What you wanted was war
Thundering and merciless
Wanted Armageddon to roll in
So you could follow every avenging angel
Brash with bloodlust
And feel righteous in the end

I felt the shift in the atmosphere
Heard the horsemen, saw the lightning
But I had long ago grown weary
Of desperate, clashing swords

You built trebuchets
So I built walls
Studying the stillness of stones
Observing the physics of load bearing and
Force balancing and
Standing unshaken as the sky itself shatters

The onslaught was calculated
Unyielding and arrogant
But of all the accusations lobbed over the ramparts
The only ones that drew blood
Were those fashioned after my own devices
Those festering things that grew out of my nightmares
Seeded with the secrets I'd once let fall in peacetime

You've called out endlessly for my head
But I won't bleed out for you here
I've been studying the patience of water
The salty tracks quietly working their way
Through all the hard places
Out to the sea

I won't bleed out for you here
I faced the red maw that would unmake me
I spun my own stitches out of ether
And lived

Healing alone through all the pain that my heart has been broken from is probably one of the most difficult things I have survived so far.

I pick up my pen
Like it's an anchor to the living
Oh to be a fool in love with death

i've never felt
so alive
experiencing the full range of human emotion

this is what it means to be human
what it feels to breathe without condition
and shackles to their needs
conservation of energy
preservation of self
outcomes fulfillment

residual ties out of desperate attempts at connection
burning those same bridges out of fear
i'm known
not understood
used as a tool from my own overextended hand
not understanding
people can't be used as distractions
finding the flaws in repeated dynamics
where do they **** up
but where do i contribute
is the better question
how am i the problem.
i am the problem
and now, how do i resolve this
time will offer it's lesson again
let me catch up
i'm still doing my homework

Bow. Bow to it all: the loss, the deluge, dams broken,
lives buried in beds of mud, square miles of charred forest,
all those for whom those forests were home.

Bow down to the loss, let it fill you. Their loss, your own loss,
each loss emptying the world of its having been. The ever-flowing
waters carving out new routes from higher ground to the depths.

Nothing is lost, only changed, reborn as a new sapling here
by the edge of the receding water line.
From ashen forests floors oaks sprout.

The loss of loved ones filling multiple hearts with compassion.
Where there was the touch of a hand memory serves up
sublime moments. Sitting, talking quietly on a brownstone stoop.

You remember her last words. She was in her wheelchair and it was time for you to leave and as you said goodbye you asked: “Is there anything else I can do for you before I go.” And she turned to you with that deadpan expression of hers and said: “Yes, take me with you.” And you laughed, hugged her, and left her there with her husband and cousin – her dear cousin who called you the next night and said: “Susan died today.”

You sob, then later that night you begin remembering the
sublime moments with her, each one filling you up again
as you honor her request and bring her home with you.

Trees along the road

continue to grow as if --


nothing had happened.

No one tells you that the hard part about dying is surviving
                    

                     Coming to terms with your end
                           but its only the beginning of a new end
                                                                                      

                                                                                          I mourned for life

I am the boy who sits at the back of the class; I am the myth and legend, that you have never heard laugh.

I am the eloquent, who so seldom speaks "Good day." and "Goodbye."
I am the b r o k e n, though you will never see me; p a r t i a l or cry.

I am the Lie.

I am the Lie, well housed in the illusion of an ever-present smile.

I am the wary traveller, exhausted yet still encouraging others to walk the extra mile.

I am the dying and ill, who screams to others. "Keep surviving and living, hold fast to your will; life once truly lived, has both bad and good."

I am a human... for better or worse. I am a duality to all others; either a blessing or a curse.

I am a song sang, though others remember only a verse... I am a play, that has been exhaustively rehearsed.