I try to follow the rules,
Somewhere under the rubble.
I make no waves, waste no tools,
Keep my nose out of trouble.

I try to parse all my words.
In step with syntax and scene,
Weaving tiny bits and blurbs
To reveal the wondrous dream,

But some levees are overwhelmed;
Small breaches opening rivulets into rivers.
Words burst forward like sharp laughter, pour like tears,
Heal like salt in the gaping wound,
Sit in awkward silence.

All these years, these thousand verses,
Can’t reverse the flow of time, can’t divert
Its fearsome force- rolling on remorselessly.
Throwing myself in the sea, it carries me- flowing free.
Words don’t dry the bed, but try treading alone.
I’m grown, but each syllable sown blooms-
It blooms before it dies.

I try to give these words their room,
Sometimes even a nudge or two,
What they may say, I don’t assume
Until the tide rises again,
Until the lyric breaks through.

You heard this moment pass.
I shed my story as dead skin,
A fragile, empty shell
Hidden away again
Finished.

You brought change.
Friendship forged in delicate fire,
Cauterizing, purifying,
The union inspired
Hope.

If I was meant to speak,
It would be here, with you.
Solitary steps cannot compare
With a waltz for two,
Or more.

I return to silence full,
Your love a dancing flame.
In the cool of your haven,
My tattered wings became
Whole,

and wholly unnecessary.

Words smash together,
Collide and contradict,
Affection, perhaps forever,
And also affliction,

And affirmation again.

Phonetic explosions,
My last dime,
Erudite and erosive,
Evolve in time

Lessen and expand.

Did you hear the echo?
Reverberations in the air.
Water carries sound, you know,
Maybe it made it there, where
You are treading.
I’ve got a life now.
Remember when I didn’t,
Couldn’t live? Somehow
Some hidden splint
Reset the breaks.
I ran away alone,
God pursued, overtook,
But I never did get home-
Found some nice nook,
Some cleft in the rock.
The summer days, breath anew,
Burned too quickly I suppose.
What’s to return to, if not you?
These memories don’t decompose
Under time and earth.
Another day to put back on
The years that fell between,
Until eyelids, like curtains drawn,
Play ancient, aching dreams
Scenes to be.