Sometimes
… lately…
this heavy, hazy feeling
crowding my chest
this lazy, lumbering
never at rest
wheezing when I laugh
shuddering to shout
I have an unwell ache
skin shivers as I call out
rumbles when I am still
inhaling the silence
translating the gentle air
into an invasion of violence
marching inwards mundanely
with no respite to save it
and this recalls the ghosts of a life in smoke;
In the memory, how I crave it
… lately…
Sometimes
And that my sense of red
may be wholly different than your own
while Red, in its being, its flesh,
exists outside what our perceptions hone
as an unseen creature, by and large
filtered by eyes and adored
for its intangible qualities.
By effect, endeared or abhorred,
but never known from the inside
by the masses in transit
along the rainbow’s slide.
In these short gestational days
we see in part, in reflections,
murmurs and heartbeats
fledgling inspections
through incomparable lenses
That your sense of red
may be tied with a thousand tethers
in loops of ideas left unsaid…
Is the thought gone?
Did it dissolve away
like the sudden snowflake
on the tip of a hot tongue?
And the words on the tip of my tongue
Dissolve, but are never destroyed
Piggybacking on the steel legs
of reason and wonder,
exhaustion, joy,
and the foreign wanderer
I have always been.
Not an idle word is abandoned
in the wake of new songs
How they flicker in the sun
turning, keeping time, telling stories
in wordless languages
of colors colliding, instrument strings
vibrating, resonating the songs of our souls
And I was born old
Onward I crawl, by day and year,
Towards the day of my birth:
Rewoven again in trembles and starlight.
I’m going to see Him-
All these years waiting,
traveling alone,
though I never have been.
What was the thought?
The traveler’s cloak
a defense against the cold
wrapped over the bare emotion
breathing beneath
It unravels to expose
the naked beauty
of the forgiven soul’s migration.
I have become a keyless creature.
I, even I, the inveterate locksmith, the Queen of Doors,
The custodian of moon-sized jangling rings,
Keys braided in my hair, hidden under floorboards-
Now all my keys
…are no more.
Twelve years ago, or so, some unknown day,
Gaping, ajar, a lock unclasped,
I pressed a key into another palm, giving it away
Before I could rebolt the trap
The cross-breeze lent a peaceful sway
…and I never looked back.
All my life, jostled between
Direct candor and stray wit
And people who hate what I have to say
But love the way I say it.
For the life of me
I can’t figure the parts
Stuck between where I’m going
And the spot I started
As anything other than
Some odd bird’s migration
North for the chill
Against the invitation
To follow the crowd, or
To just freeze
Admit some kind of defeat
But I ruffle the breezes
And walk on alone
I can’t understand
What I was supposed to do,
Was there some parcel of land
I neglected to climb?
Some trail or tour
I’m confused by the feeling
I’m a failure
When there was no clear mandate
Aside from learning
To love and be loved
To mitigate the pain and yearning
Of humanity, aware.
And I’m still here.
These ebbs erode the shoreline,
Carrying the banks to build bars
For the oyster to ingest
Constructing pearl from the hard sands
I once stood upon.
Time erodes my story,
Washing away the grains
Of days and hours and potential roads
And the details are the same
But the game of charades lilts to a side
Our birth pitches us into projects
We cannot honestly complete
Like writing the ill-conceived
Autobiography
About the stranger.
All the roots I sank
And I’m still just a duffle bag
One goodbye away
From a homeless nomad
Too tired to roam
Watching the churning sea
For the bits of debris
That feel like home.
I’m stressed; scared to death
The pain in my chest
Could be transferable.
Fighting the blues; waiting for news
With so much to lose
For those who’ve loved me.
I resist defeat; my faith complete,
But earth tilts beneath my feet
Waiting, waiting for the diagnosis.
Am I so sick? My mind plays tricks
All my exhales burning thick:
Must loving me always be a risk?
Shhh, I try to deny
That age old lie
Repeating that I am contaminated,
And every soul drawing close
Pays a toll
Atop the kindness
When I mean no harm.
Glad to hear you’re doing well!
I can’t complain! Doing fine,
Though I’ve got this feeling lately
Maybe it’s finally time
To pull all the words I’ve written,
Pile every piece into one tall pyre,
Every jot and every tittle,
And the light the whole damn thing on fire.
But what’s the point?
I can’t escape who I am.
If I burned every thought to earth
I’d take the ash and begin again.
I stood before you
Pleading my case into the offended silence
Assuming no able mediator
Would intervene in the violence,
The waste, the butchery,
And the endless consumption
Framing my identity and
Crippling my function
But the unthinkable happened, as I unraveled
Spilling confession where I noxiously sinned
The Judge handed me the very same gavel
With which I should have been condemned-
Mine to beat upon you, and the past,
To damn, or to set down free.
On it, engravings of our trespasses:
Killing you was killing me
And how deeply I considered it
With no one left to save-
Allowing my embitterment
To seal our ashes together in the grave
But what would be left behind
If I razed our souls to damnation?
We would both produce in like kind
The offspring of condemnation.
And the Great Judge pointed to a battered face
Hanging bloodied on an unearned cross
His wheezing body dripping grace
On the gnashing teeth of the lost.
I set the gavel down.
Where is the path forward?
What kind of future can be found,
Or excavated, or forged
After all these crimes between us?
My demon is my brother is my priest
And it is treasonous
To refuse your release.
So I release you,
But not to freedom.
We, neither of us, move autonomously
Outside the constraints of our pardons
We must not live dishonestly,
Sowing what separates and hardens
But pursue good, each for the other.
I sought you once, for help getting me through
The tragedies in each collision of breath
But you instead became the catalyst that got me to
A reality higher than death
And I am grateful for your diversion,
Your oppression and extortion,
Because in your exclusion and aspersions
I found that, in Him, I am more than
A Conqueror,
And so are you.
We are blood, and able to stop shedding it
Putting down the blades of our desires and expectations,
What we’ve been revering or regretting
Before cutting into the next generation
The same slavers’ irons
That have clapped us both in chains
Don’t you likewise yearn
For freedom to change?
And you are free
From the past, from your sins
I release you;
Go and make your amends
By sinning no more
Become the man you were created to be:
Serve the least, stand for
We who cannot be heard, the weak
Lost under the grumbles.
Walk in bare feet, be true:
Stand in honesty, humbled,
And I will stand for you.
A companion piece to:
viewingcamelot 