Can't you just love me again?

A whisper-wisp through the dark,
spoken in the night to familiar walls
you're helping your brother
paint a different colour,
masking forever words those walls have heard
and the time
I took acid
at your birthday
and watched the 70's wallpaper you've covered up melt like heated crayons
to join me on the floor,
rolling rainbows and laughter through the air in a technicolour soup,
in an effort to forget your face in the next room.


But can't you just love me again?

You want more than friends who are occasionally lovers,
to find meaning in the familiarity we sometimes share,
to amalgamate two bodies confidential in their knowledge of one another,
to illuminate my heart with another chance.

But you forget I say
into the silence and the drying Irish linen,
I've repainted the walls within
to erase a love which rendered us strangers,
built my heart its own house with no room for a former life,
so your words can do nothing but knock,
at a front door
now forever politely closed.

Walls.
Build them up.
Break them down.
Build them taller.

Every word, every whipser
Is either adding a brick
Or taking one away.
But never staying the same.

You broke it all down
And I threw away the bricks.
I didn’t know that I should have saved
At least one.

You came in and looked around
I let you move right into
Every corner that used to be guarded
By the walls i put up.

Slowly, I forgot where i even put my bricks.
I wouldn’t need them anyways.
You took them all away,
But i didnt know you would steal them.

You lit the bricks on fire,
And you burned the house down.
See, you still had your bricks up
And built more with mine that you stole.

I am left brickless.
Its almost like im homeless.
Everything is out,
Nothing is protected.

But you.
You are walls that are miles high.
I can see the bricks you stole from me
Scattered about your walls.

But while im laying on the ground
That is the only thing left after the fire
I look around and notice,
There is sunlight.

No walls are up,
And the mind is shattered.
But while yours is built up and safe,
Mine, has the sun.

Jack awoke in his usual pain, un-
daunted by it. We're all gonna die
someday is his morning mantra these days.
Isolate the variable, anything
you do to one side of the equation
you gotta do to the other. Practice
zen, eat less, an empty belly's holy.
These are the rules for old men waiting.

On the other hand, attachment to self
and to things to do. Clean the house, watch for war.
Count syllables, teach English to immigrants
from Slovakia or Syria.
Advocate vocational education
in the schools. Jack has much to do, a new
administration, low social security.
He goes slow as the day will allow.

living in a house that isn't a home,
eating, sleeping, breathing, alone.

She says your not good with money.

I agree.

She says these books can not feed us.

I disagree.

I say they feed my mind and that's all I need.
And that I am sorry that you're not hungry.

She says I want a house.

I say we have a roof.

She says I want a big white house with a red door.

I say I have a hammock and a tent and a red sharpie.

She said goodbye.

I went back to reading my meal.

My mother grew up poor and strong,
Wild and kind,
Unsteady and prime.
Black curls and brick house,
Stealing for her supper.

My mother can push and fight,
Claw and brawl,
My mother is a warrior in lamb's clothing.

She stands upon walls,
Falls,
then finds her footing.
Because my mother is a warrior in lamb's clothing.

At times she's insecure and unsure,
Unknowing that
My mother is a warrior in lamb's clothing.

She pushes, bows, cares and bares,
She can endure all things, conquer all things and renew all things,
For my mother is a warrior in lamb's clothing