In a new life, new emotions, new thoughts and new possibilities,
A heart held open can beat new rhythms;
The song can sound different, the tune can change,
But the intention remains the same;

Love, peace, hope: compassion ...
A heart held open can withstand pain and
Grow stronger, mightier, and wiser.
A heart held open can hold paradoxes, which is life.

he looks upon every
disturbing part of me
with faith,

as if I were never dangerous; forever delicate...

when we stare into
one another, the thousand
ghosts of everything
I am ashamed of become pacified...

i didn't know how angry
a scar could be until i saw
one on myself it was something
like a pocket-sized chilean coast
dragged across my knee disrupting  
and hills still dispersing as an acl
torn but unseen like how the many
excerpts of dreams were wiped clean
the anger is always ephemeral but
it always comes back whenever
i want to feel breeze in hair perhaps
i just miss the delaware river scene
and a long ago when my pencils
moved too quickly for my thoughts
yes indeed maybe i just miss loving
the journey not for the end like the
part where i did not know anything yet
still believed that it was all for the better

Sometimes it is hard to know how to forge
     ahead.

The news has never been good, but recently it seems increasingly bad.

The grass is still green here, mom.

But it's drowning in rivers of red there.
Dead and brown and gone in other words and
other worlds that are even
still
part of this
     one.

What are any of us to do?

How can any of us bear not to bear witness?
And in bearing witness,
How does any of us retain the strength to live as though all is normal when it is so painfully obvious that it is not
so painfully obvious
that this cannot possibly be considered normal
or that if it is considered normal
then it is so painfully obvious that it should not be
that we should not want to be part of a world where this is normal.

So I return again to the question of how
is any of us supposed to forge ahead in a world at war?

Sometimes I take comfort in the idea that this, too, is the human condition.
We are a communal species, but a species that has always been at war with itself.

Nation against nation, tribe against tribe, clan against clan.

The only difference now is the scale.
We have globalized and commercialized war in a way that people 200 years ago would have found incomprehensible.
We have COD-- excuse me,
COMMODIFIED is what I meant
it into video games and movies and bumper stickers of AK-47s and how
how I ask is any of us to press on in a world so on fire that cities are burning and children are lucky if we can pull them from rubble and somehow hope that they, too, will not later seek to wage the destruction they were born into and borne out of.

And yet still,
The grass is green here, mom.

I barely know how we can love this world.
I hope that maybe we can still manage to love inside this broken plane. The myth of a phoenix is a beautiful one. Born of the ashes made from fire in a world that cannot cease
fire.

Always we hope for rebirth.

Somehow we must find a way to love
something or someone or some place.

In a world where the grass is still green..
And hopefully,
maybe,
can be green in otherwheres, too.

Grass does not grow if it is not watered.

And yet
we have poured a monsoon of kerosene on the plains of dead grass in a drought amidst famine.

Recall--god gave Noah the rainbow sign, said no more water, the fire next time!

What recourse do we have other than to love?

Love that which has burned
Love that which is not burned yet and which we hope to protect.

Love one another and hope against hope that this time,
Maybe this time

The grass will grow green there, too.

there is this itch
in my brain
constantly trying
to steer me
in the wrong
direction
as i try
to find my way around

there’s a whisper
in my ear
breathing softly
and telling me
what move
to make next
and it’s always
so difficult
to decide when
to listen

how many things
in this life
have i
been missin’?
just because i
thought
i was
being
“good”

i often
live in the clouds

i’m up there
in space
floating above
everything
i try to know
but being
unable
to reach it

i’m always either
too high
or
too low
and there’s so much
that i’ll never know
or touch
there are
countless places
i’ll never go

but i hope
that
at
least
once
you can be
something
real with me
so we can experience
life
and
dreams
and tangle them up
into one
in the same
making up
our own new name
for what it’s like
to be a “person”
in this world

Your hand runs across my cheek,
The war is over, you've brought peace,
I look into your eyes, my faithful home,
They'll tell me 'I'm yours, you're mine'

All I want is nothing more, to see you forever,
Forever is nothing but moments weaved,
Oranges, the slap, the big dog, our smiles,
However I ache for more and more everyday,

You'll lay in my lap, my hand in your hair,
I'll sing you all your favorite songs, I'll talk too,
Forever will be dawn to dusk for endless days,
No more summers, only winters where we bloom

I miss you, the chambers of my heart boom,
You're the spark of the layers in them,
My sinoatrial nodes are jealous of you,
You, the queen of my being, my forever