Horrf, my friend, don't keep it in,
Horrf, the sound eternal !
For, soon, what once adorned your skin,
Shall be, once more,
External...

It's a ridiculous cliche but, ******* it, your eyes...
Forgive me if I don't always make eye contact,
Or look away too soon.  I'm listening. I swear it.
I'm afraid you might think that I'm full of myself,
Or afraid you might think that I've no self-esteem.
The truth is much simpler than either extreme.
The truth is I'm somewhere right in between.
but still:
Twin seas draw my stare and I fear what I'll say.
Fear falling into their unlit depths, where even my silence could betray.
The source to illuminate and fuel our lives' desires,
Find it in her hands , her touch,
Find it in her eyes.
Her eyes of ocean depth see me,
Giving no safe place to hide,
Searching bad cliches for the light, the otherness inside.
But what if all of my words are wrong?
What if they drive you away?
What if the light between oceans is mute?
Insufficient to make you stay?

Confidences
   were something we shared, but then,
Secrets are nothing per sè...

Confidence
   was a thing that I'm lacking, but that
Never stopped me, anyway...

I pressed you, you starved me,
It was wrong, but it couldn't be helped.
I said some things that I don't quite recall
You said a few things yourself.

It was a ridiculous assumption, and god **** it,
You're right.
Forgive me if I don't always hear your advice,
Or look away from the truth.
I'm still listening, I swear it.
I'm afraid you might think I'm just here for your ***,
Or afraid you might think that I'm boring and dull.
I'm just beginning to learn that others perceptions,
Are all, as they should be,
well beyond my control,

But, still...

Your eyes of ocean depth see me,
I want you to speak my name.
Searching all my cliches in the dark,
Forgetting the lies from which we came.
But what if all my words are true?
What if they show me the way?
What if the light between oceans is thought,
And words sufficient to make you stay?

Do you see yourself there,
In this life that you've made?
Arcs traced, just so, by the motion of eyes?
The flicker as they search, the pause before they rest,
The metrics of biology, could they possibly tell?
Whose child was whose,
and what they were thinking?

Raise, for your experiences, a city.
Build a warehouse, down the block,
Where you’ll keep the cosmos.
Build a bookshelf, within a brownstone,
Where some other things can go.
Like the time you grasped a flower,
Felt beneath, felt the spines that
Pricked your skin,
Made you cry.
But that shelf will be revisited many times,
In this fragile, crumbling zip code,
Forsaking more majestic memory palaces,
Because the vision reached your soul,
Through pain,
Of all that beauty, soft, red, enfolded into itself,
On such a slender stem.

One day I broke down, I took the job.

"I just wanted to destroy something beautiful..."                    
     "Yeah, beautiful and toxic. what were you thinking?"
"who are you?"         
   "I'm your ******* muse, *******"
"no, no, no. just, please... leave me alone?"       
    "nope"    
"****"          
   "do you love me?"
"how could-  i mean, what...."          
   "touch me"
" god.   ******...."

Back at the shore, at the interface, I tried, once, to be free.
I found a human animal there, hidden beneath the sea.
It stared, defiant, back at me, perplexed to be observed.
It had no need for company,
It had no need for words.

I felt unable to understand,
Understanding all too well.
The pain within the heart of man,
The pain they buy and sell.

I spoke aloud, though, anyway,
I thought I knew those eyes,
Believed my voice could make a change,
In other creature's lives.

"You're hurt", I said, to the ocean waves,
"Why hide beneath the sea?"
"You're a fool", it said, "presuming that",
"There's something wrong with me"

"Go back to where it's warm and dry,"
"Just walk away from here."
"The water gives me all I need."
"Spare me your hope and fear".

Perhaps", I said, "We all are broken,"
"To some extent, in body; soul..."
I saw my own, afraid but happy,
So unbroken as to seem whole.

It shouted at me once I had left,
We would never meet again.
Then whispered an unheard, but felt,
Admission to the pain.

Back at the shore, on my own this time,
I'm free now, yes, but alone.
I'm left with nothing,
No pain,
No rhyme,
On a beach less sand than stone.


The tide still licks the shore for crumbs,
But nothing hides beneath.
No voice calls out in dark, feigned scorn,
No stoic secretly cries for release.


The world outside worked magic for real,
It promised us strength in identity,
But now I'm just beginning to feel,
There's actually something wrong with me.


I can't go back until I know,
That your death has served some purpose.
What chance is there, to survive and grow,
When even ghosts can hurt us?


"Perhaps", I said, "it's all unspoken", aloud,
To myself, discovering,
How words can wound but silence drowned,
A heart that's still recovering.

His body floats on the surface,
Limbs spread wide and bound to the water,
An "X" marks his place on the planet.
Ankles and wrists between water and air,
He submits to a force of nature,
An "X", half submerged in the waves.
It says, "You are here",
but the ocean has more "there".
The water is a woman.
The sea is terrifying,
But he won't ever fear her.
A force of nature does nothing for spite,
Nothing for greed,
Nothing for personal gain.
His death would be clean.  
Honest.
Absorbed, even, thoroughly, back to the source,
The waters from which we all came.

Gently... exhale , now,
Breathe out, but slow,
And I sink, if only a bit.
Down into the sea, but never in fear,
Though flat on my back in the vastness of it.

Gently... inhale,
Never panic, never rush,
Only trust, and the rise of my chest, but slow,
Only faith in the physics of fluids and mass,
And I rise again, safe from the depths below.

I rise again, safe, at the interface,
My lips welcome air from the edge of the blue,
My ears hear the sea, still muted and mingled,
With the sound of a voice, and a heartbeat, too.
A comfort, a terror, both in the same,
My regular gentle reminder of how,
The world cannot touch me from there,
In the past.

The sea touches all of me, here,

And right now.

"I just want to have ***", you said.
An unexpected non-sequitur.
We had been sipping tea or coffee or something.
We had been reminiscing about the old street,
Back when none of us were single.
"yeah, I miss it, too", I said.

"No.  I mean right now", you corrected.
As I turned to see your face, it betrayed little.
Impassive but alert.  Warm but not intimate.  No passion.
I was willing, but remember: this never happened to me.
Something seemed wrong about it,
But was there any harm?

I asked if I could think about it.
You thought about it, too, as we watched a movie.
Halfway through some Ridley Scott epic, we held each other.
We touch-explored and memory only tells me this is true:
With no further reason beyond the will to be,
I soon lay naked there with you.  
It wasn't love but, then again,
This never happened.
Awkward, at first, we found our place,
Our touch and pull, our rhythm and pace.
"no kissing", you admonished, speaking only that.

Though I rest spent and full inside you,
That was your concern.
Too personal.
Too intimate.

We held each other for a while,  you left within the hour,
Saying, "this never happened", and my only thought,
My only answer to you,
Was a solemn confirmation,
That nothing could be more true.

This stupid book has nothing to offer me
In eight pages on stiff paper board.
The pictures are saccharine,
A fat headed boy
In colorful clothes
Shows us what he can do.
How could I see the value
In knowing this simple stuff?
I’m too far removed from my point in time
When “jump” and “run” were just sounds,
When jumping and running were just what they are,
Far removed from the labels we gave them.

So it comes to this: this stupid book
Among all of God’s ink-sodden paper,
Is an achievement of gold,
the height of literature,
a swell in my throat,
When you brought it to me
just today, and said,
“dada”
“read”

To some Holy Land, now, gather ye,
There, to spend the night in Gethsemane.
Entreat with the father or maybe the son,
Perhaps they can tell you when a war is won.

For another parent, another child,
Their once ancestral home defiled.
Did it help, the blood you spilled?
Your mark of Cain; your curse fulfilled?

Run to your God and pretend he hears,
Believe in lies and dark new fears,
Deny to others their right to live…
We saw what you did and will not forgive.

Where two or more are gathered,
The result is anyone’s game.
But make it many thousands,
And often it is just a shame,
How Gods remain suspiciously quiet,
When the killing is in their name.

If I wanted to take a little time,
If I wanted to share my inner mind,
If someone said it had to rhyme,
I got no time for that ****…

Paint for me, in your chosen words,
The lines are branches; the letters, birds.
Sing to me songs sublime; absurd,
Just don’t tell me it has to rhyme…

Settle the bitter, ancient scores,
Make the audience seek for more,
Make the shoes I stand in yours,
Do not make me repeat myself…

Write me a letter, I long to hear,
Your poet’s voice in my mental ear,
Till the world does shed a collective tear,

I think I’ve made myself perfectly-  uh…

Clear.

His feet carried him there with no plan but to see.
Beyond that, the ****** appendages were ******* useless.
But he can't blame his feet for the failures above,
In the brain that is always awash in a chemical storm,
Not of it's creation,
But rather, from failures up higher,
Where angels throw darts and roll dice with God,
(who disdains such a sport),
And anyway...
So, here he is again,
With a mind full of wonder,
When he wants only, sorely, for this:
To have something to say,
Through the fog and the chatter,
To find that within,
Which is real.

Miss sits in silence and understands,
Nothing breaks the spell.
Missing nothing, understanding,
As far as I can tell.
Miss spoke and said, the word was "sure",
An understanding guess,
Missing understanding pure,
The answer could be "yes".
Miss came and understood for sure,
But wouldn't stay for long.
Thought was insufficient lure,
When I think my guess was wrong.

"Wise as a serpent but gentle as a dove",
Was scripture you'd quote to me many a time,
And though your Faith would sustain you,
Through many dark storms,
You refused to insist
     That it should be mine.

You see, I had every chance to fall out of line,
A multitude of options, to shy or to shine,
And even though I may not have said it a lot-
I remembered your words,
             And made some of them mine.

So, when I reached the age,
That you were back then,
When you felt like you'd failed me,
And said so again,

I'm taking your hand now,
To place it in mine.
I'm smiling but, sighing,
I'm drawing the line.
No one's written the book yet, Mom,
You did just fine.

Wednesday 17 December 2014

This one was beautiful.  I sculpted it myself.  Did you know that?
It took years and, if I’m completely honest, I was overly fond of it.
I’d made many, of course.  I had to.  We all had to.
Cupped, round, and smooth, heavy in my hand like a clay pigeon.
So beautiful...

Somehow it began in light,
Naïveté and youth.
I used to say it just felt right,
And free from all abuse.

At  first it formed a perfect ring,
Of lies I thought were true.
I bring it, now, to end the thing.
I bring it, now, to you.  

Because every thing must have its place,
Every thing in its own time.  
This beautiful thing has failed it's need,
Inspiring only pain and rhyme.

-but may it live in memory, still,
May the growth outweigh the pain.
When pain brings growth beyond your will,
Remember fondly, this thing, again.

So why did I smile when you asked me to hold it?
Why did I find it fitting that you made me load it into the trap?
Why were the lines formed by your braced shoulder,
your leveled forearm, your
outstrectched, cradled hand,
so beautiful...
when you inclined your head,
Closed one eye, and,
Steady, raised your sights?

Why did I love you so much for pulling the trigger?