I, whose sleep gloats
searching for answers, steering for a dream

I take my place amongst men
in parks, in alleys, in trains,

and the Sun unmasks itself
like timeworn skies of linoleum.

trees their bulwarks realize such oneness
and birds start to rain

where time wounds all feelings
and lovers innumerably lay flat on their bellies.

mountains ***** as tall as truths,
and the sleuth more than my body’s engine

turns less than a seraphim – dizzy with the
night’s utmost haranguing.

I, whose soul returns not with garlands
but with chains as my phantoms go with them

swimmingly across the blue Earth
and a man brindled, tussled against

space that so distant the star becomes so near
and all sleep lose names of dreams.

verily this evening, from the veranda
i smell the fragrance of their arrivals.

the tall, slender, stockinged women
swaying like bamboo in the wind.

the admirals in white commandeering
vessels — the shear of wind, a tractable beast.

the ploys of men to woo the darling,
  the hesitations of dames cloaked
in obvious handiwork of skirts.

they slalom through life's rugged streets
like blueprints of doors revealing
  benign propaganda.

it is all too real to me. i have lived
behind the shadow of words.

it is all that i am cut up for — doting on
it still, yet a nonexistent blossom.

hearing them leave the interior of walls,
soldering the notoriety of burdens.
witnesses drowned in water,
their muffled voices reinvent the quietude. there is a dailiness overmastered by them, such rampant
mendaciloquence denied by me.

i move past cataracts of crowds
and hunt for the silence: this importunate need that feeds my bloodthirsty being.
i awaken the sleeping prowess
of words and listen to them.

now, leave me with my ocean.
i was meant to ***** in the blue
and froth like the last of unburied water,
  dreaming of fish.

i bathe myself with
the music that i alone, hear.

i heed the flinch
of my heart's centrifuge -
gyrates purely without
a hand holding it,
in a lonesome,
contrapuntal waltz.

i lie naked yet untouched,
this aloneness.

even my words prosper in
the tumescence of speechlessness.

hurrying back to
dimming light
is my body ready to feed
the wick of this dark.
traipsing the
bareness of this pantheon
is my soul,
and no one else's.
solemnity scales the stars
and transforms them
into margins to fence my own universe:

  i am the only celestial here,
   spinning in a thousand days
     of restlessness.

How did it feel
not to be touched
for all that time?

Especially
for a woman born to touch,
who feels so deeply
the colors of the day.

You know more
of the hidden power
of loneliness
than you let on.

~mce

A conflict crippling beyond my will,
My mind, my own capacity,
Abating to the point of dread
A broken soul, now broken inanity

The words I can't resist to restate
Again and again and about
Can I have the will to keep it--
The meaning, now to saturate

I sit in my muddled state of disarray
Contemplating the worst--
Or perhaps,
Just honesty

I love my scattered, esoteric mind
I love to squirm as I think at night
Alone, I know, not just in presence
But in ethos, judgement, sense--all the rest,

Still who can help but want another
A mind to love for lonely days
Any mind vaguely the same, just wise
Who could think in ways of deep insight

Can both be given?
In my life of ungraciousness
My world of willful sorrow
My feeble ways of petty days

A weight held fast in the heart

That's what my conflict is made of.

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

  -- David Whyte
      from Everything is Waiting for You
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press