broken toilet
flooding bathroom
humidity condensing on
beer bottles
tap water in plastic
rain

your clammy hand and
the sweat collecting at my chin

I light
the four candles
one at a time.

I place my mask
on my face.

The music
is wild
and somber.

I dance
and dance
and dance.

At some point
I stop thinking.

I just dance
and dance
and dance.

I hurl my frustration
into the
candles of change.

My thoughts are
a whirling
swirling cloud.

I draw strength
from these
fires of fury.

I dance
and I dance
and I dance.

I ground myself.

I give
the furious strength
back.

I go deeper.
I find
new strength within.

Not frustration.
Not fury.
But acceptance.

I smile.
I take my mask
off.

And I keep dancing.

You
say you want
to help
me.

You don't accept
when my answer
is that you
can't.

When my answer
is that I want
you to
stay away.

When my answer
doesn't
make you
happy.

So you tell me
I accuse you
all the time.

So you tell me
I'm the one
at fault.

And still.
Still.
I.
Care.

I'm drowning.
You give me
too much water!

I'm drowning.
There are so many
thoughts
in this mind of mine.
I'll have cried a river of
tears
before the night is passed.
I'm drowning.

I'm wilting.
I get too much sun
in this window!

I'm wilting.
There's too much
pressure
on me while I'm all but alright.
I don't know how
I could ever be
enough.
I'm wilting.

I'm breaking.

Slowly, on the inside,
in the depth of my
soul,
I am breaking,
drowning in thoughts,
wilting away.

I am drowning.
I am wilting.
I am broken.

And I am not enough.

I danced today
I danced away my sorrows
Let me teach you how-

Don’t play that song and wander off with your thoughts
Let it flow through you
As if it is a part of you
Close your eyes
Because your mind is a sculptor
And it will create art with the sounds you let inside

No, those words are not for you, my love
They were written for someone else
But listen
For music is a strange language -
It speaks to us all in sundry ways

So hold your breath
And when you exhale
Melancholy will lift off your shoulders and join hands with the wind
All you will feel is this melody
On every inch of your skin
Between the raised hairs and the little bumps
Until your body starts to sway
And your feet aren’t grounded

Now take my hand
And let’s dance away our sorrows

I write poetry
and paint sunsets with those words
I lie on rooftops
until the sky's adorned with birds
I dream with music in my mind
and in colours you haven't heard of
To you,
I am beautiful
I am something different
I will fill the hole in you
your emptiness brimming with laughter
I will lift your feet off the earth and plant them into my heart
but you will keep digging -
trying to unbind my roots
But I am not gentle, as that flower
You cannot like what you see, and pluck me out of the water
I am not what I seem on the surface
I am a flood
and I leave destruction in my wake
I will wash away all the paths you've ever walked on
and I will leave you astray
Wondering
if you'll ever find your way back

It comes in, sparkling and exciting,
with the promise of fun and zest
like a mist dappled with thrills

but it is a false promise
like the allurements of commercials
with smiling faces and a myriad of glitz

it ends in a state of shame
controlled by lords of the dark
and the owners of hell.

I brim over with gratitude for love
and the forces of beauty and mercy
that break the trance -
the spell always ending
with the unlit inglorious state of shame.

I get up in the morning
and my first duty is to our cats
to ensure they have food and water
to satisfy their simple needs.
They have no urgency to gather in
the myriad strands and filaments
of my mind to focus on them.
Unlike me, they are without ego
or neurosis or compulsions
or impulse to chew and devour
startling new currents of thought
or to dissect and parse tradition
to produce some new light of intellect.
Their feline genius of simplicity
is my present focus of admiration
and desire.
But of course I could never dissolve
the accumulated humanity
focused in my solitary mind
and achieve the elegant ease
with which our cats occupy
their meager patch of earth.

You walk lightly,
said the old wizened man,
As if the floor were too thin
and you, afraid to use all your weight.

I looked at him with a surprised grin
and said
You are perceptive
no one ever said that out loud to me.

He just grinned and winked.

Some people are writers
some are speakers or preachers.

Some try to do both
but one side of them always presses forward
as if to say,
This is who I really am
This is my natural gift.