the pesky locusts.

And did I mention the Zombies? And the vampires? And the Vampire Zombies?

And who would have thought that the adorable little fairies would be carnivorous and cannibals and just plain mean?

And maybe it would attract the attention of Aliens. And that U.F.O. you saw that one time in Texas. And maybe the U.F.O’s would attack and fight the Leviathan, which would be kind of bad ***.

And the zombies would fight the vampires and the vampires would fight the zombies and the Vampire Zombies would fight themselves and the Zombie Vampire survivors would find that they had a distinct taste for Soy.

And maybe us carnies would have enough experience with sledgehammers and haunted houses that we’d be rather good at fighting zombies. And I’d be particularly bad *** because of the eye patch and leathery skin and hand rolled cigarettes that I chew on more than smoke. And maybe I’d go lone wolf and ride a motorcycle. Which is also kind of bad *** and I’d do okay considering the apocalypse and all because honestly?

I’ve never been all that scared of ghosts and devils. And the UFOS are busy with the Leviathan and their really is only four of the horseman and we keep a professional distance just the same and the locusts and the fairies are at war, besides locusts don’t bother me, save for the noise.

And look..

I guess what I am really saying is this:

I think maybe I could survive.

And I think maybe I could rescue you.

And maybe we could fall in love.

And what do I do/
With the fact that I only/
Wanted to love you?

Please don't run away.
Because I won't chase again.
It's my turn to run.

This was written for Tim Burris. My best friend.

Happy Birthday, Warchief.*



The sky will break open.

Meeting shades of red, black, and white, as the sun settles into the void.

This is his brow.



Anvil hands. He marks the moving beneath, like earthen plates in shift.

Affecting change. Symphonic strokes.



War is on his breath. Hidden behind a smile that shines like pax.

Don't dare him or he'll ask you to look down.



Heed the drums.

The warchief comes.



Your victory is written in the fabric of his kilt.

Gilded in the golden thread of kith and kin.

He was watching. He is always watching.



And though the black steed has gone gray,

He snorts storm clouds into the valley he looks down upon.

The tides ripple beneath his skin.

His chest swells in pride and laughter.



Alpha. Hands curled in furious fists of might and mirth,

Trained for love and war and so much more.



Heed the drums.

The warchief comes.



His hug a phalanx.

His word, unbroken steel.

His hands. Anvils.

His history, legendary.



Mighty.



He is the spirit horse.

He is the edgewalker.

He is the vibration playing across the drum skin.

Carrying outward on wind.

Settling peace in the hearts of his own.



Heed the drums.

The warchief comes.



We will stand beside him.

For we are mighty too.

We that tie our spines together, like coursing veins.

We that are family, not of blood.

But spirit.

We that match our heart beats as one powerful rhythm.

Pounding off canyon walls.

Ringing in ears.

Shaking the fabric of the never forgotten.



We that are woven together.

A tartan of our own.

We that stand as one to love.

And laugh.

And revel.

And fight.



We that never run.

But run like blood.



We that are bound with him.

Storm clouds.

A phalanx.

A fabric.

A family.

A drum beat.



We are the drums.

We are the drums.



Look to the horizon.



The warchief comes.

Standing in the pool of light. Moving in small circles. Smiling. Glancing. Talking in brief phrases, punctuated by laughter. And all the while aware that things had shifted. The planes of our potential, meeting, and pushing, and forming a snowy mountain between us. And each wrapped in skins marching up the face, between the tall pines, to crest the top and over, if need be. Me, crashing into you and you in to me. In my head the mantra goes on. Verse by verse. Each one with it's own meaning but the words not varying a jot. As easily constant as, "She loves me. She loves me not."

Don't go.
Stay with me.
Don't go.
Stay with me.

Over and over. Hoping that something in the way the light from the stars catching my eye would convey these words so powerfully to you., that it would stop you from continuing on, into the world, away from me, and gone.
And I am left with coyote to howl at the moon. He and I in harmony, singing a woeful tune, with words paraphrased from the tongues of Gods. Longing for you to come back soon. And each page of each poem I write for you will be drawn upon. Little margin Picasso's of letters trying desperately to gather into an order that holds some merit or worth. My pen, racing along the line, trying to capture the feel of the goosebumped skin of your thigh. Trying to find a rhythm of rhyme that beats in time to the quickened pace of my heart when you kiss me with an unrelenting ferocity that pushes my bleeding lip against my teeth and settles my mind into a moment of peace. But frees my hands to their own devices.

The kiss, feeling less like an affection and more like a crisis.

And this ink rolls off my pen like saliva off of my tongue as I race along it's lines in an attempt to scribble down something that will make you understand. I'd sacrifice every even numbered breath for the ghost of Byron to lend me a hand. As his sword/pen slashes through and through until the only letters that remain, when put together, cascade into a new mantra of:

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

And once again I stare at you. As the earth, the moon, the sun, and the ring around the outer-edge of my eye move in perfect circles, and hope that the way the reflection of that look, that breath, that way that you touch me, is caught in my pupil and you see it. And it stops your step, as well as your breath. And you understand, somehow, that as desperately as I want to...

I, sometimes, don't have the words for you.

Shut the Windows.

Turn off the lights.

Lock the doors.

Make no sound.



Cover your eyes.

Cup your ears.

Until the only sound that remains is the steady beating of your heart.



This is where we will begin.



If you were the only thing this town had to offer,

It'd be enough for me to stay.

Or go.

Or try.

Or talk.

Or tear the roots of a sequoia from the earth and mend it together into a spine,

That I would wear for you.

Earthen.

Beautiful.

Strong.



It is like being shown how to breathe and then asked not to.



And these cycles keep forming on my chest like a bulls-eye.

Making me a target, once again, for beauty just out of reach.

And how we seem to perpetuate patterns. Circling uselessly through our transgressions.

Like a broken record.

All grooves and needled and cracks.

Skipping like heart beats.



Seems I am always chasing some sunset or another.

They just have different names.



And we believe the promises. Inscribed on the back of dewy eyes at dawn.



Not me.

Not this time.

Babies in skins.

Mountain tops.

Running away.

Steaming trains.

Landscapes and bedrooms and windows and moonlight.



But then they are always just warning labels.

Fine print.



We have already made promises.

Pastries and the smell of fresh coffee.

Rain on green hillsides.

Mountain tops.



Mountain tops.



But my hands only seem to fold into prayer or failure anymore.



My wolf heart smells familiar scents.

Like endings.



Once again, my branded heart is folly.

And the river of doubt snakes through our canyons, making our mountain tops further away, and settling about our necks like guilt.

Guiding us parallel.



But not yet as one.

I have already lost what I had won.



And my trap has been set and released.

Golden teeth like shackles, clamped to my leg.

Victory on it's grin like plague.

Plating your outstretched wings.



I can see beyond these words of breath and know you are poised to fly.

And finally I understand what it is to stand on this side of the ocean.



It is cold here.



My shoreline is my prison.



Let. Me. Be. Something.



Or just let me be.



And I have held my heart out. Netted together by cast iron plates, rivets, bolts, violin string, and wishes.



Again and again.



And each time, I am told, yes..



yes..



I will take it as it is.



Yes



I will take it into me.



Yes.



I will walk the path. First to make the prints and then to walk in yours that walked in mine.



I believe in how you love.



I will hold your heart in mine.



Just





Not





Yet.



Or ever it seems.



It used to shine.



Running down my arms as I held it aloft on mountain tops.



A beacon.



A light house.



A fool on a tower.



Now it hardly glows at all.



But it smolders madly.



And it could burn.



For you.



Or burn out.



Forever.



Just



Not



Yet.

Dear…

I don’t even know what to call you. But, already, we are beyond such things, aren’t we? When you wander into my head from time to time and form to form I am left with out a course of action. Mostly because action seems… so… very…very… silly. But this time. I took said action. Here it is.

I am sounding this letter off of the sky as postage. I am licking my lips to seal the envelope and throwing my marbles into the sun. I am lifting you, without strings, with the last of my magic.

I am not sure how the universe will choose to eclipse or supernova our meeting. But I am patient. In the mean time, I will remain so.

But I thought you should know.

I promise you passion.
I promise you fire.
I promise you mood swings, and fights, and making up, and making love.

I promise you an insatiable hunger to touch you. Kiss you. Be with you. To a fault if you wish.

I promise you a less than perfect attention. I promise to get too caught up in my vision of you to notice you, from time to time. I promise to notice you, more often than not.

I promise laughing. Together and at each others expense. But laughing. And laughter. And cause for it.

I promise to be serious. And scowl. And furrow my brow and nod my head at just the right times.

I promise to picture you naked at the most inappropriate times. I promise to paint pictures of your smile on the back of my eyelids while I sleep. I promise to sleep next to you, feeling my body scorch as our temperatures press together in red patches of skin.

I promise you poetry. And wine. And both at once.

I promise you adventure. I promise you distant landscapes and matching our rhythm to the train we find ourselves in, watching the blue, gray, and green streak by our window like an exercise in futility and motion.

I promise you futility and motion.

I promise you faith. I promise you doubt. I promise you a clenched fist and an open hand. I promise you my shoulders to stand on and my frame to drink from. I promise you holding hands on midnight drives from place to place.

I promise you silly.

I promise you gifts and flowers for no reason. I promise you a constant reminder of my awareness of the gift of a woman that I have been blessed with.

I promise you breakfast in bed. I promise you all day in bed.

I promise you discipline. And craft. And becoming a master of loving you.

I promise you truth. And empty promise. I promise you the promise of more.

I promise to be artful. I promise to be delicate. I promise to be crass and a brute. I promise to regret what I have said, over and over. I promise you steadfastness through the changes as we learn to navigate the many tides of the sea we find ourselves drowning in together.

I promise to be your opposite and drive you mad. I promise to be your equal and touch you thusly.

And you. I promise to only allow you entry to my heart if you are what I know I want.

I am faithful. I am loyal. I will not fill your space with less than you.

And I’ll only ask that you be worthy of this.

And here is something shiny.
And red.
For you.
To wear.
As your own.

It is all I have.

My return address is on my palm, out stretched to you. I await the scent of perfume on the letter you will write in me.

Red and Shiny.
And worthy.

All My Love,
Sean

The clock on the wall is God. His hands, sweeping by, reminding us that time is running out. So get to it, boy. The window is my eye. Looking to possibility as a green horizon. And the path is the new vein, running down my arm. Saying, "Blood is compulsory".

These shoes. I have always known I walk around at the expense of my sole. Wearing thin. But my feet feel so much better there.

I breathe in. I am told it is holiday nuts. Cinnamon. And air that is just a little to clean. But I like it just the same.

We let ourselves move the puzzle pieces into place, one by one, knowing what the picture was going to be already. We squeezed the last bit of it out with our hands until the juice ran down our arms and we held the pulp out like offerings to strange gods. We fought and fought to meet at the center and then promptly forgot why we were there.

And I am taken back to my nephews. The smiles. The reminder that blades of grass split our toes and somewhere in that is childhood. And I roll the ball to him and say, "Kick it." and he doesn't. And I say, "Not yet? Okay. I'll roll it slower." And he doesn't. And I smile and say "We'll wait". And he smiles and says, "It's okay. You'll figure it out." And I will.

Our strange adventure will be pushed into one point. Carried away like jasper. And the images of the Apache Dinae, the ears, the cloud we rode through, the ocean, and each of the little things will yellow and crack until it is nostalgic and sweet. Honey. Wine. Thyme and thyme again. Rolling down and creating a glow in the bottom of my stomach. Stoking my fire. Using my ennui as kindling.

Listen. Listen to each click. Listen to it saying, "It.. is.. never... too.. late."

My hands are sticky with possibility. The strange gods have begun to lap at my fingers. And I can see the look on the face of my nephew when he finally kicks the ball.

The clock on my wall is God. His hands are still. My hands are covered in hope. And I have begun to remember something I'd forgotten.

We began bigger than this. Like sun warmed sand and waves. Tidal and furious.

We began like crashing stars into a horizon that thought it could hold us captive.

We began with simple letters forming big complex words and then sentences. Destined for stories.



A call.



And now we stare at ruins. Wondering if we can rebuild.

Wondering whether we can weather the weather.



And through it all, I reclaim my former glory.

Punching at the glass ceiling and shaking my fists at the passers by above.

Warrior. Skin your tattoos from your back and bind them into picture books for children.

Rid your teeth. Give them to the wise man to dangle from his throat.

Turn your shield into a soup bowl and feed the hungry mouths you see.

Make your bow into a cradle and let your youth rest for once.



My fists are polished stone. Monuments to days past.



I am a relic.



This. This is what men of the world fight for.



Bright smiling eyes. And matched heartbeats, linking rhythm until it threatens to burst from our chests.



Playing heart strings in minor chords. Making lyrics out of the words stuck in our throats.

Trusting touch to explain the things we can’t.



And making love like prayer.



We began like laughing children. Laughing in the face of the future.

Reading the great stories on our lips by placing our finger beneath them and moving slowly.. to.. the.. right.



And the hole on the other side of the world can’t be filled.



Just avoided.



Our hands are held to our own mouths now.  Some covering. Some cupped to shout.



And I will bellow. Bellow to stoke the fire.



Warrior. Make your armor into a home. Cover the heads of those dearest to you.

Bring fire to match the one in your heart. And cut your tongue from your mouth before it learns to form the word surrender.



Ask the mountain for faith.

Ask the rock for healing.

Ask the lady for peace.



We began bigger than this.



We can end the same.

Let us go forward then, in full bloom.
Daring to be only what we are, at last.
For in our kiss, we felt the future.
But in our haste, we taste our past.

And all at once, I loved the feel of hands sweeping across my face.

Moving in circles to mark the years I was imagining as we lay still.

The blankets like bark as our roots tangled together sipping wine like rich soil and whispers.

We. The rings. At it’s center. Moving like planets in travel.

Biting our lips shut. Revealing our age, one whispered secret at a time.

Our hearts making rungs to be climbed to our minds. Our minds making light to show the path back to our hearts. And there and back. Again and again.



I loved you the most when you loved me the most.



Had I known the answer to the riddle. I would have bound the hands together when they met. Both facing upward. As if praying to the stars to stop the time and let us live here. When it was best. When it was still before dawn. When you still believed that my shoulders were wide enough to protect us both. Wide enough to carry the world upon.



The weight. It makes my footprints look like canyons in my wake.



Could I have seen that, once again, the falling stars we wished upon were grains of sand passing through the event horizon of our infatuation to fall on us like dust, I would have shouted them back up. Screaming my throat raw.



I have no voice.



There was a time. A time when the titans wished for hearts as large as ours. A time when the moon was brighter as it caught the glow of my hand on your waist. There was a time when our hungry paws found skin and mouths like milk and finger tips like ink and hearts like parchment. And we drank and wrote and laughed so loud the horizon split. The sun coming up as an echo.



There was a time when every answer we’d ever sought could have been written on the palms of our hands and we would not have parted them to read.



A time when we believed that time could stop.



I have read the answers on my palms now.



I wish I had then.

Could I pluck this nights moon from the sky,

I'd tether it to the center of my eye.

That you might see your light reflected back,

If only once, before we die.

My hands are cold from want and salt-heavy air.

The sails are gray like soggy wool against the purple night.

The wind smells of possibility but tastes of regret

And I can only mutter,

"It reminds me of her. It reminds me of home."

My heart is a compass.

You are North.

Be a lighthouse and I will turn my wheel towards you.

I. Am. Not. So. Far. Away...