I was desert when you brought rain.
You were a balm to cure my pain.
I could not talk without my tears.
You brought love to allay my fears.
I was living in the future and the past.
You helped enjoy the present at last.
I learned to love again from your kiss.
Everyone should know a love like this.

I had only the dreams of a little child,
The romantic fantasies I let run wild,
Stumbling through uncareful affairs,
Only to discover that nobody cares
About a needy infant of mature years
Who pulls his life down around his ears.
Then your voice brought reason to me
And then suddenly I could actually see.

The best way to find out what you need
Is to know what you don’t want to succeed.
I had plenty of experience of the things
I didn’t want and what they could bring.
So, I started listing what I needed to grow
And then helped myself to make it so.
I stopped investing my time in looks.
I figured out what behavior it really took.

What was important was the heart
Of the person I would love, then start
To see if the rest matched my needs.
Love can grow from just these seeds.
You were the one who taught me this
By caring for me and sharing a kiss
That helped me to stop my routine
Of looking for love from a magazine.

You tell me I've a problem
   Problem one I know already
   Already working to mend it
   It stays broken in spite of me
          And so I freak out
I explode with resentment
   Resentment is my fail safe
   Safe I no longer know about
   About face,  I turn around
          And so I'll claim no one gets it
Sadness comes I know I'm wrong
   Wrong to tell you you were
   Were any of my attempts real
   Real life sinks in
          And so I go down uncertain
I implode knowing I've a problem
   Problem two I know already
   Already passively trying
   Trying it is, seeing my self lies
          And so now I face myself

I remember as a child,
Looking up to the older kids,
Thinking they were so cool.
And now,
All of a sudden the tables have turned.
I'm not a little kid anymore;
I've entered the stage of turning points
And life-changing choices.
I feel like my life is a news cast,
With reporters on every corner,
Trying to get their nosy noses
All up in my business.
I feel as though I am stripped and vulnerable—
I have no answers to their questions.
I used to dream of doing great things,
And now it's time to choose
Whether or not those dreams will become reality.
I'm told that I should follow my heart,
But what if I don't know what my heart is saying?
The dreams I used to have...
I don't know how to fit them in my life.
I thought I knew what I wanted,
I thought I knew what I loved.
But now I'm not so sure
If I can align my fantasy with the rules of life.
I'm afraid to make the decisions
That will determine my destiny.
I guess that's what happens when you grow up.

An old man’s eyes
So much they have seen.
Actors and extras
In some memorable scenes.
Dim with time, perhaps
Yet they’re working still.
Seeing all the landscapes
But, from over the hill.

Happy young children
Playing with jackstraws,
Sliding down hills and
Riding on seesaws.
Growing up quickly
And thinking about cars
Becoming too busy
For looking up at stars.

An old man’s eyes
Saw the ages go by
Learning the lessons;
By unsuccessful tries.
Trying so hard to be
Just one of the guys
Growing old gracefully
And hopefully wise.

Singing songs of sixpence
Not knowing what it was
Echoing parent’s politics
Not understanding the cause.
Hearing about god-fearing
Never reading the book.
Not retaining a word said
In the courses we took.

An old man’s eyes
Can be fooled at times.
It doesn’t work out like
In old nursery rhymes.
The wolf gets the grandma
The houses blow down.
And beneath the old eyes
There was often a frown.

Going into the military, then
Looking but not really seeing,
Ignoring people without my luck
Selectively blind way of being.
Told there were people who were
Not part of the world we live.
Gathering mulberries while I could
Not having extra I could give.

An old man’s eyes
So much they have seen.
Actors and extras
In some memorable scenes.
Dimming with time, perhaps
But they are working still.
Seeing all the landscapes
But, from over the hill.

Glazed faces running fearless in the harvest forest
The brush of the rising crops tingles on the skin
We drop down lying head to head
Following planes with our fingers in the sky.

Your reflection inside mimics my stance outside
Where the smoke from my cigarette
Turns into clouds above my head
Masking the light from the full moon that shines elusively bright.

Distance is crawling between us
Stealing our monumental past
It pollutes our freeness in speech.
Sorrow cant be fixed by ice cream
A day off where i let my mind indulge in far away dreams.

Your voice that was sweet music
Is now NOISE.
I close the bathroom door and wish we were in a book of prose
Where we play faces and turn into toys of mad creation.

Beneath my covers in the
dark of night,
I felt pulled tight. 
My pajamas and
underthings finding all
the wrong places.

At my time of change,
I was gifted a bed.
I felt freedom.
A space of my own, finally alone.
The eldest, released from the pack.

Revelation of delight,
naked under soft sheets.
I felt the coolness.
My skin alive, fresh from a
warm bath. Feet wrapped safe,
deep within layers.

The Dreams came then...
I felt their calling.
Whispers beckoning me
into flight,
to float above,
observe my simple beauty

Gently slipping towards the galaxy,
I felt no weight.
Nebula's Helix, Saturn and Orion,
their colors became the
pallet of My mind.

Able to soar with the eagles,
into the depths of the oceans.
The whales called for me to follow.

Walking within the beam of
light, I felt warmth.
Crystalline aquifers quenched
my thirst. Grounding  me to the
center of our Earth.

Of an age now,
that comfort has settled in,
I feel whole within.
Naked with my soul.

The sheets still cool
after a long warm bath.


Copyright © May 2015 Christi Michaels.
All Rights Reserved

A Tree of Life with roots of evil will die in the storm,
before it’s ever born.
The sun will be its father, and it will be raised by mother earth.
If it soaks up knowledge it will survive its birth.
Sprouting ideas while growing its spirit.
There’s a whisper in the wind... be quiet and you can hear it.
Doesn’t need to fear it, when the weather gets cloudy.
It knows its true colors and reveals them proudly.  
It cannot be not shy, because when it looks around.
It realizes every other tree is similar,
Just different branches in the ground all waiting to be found.
Discovered and loved; nourished by nature.
It realizes its reflection is its only true stranger.
Covered with bark so you cannot see the inner.
Shadowed by the dark, transforms to a sinner.
A stump at worst, and a home at best.  
Too much is in between to explain the rest.
Now let it be known, when the red leaf falls,
It’s the end of a season for no apparent reason.
Time to change its ways; it won’t take a few days.
Give it time to mature to reach its full potential.
It sounds so simple, yet gets complicated.
When it timbers down, something new is created.
It went from a seed to sprout, conquered any drought.
Now with a shout of thunder, it just can’t help to wonder.
"Why am I here, and what is my purpose?"
But if it received the answer, would life really be worth it?

It seemed to happen
suddenly.
But looking back I found it was
    g r a d u a l.
It started with
A grandmother 8 and
A mother at 11 and
Then a nother at 14
But then there was
A noose at 17
And after that it seemed to come more often
Then there was
A gun and a school and
   A bomb and a city
But there had been
Guns and
       Schools and
       Bombs and
       Cities
Before but now there were
People and
       Stories and
       Impact and
Suddenly there were friends of friends and
Family of friends and
Suddenly the inevitable shadow at the back of my cognition
Was coming forward and
The light was just that much darker.

It had not been absent from my life
I had never met
My grandparents or
My aunt but
Now I noticed it.

Was it always there?
Silent in the corners
Happening without my knowledge
or care? And
Now it was making itself know? Or
Had it been much smaller before and
Now decided to grow and
       Eat and
       Consume and
       Take and
       Make holes
Because how could it have hidden from me before?
Because it was big I was so small?

It had always been
          An idea
        An abstraction
In books and
       Stories and
       Serial dramas and
       Movies and
       Films and
       Digests and
       Papers and
       Drawings and
       Paintings and
       Photos and
       Movies and
       Sound waves and
       Radio waves and
       X-rays and
       Brain waves and
I remember the day I realized from
Ink on paper in
  Other shapes and
With wet eyes walked into my father’s office
With many I’s like
Don’t want it to happen to you and
Don’t want it to happen to mom and
Don’t want it to happen to sister and
Cat and
Fish and
Friend and
He said “it won’t”
But he knew and
      I knew and
We knew but
What can you say?

So maybe now the abstraction
Became the concretion and
No more could I cry “not me”
Because I was all the other me’s “not me”s and
Now there it was but
There it wasn’t
Always at the corners but
Never right there and
Maybe it never would be there but
Maybe the corners would just get bigger and
The there get smaller until there was no
There
Just corners and
Just darkness.

And maybe that was when it happened.