Where there is love, but there is no passion
There is a hearth that has gone ashen.
It is a sleep where there is no dreaming
Day will break, but there is no gleaming,
A familiar dish, lacking in heat,
A well-known dance, lacking in beat,
A complex wine sans maturation,
A photograph sans saturation.

I beam when leaves stick
To the bottom of my heavy leather boots,
As I tromp from one place to the next,
Irritated yet pleased when they're STILL THERE,
After every sticky, wet step.

I think leaves are meant to bustle and blow
In Autumn as they do in Spring,
And that leaves have a yearning,
(After rooted so long)
To see the world.

The wind whispers to the leaves,
“I have been here to caress you all along,
And I am here to carry you now,
And bear you to beautiful new places.”
And the leaves sigh and surrender,
And flutter to the ground,
Then back to air,
Then to ground,
Laughing merrily,
Tumbling,
Enjoying the last few moments alive.

When leaves stick
To the bottom of my heavy leather boots
As I tromp from one place to the next,
I have the satisfaction of knowing
That these leaves would not have seen
The places I have taken them.
They would not have left
Pieces of themselves in the concrete.
That somehow I have helped fulfill a dream
By moving their dying fragments,
Like scattering ashes,
And showing them a new world
If only a hundred feet away.

Lately
I **Long
for the Love
that I once Left
when I chose the Lonely
path of discovery and difficult Learning.

My
steps Melt
into the Miles
I tread when Meandering
round town each cloudy Morning
'til each crisp and tender Midnight

Softly
I Sing
the tender Songs
not meant for Solitude
and gently drop a Sigh
waiting patiently for another ripe Summer

Freezing fog
Trees protest
They can’t shiver
It’s a test.
Wait for spring
Hold all breath
Patient trees
Denying death.

Stagnant air
Hanging white
Building daggers
In the night.
Grim to breathe
Grim to touch
Patient are trees
That suffer such.

Winter cracks and
Winter cleaves
No bitter words
Are heard from leaves.
Watch the trees
For they will show
The path of patience
And way to grow.

I am no gardener, but I do know this:
Perennials and orchards need the kiss
Of an early frost, a freezing deep,
To hold them whole through winter’s keep

A bloom in false spring, (winter’s hollow),
Before the heavy snows that follow,
Will have the cell walls bursting, cracking,
Freezing, thawing, expanding, contracting.

So too, must dreams lay dormant still,
Or else becoming Winterkill.
Much as I wish them to bloom, bloom now,
They must lay under the mulch and bough.

I tell myself, “Learn what you can from the season”
Patience, Myopia, Acceptance sans reason -
You are stuck in the wheel, right here and right now,
Hearing naught in the dark, muffled underground.

Yet I am no seedling! I am no tree!
Though my flesh warms and cools just as easily.
So why should I wait? Why be pinned by the cold?
Do I have a choice in the story that’s told?

Could I be a cold crocodile, nose above ice,
Or hibernate warm with the marmots and mice?
Why not come in from the outside to thaw,
And savor small tidbits of hope in my maw?

Could I choose to fly south, or to stay evergreen?
Must I really wait for the melt to be seen?
I wonder, though I’m sure from what seed I have come,
Is it winter that dictates what I will become?

There’s a rumbling a-coming
And yet I build my dreams from glass;
I hope you’ll peer through to find my face
Through the fancy, frosted, crystalline patterns.
You blew sparks into me that became novas;
Now they fuel my beaming eyes in the melt.
Watch as sands of time are blown into fragile fantasies
And yesterday’s memories twist their colors
Into improbable dragons and stars of tomorrows.
Glimpse me through my new frail fortress.
Keep watch as I hang tiny galaxies in the rafters.
These walls are your windows.
Use them well,
For the rumbling’s a-coming,
And I might need a savior
Who knows my dreaming face.

In my deepest of souls
I do not want to be owned,
Do not find pleasure in owning others,
Do not want to call or be called
by titles that ring false
such as mistress, goddess, or little girl,
Can not be loved as anything more or less
than a fellow traveler,
Love to tease, charm, chase, and impress,
but ultimately appreciate and wonder.
This bed of expectations
begins to scare me,
and I long for simpler times
of *****, pillowtalk, and first kisses.

A reminder -

It is still winter,
We are still in the thick of it,
Chains and snowshoes
are still requisite,
Imbolc and Candlemas
are still to pass,
Groundhogs hibernate,
Tarns still as glass,
The tumbling finch song
has yet to be sung,
and even the false spring,
has not yet sprung.

So lie still a while longer,
Let the chill freeze you through,
Warmer days will return
in their own time,
And so will you.

So many things to say to so many people
So many things that I’ll never say
At the end of the day it’s just me and myself
Lying naked on my bed
Fingernails longing for something they can’t touch
And doing their best to quench their thirst for life
And I’m dragging my toes along the bed-sheets
Squirming with the words unsaid.
And maybe I won’t let them spill
Because I’m afraid of the havoc they’ll wreak,
But maybe it’s because you wouldn’t listen
And you wouldn’t respond
And they would lay to waste and writhe and shatter
And crumble like a burning paper’s living soul
Left to clutter my mind
Like “This is all your fault. So pick it up.”
Even this will fall into a corner and be swept away
Because that’s what happens to the words I decide to say.

I’m cradling what’s left of the word “casual”
Because it sounds like “pretending”.
Maybe we should have said “casualty”
Because we both know the answers,
Or "causality"
As some ridiculous joke.

No, we can’t fall, we can’t fall.
When I giggled,
“Don’t get stuck on me,”
What I said was,
“I’m already stuck,
But we all have to move...
Right?"

Heard words on the radio driving home
That echoed like “coincidence”
I learned the words and echoed back
With no regard for context.

Crawling couch to bed,
Passing faces in the covers,
Say ‘hello’ my sometimes lover,
Say ‘goodbye’ and run away.
We can dance with one another,
Hold the truth until the day
When the sheets turn into clutter
And the miles casually splay.

A couple of innocent words. A wink. I can’t pretend I don’t know how she feels. I suppose it’s the way that they all feel. And then I look at her.
She’s the kind of girl that you’d ironically fall for. Model skin, model hair. She actually speaks French, nom de diu! She takes pretty pictures of herself amongst the scenery, posing as one who is very much alive. You, who would protest about how photographs can’t capture the majesty of the world, and find a certain amount of deadness in that which is judged by the surface, you’d fall for her anyway.
With her pretty lips and pretty mouth. They could say the words that my mouth says and you wouldn’t find the same meaning, but you’d want her ideas that much more. The saccharine taste of pretty.
You just would.

Let's breathe.
Let's place our feet in the mud
and count the birds' songs without numbers
but with our souls
Let's let the branches speak to us,
the moon flood our skin,
the sun flood the land,
the flood chisel the river,
the bed grow to include us
Let's see life so precious circumnavigating
pushing on differently a little changed
Soon we succumb to the same
So laugh with a grim love and peace
that you come from the sun
sister the moon
become the mud
and the branch
that the circadian chatter of birds
will serenade
as we breathe.

He creates miracles
And I don't know how to handle it.
I want to show him off,
But he is not mine to share.
A rare, crafted magic
Flows forth from his clever hands
Turning the world around him
Into banks to hold rivers of the stuff.
I am not the only one stymied and awed.
How then, am I alone,
With my strongly beating heart
Watching as he creates miracles?

I’m afraid for you to leave
Because when you’re gone
You won’t fit in any of the little picture-frames
I’ve built for you in my mind.
The edges will be blurry
And I’ll be losing part of the picture of you.

I’m afraid for you to leave
Because when you’re gone
You’ll continue to find all the beautiful new things
and you’ll try to shrug away the old.
You’re still learning to live;
It will hurt too much to keep this fresh.

I’m afraid for you to leave
Because when you’re gone
I’ll have one less thing that draws me to the hills
And the valleys and rivers of home.
Now that you too have heard the call
To venture from the blanket we’ve woven.

I’m afraid for you to leave
Because when you’re gone
You’ll find that you can never really come back
No matter how much your heart complains.
The world is too vast and you’re too young
To live amongst the things you love.

I’m afraid for you to leave.
I’m afraid, most of all,
Because when you’re gone…
Despite all the beautiful things that you’ll find
And despite all the lessons you’ll learn over time
And despite the new loves and new dreams that await
And despite the fresh views that new places create
And DESPITE that your conscience will blossom and bloom
And despite that new life and new love you’ll exhume…
I’m afraid of one thing, and it’s breaking my heart
To be scared, when you’re daring this brand-new start…

I’m afraid your long glance is the last that I’ll see.
I’m afraid that you’ll never come back to find me.

Oh that we were not creatures
Sometimes so in tune with our world.
My stomach is telling me
That something must happen today.

Click clack
Heels down long pavements
Mean business.
A bystander excuses himself
From my way.
Take a seat and
Squickety squeak
Leather up legs
Crossing on
Leather up legs.
I'm endlessly amused
Biting my lip,
Silently cajoling,
"Oh, is this your thing?"

I have faced down
the existential anguish
that drives lovers
to padlock themselves within.
I have woven blankets
to warm my cold shoulders
when I tumble
through the abyss.
I have created
Reason, Religion, and Reverence
out of Absurdity and Stardust.
I will always be
more desirous of desire
than secure with security,
more comforted by wonder
than wondrous of comfort,
and more of the romantic than the realist,
though neither is whole
without the foil.

Up north
The ravens are well-fed
Proud and bossy
Tail feathers two feet long.
Up north
The cougars are muscled
Prowling through yards
House cats go missing
Up north
The game grow bigger
Towering, stoic
Against beasts larger still.
Up north
The people are farther
I finally feel
That I'm plausible prey.

Everything happens for a reason.
And though I can’t yet fathom
Why my stars have left me now,
I know that there is a lesson in this.
There is something bigger out there,
Something beyond the now,
Something calling from the deep,
Shining, darkness of temporality itself.
And so the distance has come to me
Over sweeping valleys of moments passing,
And tracks of trees and fields of fixed events,
And the wave has moved through them all
To tell me:
“You are this. You are now.
Yet also what we know you shall be.
Take this bloodied bludgeon that was hope
And find in it the gift that shall forge you.
It is a steel monument, washed in crimson,
Standing to honor what is,
And what is yet to come.”

Do not expect a linear path
Nor a strictly circular one
Though you meander one foot to the next
In cyclical, somewhat predictable rhythms.
Do not expect clouds to behave,
Mountains to hold,
Or branches to grow.
Do not expect bridges to stand the test
of time that even trees cannot.
Do not expect your golden shot today
to hold your interest next go round the wheel.
Do not expect a clear and simple reward.
Rather, take what you can,
Whenever you can,
Drink it in,
Make it a part of you
For the next go round.

I have had enough of lovers
Wishing to be the sun in my sky
And creating diurnal dependencies
That block half its dome at a time.

To shine with such effulgence
Should be an honor all my own.
Who else is my constant companion?
Who else sets my caverned heart 'glow?

Instead, let all that is loved by me
Be a dazzling array of constellations,
Each brilliant Sirius and Betelgeuse
Whirling, returning through my seasons.

And if I should find such a Star again,
Let them be not Sol, but instead, Polaris -
Gleaming steadfast, in their own region,
Never dipping 'neath horizon's terrace,

Their simply existing
A northward guide
Keeping me truthfully
Aligned.

Finding twigs in my hair
From where I impulsively rolled in the grass.
Ha.
Should have known that days of summer
Were too good not to pass.

It's as if we're climbing
over mountains,
except by some cruel trick
we trek along the fault line
rather than across
and as we crest each painful saddle
there is no choice
but to slide back down the other side,
blistered, limping, starved,
and carrying too much weight,
hoping the next peak
will be the last.

Except,
it's nothing like climbing mountains,
for at least in the mountains
I can breathe.

All those moons ago
I plucked a stone from shore
and whispered my intention
with each waxing and waning.
I took it back to the sound today,
intending to sing a final goodbye
before casting it far into the waves.
It sparkled in the spring sun
then slipped from my fingers
into the sludgy low-tide pool
of barnacles and gooeyducks.
I simply walked away
and watched the gulls drop oysters,
fighting over what belongs to whom.

The waves will carry the stone to sea
the same way the green has returned
like the green in me.
A gentle and abrupt easing -
A slip out to sea with the tide.

It is a strange moment -
a change in the wind, perhaps? -
a shift ever so slight
when I discover
that the next time your eyes drift skyward
and you brightly propose,
"It's nearly the season
for us to go stargazing!"
I will not wander through the valleys
of misplaced envy, grace, and doubt,
before laughing, sighing, and shrugging,
"Yes! We should! Well... Goodnight!"
That instead
I will send my eyes aloft
to meet those flecks of dreams and dew,
before laughing, sighing, and shrugging,
"Well... How about tonight?"

Before

My feet are big
And growing ever bigger.
Large, wide,
And filling every shoe.
They stick out from me
Making flats look ridiculous.
They are like life rafts,
Falling to the side like pillows
When encountering resistance.

After

My feet are long
And growing ever stronger.
Supportive, storied,
And deserving special care.
When pointed, they are elegant,
Skeletal and muscular, even when in heels.
They are like canoes,
Chiseled and carved with love,
Gliding forward with intention.

Silent, unexpected ripples
As the first flakes softly alight on the lake,
A crisp inhale with eyes closed
Followed by a joyous vaporization of cloud.
When vision flutters back into focus,
A spectacle ever-more lovely than the last.
The muffled crunching around the trail,
near-muted chattering of chipmunks,
windy flurries whistling then growing placid,
the softened screech of a hawk
subdued now to an awed whisper -
Mounting and falling like a Debussy.
Clearer and more humbly triumphant
than cathedral bells.

This suite - this bright panorama
Shows me to the brink of an elation within
And brushes my crystalline spirit.
It sings and I overflow -
Light pours drop by rapturous drop
From each eye.

Please, please,
Don't be a ghost discreetly -
Please, please,
Don't let me go completely.

In May
The forest
Erupts
In aromas
"Did you miss me?"
It teases.

The mountain
Peaks
Denuded
Of white shawls
Flirt
With the sun.

My body
Subsists
Efficiently
On fruit,
Nuts,
And clear, cool melt
In May.

All of my targeted ads remember
that we wanted to go to Iceland
in winter
to see the Aurora Borealis,

and they bombard me relentlessly
as if marketing in memories.

This instance is not unique.

It seems
no matter how many buttons I push
in attempts to subdue
these bright incursions,

I can't mute you completely.

You will know, you'll feel the change,
That calls on parts of you most strange,
And through the wooded halls, you'll pass,
To gather for Its ancient mass.

The fallen towers' decaying bark,
Will harbor haunts of growing dark,
The slime will sweat, the crawlers teem,
You will not wake, this is no dream.

Descending into rotting cold,
You'll hear Its voices, deep and old,
And when their song has chilled your bone,
You'll know that you are not alone.

The path will dim and fall to end,
The soil below, itself shall rend,
The wyrm within shall rise without,
With blackened fur and horned snout.

And surely as the lichens gnaw,
It opens up its snarling maw,
The void beyond the smiling tooth,
Revealing long-forgotten truth.

Crafting scissors
Gardening shears
A pizza roller
Instruments of humble vivisection
I wield, I rend, I create.
Needles and pins,
Nimble and thin,
I pierce, I pull, I close.
With measured patience
I choose my weapons:
Ink, passion, time, and wit.
An armory of precision and gut.
Boulders bruise but roll away,
Fire burns, but I'm already ablaze,
Arrows lodge shallow or all fall short,
But the cold?
It slices.
The draining thought:
Is this the end of my creation -
Is there no more?
I slowly bleed out.

Storytime: I have long worn this body as a mask, pinning my cravings on the easily dismissible "primal urges" shared collectively. And though I revel in the smooth, lithe curves and motions of ***, it is my mind that is racing. My climactic tears have always sprung from a deeper well of sensation than the physical.

The buoyancy and depth of my spirit is directly proportional to the clarity and frequency of my Aha! Moments, and the duration and spells of radical trust and honesty shared in body and in soul. These laser beams of clarity or steady washes of electric buzzing seem the only true reason to be conscious of life at all.

I always wish to be worshipping at the altar of the stars, whatever form they manifest themselves in. A view, a meal, a lesson, a conversation, a work of art, or a companion. I feel love as less the solid, quantifiable particle, and more the ethereal wave of euphoric wonder, pulling like gravity. In a reason-less world, this is the best one to exist.

I want to share, "I Wonder You," with the humans that amplify the buzz of this wavelength. I want to go without the stretches in between where I must disguise the stirrings within where I feel the minutes of my life slipping away.

I have a hard time with differentiation
Between getting coffee
  And let's demolish 3 bottles of wine!
Between getting inspired
  And let's spend holidays seeing the country in a van!
Between getting butterflies
  And let's kiss on the face right now!

Surely,
There must be spectrums I can bisect
  Splitting
   Platonic Love from Romantic
   Sensory from Sensual
   And Casual from Committed
But they are not immediately apparent to me.

Regardless of type
All ships must be properly cared for,
So I will patch the holes
Man the sails,
And try not to rock the boats
Too terribly hard.

I just want to delicately cull my favorite blossoms from your mind
Until I've traveled the neural networks so,
That you might later allow my feral traipsing.
I just want to throw our backpacks in the backseat
And take a careless adventure
Wild. Jovial. Unbridled.
I just want to take you out from this fencing
To see you in new surroundings once more
To abandon labels, structure, and facades.
I just want to admire your strengths and your work
That you have shaped with your hands,
your will,
your individual cut.
I just want to take you out
To the open road
To see what you would shout,
how reckless you would be,
what abandon you could inspire in me.
I just want to do human things with you.
I want to enjoy pure moments of our nature.
I want to feel the Earth move with you.