Working it out again,
These kinks, these sins,
These ancient flaws.
These lulls in growth
Frustrate hope, I loathe
Aimless introspection.
Some new sunrise
Break new, break now, surprise
My darkened thoughts
With light for the day
Sight, the right way
To face the morning
Because I’ve forgotten it,
yet again…
I had a dream.
I was you. You were me.
In the mirror of ourselves
I saw my particular cruelty.
I am ebb. You are flow.
Two motions of the sea
Both interacting, avoiding,
Responding to different gravities.
I saw myself in your eyes;
Your heart beat in my chest cavity.
You were faithful when I was not,
Stable when I despaired the misery,
When I wallowed in the mire of myself
You tried to shake me, make me see.
After all these years, these miles,
These little love notes, all our dreams,
I still see what I could not be for you.
I shoulder that blame entirely.
Maybe the greatest gift I never gave
Saying goodbye gracefully,
Acknowledge, relinquish, perhaps forget-
Let time slowly consume what morsels I carry.
Follow the propulsion of our brief collision,
Embrace the distance, the imposed anonymity.
A goodbye to you is murder to me,
Smothering the last hope of who I could be.
Did I run away, or stay until I could forge
Someone better, someone valued more appropriately;
To stand side by side, not at odds.
One you could love fully, without pity,
Remorse, or frustration- not with lips,
Appetites, or eyes closed tightly,
But thought, heart, faith- My mistake
Has always been in my desires, shamefully,
And I have my mistakes, my expired hopes,
My dreams of us, and always childhood memories.
I have the knowledge I was cruel to remember,
Cruel to hold on, but kind enough to leave-
Leaving you to simpler loves, simpler times,
A simpler existence than any I could weave.
Simplicity brings deeper joys, uncluttered moments,
Unexamined, uninterrupted peace.
I was always the mess, always the liar,
Until the night I spoke truthfully.
Then a runaway, an ingrate,
A coward in the face of victory;
Victory incomplete. I find solace
In my unilateral obsessing.
Had you cared, had you stayed awake
One long night thinking of me,
How could I speak a word to you?
How could I bear to speak affectionately?
I’ve lived these long hours in your shadow,
Lived beneath you all these years between.
You, an anchored vessel of honor, and I
Adrift in the humiliation of tragedy.
You, a gem in your long lineage.
I, a vagabond with a past, but no history.
You, the prided son who stays.
I, the beggar orphan who flees.
With empty hands to offer you
Stains to mar your beauty-
It was right to leave, right you love
Never me.
We were come-heres. You were bred-heres.
When one window opens, a door closes.
You welcomed us warmly down the bridges
Of your long, distinguished noses.
We paid homage to your names:
The cost of our admission.
You were the gatekeepers, the tax-collectors,
Grotesques capriciously granting permission.
We were your serfdom,
Every kingdom needs slaves and knaves
Just as well as kings.
We bowed to your thrones of DNA.
We struck out on our own
To the land of opportunity,
With other runaway slaves-
An escapee community.
I think of you, now and again,
Perched on your antique thrones.
I wonder if we all made it out alive.
I wonder if you worship yourselves alone.
A smooth lake, like glass,
Spread my firm skin
No driftwood jutting,
Nor cut by wind,
Just unbroken surface;
Golden, superb,
And the mirror reflection
Lay undisturbed.
Time cut headway
Across my brow.
The ivory wake
Spills from the prow
And ripples out
Along the shore;
The wake unstoppable,
The vessel unmoored,
The tide receding evermore.
I dance on this hard surface,
And the equal and opposite
Dances back on me.
I absorbed some different shade,
And what reflects to you
I cannot see.
But I taste distinctive hope,
The sweet salt-water pucker
Of forgiven memory.
And when I am alone
With all my years,
I dance free.
These few lessons as souvenirs
Carried from the frozen, snowless places;
Passion lifts a man’s voice to the echo,
Whether Wisdom has given him graces.
While Wisdom speaks in the frost,
And the hunger, and the blistered hands,
And coming to the end of all,
It lifts the kneeling to understanding.
Love is His whisper, His breath
Undergirding every law, every prophecy.
If passion screams without these
It lacks all, and decency.
In station wagons, down old dirt roads,
We held our ground like sage soldiers,
Collisions of tire, and rock, and earth;
Undergrowth biting the undercarriage.
And we were human, and new
Our ruts were still just shallow grooves
While the yet unpaved dust retaliated,
Rebelling against our persistence,
Our ignorant existence.
Bubbles pop, some stop
Delay their stay,
Sit on the blade of grass.
Crass decisions
Don’t always burst first.
Never did work that diner,
Finer dives offered better lives,
Everything went corporate
The portrait of America.
Trading sleep for cheap wages.
Had to kick my tobacco sticks
Because cancer costs as much
To acquire as to remove.
Improved my lungs,
Stung my mood.
Just the coffee now,
How I trust the brew.
Black swill, but willpower
Needs some release.
Keeps me sedated.
Thought I’d reflect.
I suspect I’d overdo it,
But TV keeps me occupied.
Compromised a few times,
But it ended fine somehow.
I usually focus on forever,
The grand, the stand, the
Land of the severed,
But I feel like a beer now,
Maybe a margarita;
Bubbles to pop when needed.
I can try to restrain, to retreat,
From this familiar roam,
But not all ruts are carved defeat.
Maybe all roads do lead home
If you travel long enough.
A preacher puts pressure
On all the weakest seams,
But not all stressors
Conspire to redeem,
And I miss the traveling.
In our broken best
Our innocence compounded
To forge a distinctive crest
We stay astounded
At what stays home.
Maybe we are broken,
But what we have seen
Leaves folly unspoken,
And only the obscene
Would speak to it.
Yet arrogance glistening,
Marinating the core of man,
Always speaking, never listening,
Defers on some master plan
Justice in conquest.
Humility waits for zeal
To wound itself, the limp
Salvation in motion, reveals
What the inner imp
Took for himself.
How am I to explain these things
To ears that only hear themselves?
There is no possible conversing
When you’re labeled on a shelf
Before you begin.
I’ve lived this life, this blow by blow.
Fancy footwork makes fancy ruts.
Sometimes blood must flow,
And what can’t swell gets cut.
I keep my glove above the broken bone,
Regardless of what keeps landing.
I’m losing the plane of horizon,
But winning means standing.
My fist is a foreign language.
I can’t see where or who to attack.
Bearing the barrage of anguish,
Waiting for the bell to pull this back.
I withdraw to my corner stool.
My peripheral friends make me flinch.
I know I can’t get comfortable.
No boxer trusts the bench.
Another bell, another chance,
To beat the thing that’s beating me.
I move my feet into the dance,
But in my eyes burns my defeat.
viewingcamelot 