Rich and Prepared

If you were to imagine,

that your body was covered,

not in skin,

but words,

what story would they tell?

And would I have to close my eyes,

and read you with my hands?

The tips of my fingers,

tracing your words

as they reveal all the things

you cannot say.

Would you trust me

to understand?

If you were to imagine,

that your body

were a rushing river,

and I had fallen in;

would you let me

drown in your currents

or carry me to dry land?

Love seems so simple.

when we first begin,

you seem more I,

then I am.

And as time goes on,

and time is spent,

what revelations we discover

as we learn

that you,

are far more you,

than me.

And it is in this flowering

that I discover

what my love for you

means.

Does it wither and pass

in the knowledge that

you are so different?

Or does it take root and grow,

as I find in your soil,

ample room for my soul?

And if so?

If so?

Am I fortunate enough,

and do you accept,

the knowledge that I have

of what I need

to thrive?

And after that,

do I possess

the gift to give you

what you need to survive?

Imagine if,

Instead of on this destroyed bed,

we lay in a field,

furrowed by unseen hands,

watched by an unseen eye,

to see if our roots will take hold

in such rich and prepared soil.

Imagine,

if this distance between us,

was not a separation,

but a sea,

that we sailed upon

to bring to each other

all of our things.

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Devastation and the Dark Flower of Hope (Part I)

In my city darkness rules

broken only by the shattered lights of a thousand lives

that are crushed unnoticed.

Tiny points of color

red and green now yellow warning

slow, don't stop, but don't commit to go.

And we take the night

for what it used to mean

and grow disappointed

in its lack of delivery.

Our poets are silent.

Our singers drunk,

their words spilling out in clumps,

and still we expect

under cover of night,

the litter of their words will be transformed

into illuminating myths of life.

And finding them to only be

scraps of paper

wasted on our history,

we gather them like leaves

to stuff in our shoes

and pretend as if our soles

weren't holed but new.

The doors that once provided

warmth and answers

lie on streets no longer safe,

and the taverns

where we passed our youth,

are filled with people drunk

with their desire for escape.

And tossed from raucous lit life

into day just dawning,

the silence is unbearable,

making spare moments

beneath the sun

seem more dark

than darkness has become.

And still

I choose to live here.

Walking streets

more real in memory than what they have become

shadows find me pools

I search for reflections

of what I have known

and find none.

Turning I leave

emptiness filled with a hundred bodies

disconnected

and seek the small alley

that holds but the distant threat of the sun,

                        The key that fits the lock

                        that turns and opens to my

                        sacred space

is old and worn

and worry do I with each day

I will come home

and it will be too bent or weak

to free the lock and leave me

trapped without

in a city

where all has become closed in.

it is here

and only here,

do I sink to my knees

and reveal to the earth

all the life I have within me.

my fingers scrabbling

to find the words I have buried

in  soil safety.

In my city darkness rules,

rich and fetid

turns the earth

to deep shade roots

till they are strong.

Tiny points of colour

breaking into the night

red and green now yellow blooming

unseen in this rushing life.

small breaths disturbing

the stillness of my heart

I sit and bear the silence.

my words

unnecessary before this history,

the songs of scattered birds

illuminating what I would have

mistaken for gloom

and I see,

stirrings of something

so slow and beautiful

so easy to miss

that it seems of a story

all magic and strange mysts.

but this is life

as it has risen from the soil

time and time before

that I

have stepped over and past

rushed from brick to stone

searching for signs in the skies

never thinking to begin with the ground.

and when life and rush

brought me to my knees -

devastation I did not greet

but the seedling flower of hope.

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Hell

Hell is the house

Love moved out of

when she wanted better things.

It wasn't

that she didn't have

everything she could need

within those four walls.

She was just

lacking

any air to breathe.

And in the days

before she thought

that maybe moving in had been a mistake,

she would sit

in the window,

looking at the world outside,

and count all the blessings

that being in Hell made.

There was

warmth,

and shelter,

company

and a kind of

passionless grace.

Within the walls of Hell

there was no fear

of a lonely, old age.

And yes,

there was a kind of affection there.

Only the kind you might share

with the things you find familiar

but really,

not necessary

to your being there.

Now,

Love had always been

a reader.

You could find her

squirreled away

at any given moment,

reading

any given thing,

and the words she thought of now,

pained her with their memory.

That the imagining of pleasure or pain,

affects the dreamer,

as much as the dreamed.

And every endeavor

that begs to be undertaken -

demands payment.

And Love,

in her rising lament,

was beginning to rage

at the way

her life

seemed to be

misspent.

But still,

the promise of Hell

is a powerful thing,

and Love

would force herself to think

that what she was doing

was a needful thing

and try even harder to forget her dreams

and learn how to live

in the midst of hellish things.

 

And when Hell would say,

"Since I met you

I feel complete,

and isn't it wonderful

How almost nothing

About my life

Has changed?"

Love would ignore

her thought,

that there is something wrong,

in being able

to say,

something like that.

And tuck her head down,

and move her feet faster on the wheel,

trying to speed the end of the day

But time has a habit

of sneaking in

and showing you

old movie reels

of where you have been,

and what hope

once carried you.

And Love finally

could not ignore what she felt,

that when she was away from Hell's walls

she was alive again.

When she caught herself

imagining

a life that was beautiful

and full of passion,

the only way she could see that would happen,

would be to meet and have

a secret affair -

she finally realized,

she had no home

with Hell here.

And decided,

she wanted,

better

things.

So she moved

from out of the palace walls,

leaving behind the riches

and worships,

and the promise of never being alone.

And walked down the road,

past where the pavement ends,

and followed the path,

that led into the forest

that was filled with the songs

of a thousand souls.




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