For a second the world was silenced and freedom mourned.

At one end of the couch
you sit, mute as a pillow
tossed onto the upholstery.

I watch you sometimes
when you don't know I'm watching
and I see you. Who you are.

You are a self made man.
Hard suffering. You are grey
stone and damp earth.
A long scar on a pale sky.

The television is tuned to CNN.
The world's tragedies flicker
across your face like some
foreign film.

You are expressionless.
Your usual gestures ground to salt.

How do you explain yourself
to people that do not know you?
How do you explain to them,
this is me; that is not me.

However many words you choose
in whatever context with
whichever adjectives you use
could not compare.

Even you describing you
would not be you.
Not totally.

Your hands are folded
together, resting in your lap.
I study those hands until
every groove becomes familiar.

Like a favorite hat,
you wear your silence
comfortably.

I sometimes can not help
but wonder what we will
talk about if we ever
run out of things to say.

You are the curve
I burrow into. The strength
I borrow. You are the red sun
rising over the mountain.
You are the mountain.

Don't lose heart
You have enough love to win
And many other hearts to be won
Divert the flow of your love
Make your life worth living for many
Than craving for one

I failed to save another soul today.
On my high patrol, I heard their last gasps leave their lips,
and I let their salvation get away
slipping through my super-powered fingertips.

If I can write assurance to a thousand souls lost, humorous and witty
"If I muster all the words that I know," I thought, "Surely I can save this city."
But life can't be measured by honeyed words, and it's agony to see
the souls' salvations that I'm missing beneath my red-caped nobility.

Even if I flew higher still, with my cape waving proud and free,
no great power I could bring to bear could match my responsibility.
For every orphan girl I save, there's another not too far afield.
For every chain broken, for every freed slave, there are chains that will not yield.

I'd fly around the world and turn back time, but I know t'would be in vain.
What's a single Superman to do, when the whole world cries to be saved?

termites crawl in my stomach; you
are my disarray, o soft and golden -

take the curves of my feet, the
freckle on my lip, and

hang me on your wall, you
compel my speechlessness.

i'll keep guessing, guessing
and unguessing.

i am up all night over this.

i never thought that anyone could love me
until the day i wasn't there
to love anyone else
or myself