It's true that I never really knew you.
But I did love you
In a certain, breathless way.
In a hushed way.
I was very small, then. And very sad.
And I looked out on a great, green, vivid world,
And I was afraid, even, to whisper into it
As if my breath would push the color out.
I watched. I noticed.
I perched on the edge of myself,
On the line between me
And the air around me,
Too cautious to slip into either fully.
I was used to looking.
I was used to being a shadow, and I enjoyed it.
I thought I enjoyed it.

The day I met you, you looked back at me.
You were the first.
Imagine that- all those years, and you were the first person
To wonder what it was like behind my eyes
Enough to really look into them.

I could have loved you
Just for that
And maybe I did, originally.
I remember small things, small wakings-up,
Tiny moments that made me realize who I was.
I never lived inside myself before that year.
When I met you I discovered
That I had hands
That when the breeze was warm
I felt it
That my fingers could read the world I so loved to look at-
Change it
Mold it,
Have it.
I discovered that maybe I didn't have to exist alone
And for that knowledge
I must bitterly thank you,
For ever since then I have craved to be held,
Every second
And it has been wonderful and terrible.

I remember snapshots of that time.

The first time, when you looked at me, when you stood close to me
And I was so surprised that I forgot to recoil
And I discovered that I didn't want to.
Your eyes,
Pale and warm, a clear grey-blue, sparkling with mischief,
And what was behind them-
Pain, fear, love, wit and imagination.
You.

I didn't know you,
But I saw you.
I was looking. I always look.
I rarely see anything I wish I could write poetry about.
When I do, it keeps on coming, even years later.
Go figure.

I remember going home and laying awake in the dark
And your face wouldn't leave my mind.
You were leaving within the week,
And I didn't want to forget it, somehow.
I didn't know what made me want to look at you.
Thinking of you-
The curtain of dark hair you hid beneath a hat,
Your softly freckled skin,
Your low, husky voice that always made my head turn
As if everyone else was just background noise.
Maybe it was the way your lips would quirk up in a half smile
Whenever you said something witty and knew it.
(I loved that you knew it.)
Somehow the sum-total of you
Stuck with me and wouldn't leave.
I'd met handsome men.
I'd met beautiful women.
I'd met many people, by then,
But none I'd wanted to know quite like I wanted to know you.

It had never occurred to me
Before that summer
That I would ever want to kiss anybody.
When I discovered that I wanted to kiss you...
I didn't know what to do.
So I said nothing.
Did nothing.
I passionately looked at you
As you told your mesmerizing stories and laughed and looked elsewhere.
I didn't mind.

That was the year
Two weeks later
That I rolled over in bed and asked my best friend to kiss me.
That was the year I discovered why I'd never fantasized a white wedding
(It wasn't legal yet.)

In the years after, I searched for you.
Sometimes I found you.
Sometimes
I couldn't stop telling you you were beautiful.
Sometimes I felt close to you
And my heart would race.
Sometimes you chose a boy
Over my small, dainty face and my eyelashes and my high heeled boots
And that was the first time I felt
The now familiar aching shame- the fear
That maybe that would always happen.
The fear I still grapple with, if I am to be honest.

Still, there were moments when you and I were close, and I treasured them.
Once, I asked you for a hug
And you pulled me down onto the bed beside you
And that was the first time
I ever felt my stomach fall through my feet
In a delicious way,
In a thrilling way.
All I did was hug you,
And looked at your soft, brown eyelashes
Casting shadows down your cheeks.
And then somebody walked in and the moment was over
But I never quite forgot it.

You were kind to me.
You were kind to me in a way I hadn't experienced before,
And I wanted to make you smile.

I remember the day you told us why you wore shorts at the pool.
I remember the white hashmarks shining in the sun
All the way up your thighs.
I remember I thought a thousand things in that second.
I wanted to tell you that you didn't have to hide them.
I wanted to show you that you were beautiful.
I've kissed scars since then, you know.
Because of that moment, I've kissed scars before I've kissed lips.
I've left people loved instead of wounded.
If I'd have let myself think such things about people back then,
I'd have wanted to touch those long-healed cuts with my fingertips,
Feel the smooth hills and valleys of a chaotic heart
Made damaged flesh.
I'd have wanted to kiss them, too, like I did to different skin-
Softly and without lust, looking into the eyes that witnessed their creation.
It was a very, very personal thought. A very, very private longing.
So confusing that I locked it up and didn't think of it for years to come.
And when I did once more,
I was raising a pale white wrist to my lips, tracing a wax-white pattern of healed hatred with soft kisses
And I saw what I wanted to see in the surprised, vulnerable brown eyes I was looking into.
That moment for her
Was your fault.

I remember when I realized why you had such trouble eating.
I never did hear all the details.
I couldn't presume to ask.
All I did was watch you walk away from the table,
Burning with the desire to comfort you
But
I was so used to looking
And not touching
And so I watched you go
And thought of you all night.

It rained a lot, those years.
It never seems to rain like that anymore.
Whenever I saw you it seemed to rain at least once,
The sky turning the same grey blue as your eyes when you were thinking
And thought nobody was looking
And cracking open with a rush of rain and lightning and the sweet, low rumble of thunder crackling through the hot clouds high above.
The holes in the road would fill with water
And the whole place would become a river.
It was so free.
Somehow I began to think of you whenever it rained.

I'm almost sure it was your eyes. They were so deep and stormy, sometimes.
Sometimes they were bright blue, like those summer days when the clouds skip along the sky, pushed by warm winds and shattered by sunlight.
Sometimes they looked very, very pale, like the tide when it folds up in satiny layers against the sand.
I always felt a little strange, looking at your eyes like I did.
I couldn't stop.
That was probably why I rarely touched you.
I was afraid that I was already invading, already pushing too much
To see what was inside of you.

I remember listening to you learn lines late at night,
The way your voice would rise and fall,
And I didn't even know why I was listening-
It just pulled me in, a sound I was partial to,
A tone I wanted to feel on my skin.

I remember tagging along for countless adventures,
Making up excuses to be here or there that I knew you'd be
Just so that I could be a bit closer.
I didn't have an end game.
Didn't have a goal.
I wasn't me enough yet. I acted from fascination.
I wanted to stand near you and watch you be.

I have the most vivid memory of you taking off running
One hot, hot summer day
Into a field of tall grass,
Your laughs and shouts echoing further away
And sometimes I'd see your pale arms stretch above the wildflowers and underbrush,
Waving a gauzy net after the white butterflies that rode the sunbeams.
What a happy field that was.
I didn't run.
I watched.
I always watched.
But I remember that the smile that touched my face
Filled my bones.

I remember when you cut your hair
And I could finally see your face in full
And I wanted to photograph it
In black and white
And maybe catch the way your laughter lived in your gaze.

That was when
You started to fade away.
I saw you less,
And you saw me... much less.
Perhaps I should have let you turn away
And never said a thing,
But
You were the first thing I ever really wanted
Enough to reach for in any way.
I spoke, and you heard me.
And even though you pretended you didn't
It was still the first time
I ever shouted.

Now... now I'm not sure what I think of you
Or what
You think of me.
But I know what you were when I knew you
And I love that girl
And that girl
Created much of what I love about who I am.
And most of the time
I think she grew up.
Found a man, found a life, found a place.
Most of the time I think it's okay that we don't talk
Because you probably aren't her anymore.
I wish I could say
I thought I'd grow up like that and leave my skin behind
But
I am the girl who looked at you back then.
And I have been her ever since,
Only added to.
I know I will never outgrow how I love,
Who I love,
Whatever woke up when I first realized how I felt about you.
I will only learn to wield it.

Sometimes I wish I knew you now.
Sometimes I wish I'd known you then.
Just because... look at all the firsts you were, to me,
And for years into knowing you
I didn't even know your real name.
Imagine if you'd let me in, how we could have changed each other.
I wonder who I'd be
If I'd done more than just watch you silently and smile.

What I learned
From years of gazing at you across picnic tables and bunk beds is that
You can love somebody you don't know.
You can give to someone you haven't taken from.
And you can be changed by someone who never even touched you.
And I'd like you to know that.
And I'd like to remind you
That you never quite know who out there
Is quietly writing you poetry.

Vanished are the veils of light and shade,

Lifted the vapors of sorrow,

Sailed away the dawn of fleeting joy,

Gone the mirage of the senses.

Love, hate, health, disease, life and death

Departed, these false shadows on the screen
    of duality.

Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, whirlpools
    of melancholy,

Melting in the vast sea of bliss.

Bestilled is the storm of maya

By the magic wand of intuition deep.

The universe, a forgotten dream, lurks
   subconsciously,

Ready to invade my newly wakened memory divine.

I exist without the cosmic shadow,

But it could not live bereft of me;

As the sea exists without the waves,

But they breathe not without the sea.

Dreams, wakings, states of deep turiya sleep,

Present, past, future, no more for me,

But the ever-present, all-flowing, I, I everywhere.

Consciously enjoyable,

Beyond the imagination of all expectancy,

Is this, my samadhi state.

Planets, stars, stardust, earth,

Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,

Creation’s moulding furnace,

Glaciers of silent X-rays,

Burning floods of electrons,

Thoughts of all men, past, present, future,

Every blade of grass, myself and all,

Each particle of creation’s dust,

Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,

I swallowed up – transmuted them

Into one vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!

Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by unceasing meditation,

Which blinded my tearful eyes,

Burst into eternal flames of bliss,

And consumed my tears, my peace, my frame,
  my all.

Thou art I, I am Thou,

Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!

One tranquilled, unbroken thrill of eternal, living, ever-new peace!



Not an unconscious state
Or mental chloroform without wilful return,

Samadhi but extends my realm of consciousness

Beyond the limits of my mortal frame

To the boundaries of eternity,

Where I, the Cosmic Sea,

Watch the little ego floating in Me.

Not a sparrow, nor a grain of sand, falls

    without my sight

All space floats like an iceberg in my mental sea.

I am the Colossal Container of all things made!

By deeper, longer, continuous, thirsty,
  guru – given meditation,

This celestial samadhi is attained.

All the mobile murmurs of atoms are heard;

The dark earth, mountains, seas are molten liquid!

This flowing sea changes into vapors of nebulae!

Aum blows o’er the vapors; they open their veils,

Revealing a sea of shining electrons,

Till, at the last sound of the cosmic drum,

Grosser light vanishes into eternal rays

Of all-pervading Cosmic Joy.

From Joy we come,

For Joy we live,

In the sacred Joy we melt.

I, the ocean of mind, drink all creation’s waves.

The four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light,

Lift aright.

Myself, in everything,

Enters the Great Myself.

Gone forever,

The fitful, flickering shadows of a mortal memory.

Spotless is my mental sky,

Below, ahead, and high above.

Eternity and I, one united ray.

I, a tiny bubble of laughter,

Have become the Sea of Mirth Itself.

The cold familiar chill
of November mornings
now comes with despondent
wakings.

Sleepless nights on cold
gray sheets of stone.

Tired lovesick limbs
reaching for home.

Thoughts spoken in solemnity
to the dark.

Oh how these nights
they go leaving a yearning
in my heart.

i am the universe
come alive, come conscious,
and what is sentience but
a mystery living at the base
of all that we can ever be?
what a strange dichotomy,
how insignificant, and yet
spectacular! inconceivable beauty.
my life is a verse in the cosmic poetry
constructed out of explosive nothing,
a vast vacuum littered with
unknowable everythings.
what to me is familiar idiosyncrasy,
the everyday routine of my wakings
was arbitrarily designed by some intricate,
equation unsolvable, navier-stokes
nothing compared to the machinations
of the minute turbulent eddies
from the swirling currents in my bloodstream
to the patterns formed by astronomical dances
debris and space dust.
so how is it then that in my miniature
dollhouse of a life, am i languished?
i look up through the pollution,
through the night sky, and think
of how much i long to simply bask
in the beautiful artistic whimsy
the universe has let me into,
to embark on the philosophical,
the insurmountable task to uncover
the myriad of deep secrets locked now
for i am the universe come conscious.

The culmination of the poet’s desire was an
Overwhelming yearning for mutual adoration.
In desperate pursuit of this arbitrary satisfaction,
She abandoned the miniscule red slivers she possessed.

She placed the bricks upon her own chest.
Lo and behold, they deteriorated quite rapidly.
The poet fabricated the conditions responsible
For her own glorious, life draining asphyxiation.

Too many jovial blurs had graced her now black eyes.
Bringers of the curve to her face grew frustrated.
Desperately, the poet reached to reclaim her light,
It had already been eclipsed by the ink in her pen.

Her messiah brought hope; tiny white specks.
Strategically placed throughout her conscious wakings.
Ever present in her unconscious imaginings; intrusive.
The speckled brightness only brought life to sinister creatures.

Creatures which would feed on her fragile soul.
Until all that remained was skin and bone.

Our journey was brief
nearly as long as
a walk in that park
down by her place,

fleeted like the sound
of a crackling leaf,
on that roadwalk home
in utter solace,
oh how I decieve my years,
for those mere minutes,

they may be
demonic nightmares
pushing you to limits,
to me they're dreams,
worth more than
every passing wakings.

I often sit at the pavement,
tired by the bereavement,
perhaps from there
our journey resumes,
but this time
the stroll consumes,
that's how I'll go.

It hasn't even been ten minutes yet,
Already outside sweatpants hanging off my hips, you can finally see the bones again,
A ciggerate between my lips so quick,
I don't have time to remember that I don't smoke, but the offer was there so why not take it, I've got more toxins in my body I can handle it, cold hands on colder concrete, I can hear the boys next store talking about me, they say I'm a broken bird in a world where I'm forced to fly,
They whisper the words pathetic, yet have never outstretched a hand to a childhood friend, who's dying, trying to believe in a God,
When every else knows she's lying, the unforgivable sin always dancing in, her brain, a mess, a wreck. Her heart, a detached chain link fence, always looking through but never reaching, and she's sick and tired of all the needless beating, the 3 am screaming, knocks on her bedroom door during the night send her reeling into terrorized wakings, remembering who's always on the otherside waiting, what did she do wrong this time, like living in the hood, but all her family thinks it's good, the way her parents raised her up. They don't know about the glass and beatings and the blood. Cause she smiles, & Yaweh smiles they use to say, but it all leads back to a scared little white girl in the suburbs, sitting on the porch step, asking God what he's doing, she cries out," lord my love for you is abundant some days I get lost in it, 1 hour of intimacy and feeling wanted, I walk away broken and daunted, sitting on a porch stoop waiting for the next train to come by, you won't see me in the morning"

So this is the way it goes
I put out my second mini preroll of the morning
Don my mustard fall sweater
Check the screens, check the screens
Don't
Don't
Miss a thing.

Messages from you and your mama
Come through
Like a fog in the grave yard
I no longer tread.

I can see myself again so easily
Plumper, shorter hair
Platinum rust
A bigger bust
Running into the dust
I knew who I wanted to become.

I'm becoming her
More and more everyday
And it is a cryin' shame you went away
But I can't hold ghosts in the palms of my hands
Though you'd think based on my late night
Wakings
I'm certainly most comfortable
With just the imagined.

I'm striving to be more and more present
Everyday
I know that's all you wanted too baby
I know that's all I wanted for you too baby.

I'm just sorry it didn't go our way.
I'm just so sorry you chose not to stay
I'm really very sorry you closed the door to me
I apologize for driving you away
But most of all I'm sorry you are so sorry now
You've seen I no longer remain
Among the bones, the dirt we piled up high
In so short but meaningful a time.

I still look for your black Toyota
Highlander stamped on the back
But I can never really remember what the front looks like
Catching the eyes of strangers
I gaze at them with an intense
Looking for ghosts manner
Only to quickly avert my gaze
Not him.

I painted the visions for you
Blew them up like 3 dimensional figurines
I didn't mean to relive such a thing
My face gets caressed but I flinched like it was
Going to be a slap
Dollar bills flashing through the pupils of my eyes
You've gotta know I'm still mad.

I don't choose to do anything with my anger now
I nourish places to live in peace
And I know that's all you ever wanted for us baby
I know that's all I ever wanted for us baby
It's just too bad it couldn't be with you.

And its true I always feel this way
Because I give relationships my above all
And there's no shame in that
But I stand on the edge of the waterfall
So aware that with one wrong move
I could tumble all the way on down
But it isn't death I fear
No, I've never feared death
And as I felt my eyes becoming
A little too comfortable closed
Standing next to my new friend George
In the Hilo, Hawaii night sky
I awaken, stopping my getting too comfortable in potential
Danger state
And tell my friend, "let's go."

Not because I fear pain
But because I've got so much living to do.

Hallows eve and nights are darkened
By gouls and goblins and witches excited by morning wakings, next evenings frighting
take the souls of weaken minds
To greater strength and evil sources
They store them up get much strength
For one more year they have to wait,
to steal minds of all the weak
So Clearly think of all you do
Or have your soul stolen from you!

.    Depressed people never
     have happy dreams and
    because the subconscious
  is nocturnal, sleep is hunting
ground for suppressed thought.

Therefore, self induced wakings
from disturbing nightmares can
only suggest that the person is
cognisant of what is occurring.

It is an extension of their coping
strategies during diurnal events,
when flight is the chosen option.

out twice yesterday james
and while down the back
road stepping out the police
drove by

did not stop
guess i look local

you see england are free to roam
free again and may roam over here
while
here they may not
as we cannot

it gets complicated
as do them ladders
now

the knots have to be just ways
and wet
to be tight enough, while nothing
is perfect nor should not be so

as to the delivery man i found it
interesting that i judged him faceless
character and demeanor

nothing hot here yet it is merely warm

i really hope the bike has come
and that all is well with you

today comes overcast with early wakings
and an insect at the window

james

mostly the same time daily