Hermit
Skipping shells
Like vagrant towns
Carrying homelessness
On my back
Sleeping in it
Slipping into tidal pools
To stay out of the rain
All my epiphanies
pounded free
from the firm wet sand
below the strandline
twisting in convolutions
revolving again
back out to sea
to tangle in the murky depths
of my hypocrisy

Tender rain falling
recalling wispy remembrances
Walking slowly into it unprotected
gray like our forgotten corner dances
cloudy like lost conversations
in strange, unlikely places
Cold like the corners of your mouth
when you say something tasteless

Tumbling walls of the dead
pooling in the streets
I splash through their loss
with forgetful feet
but they gather in rivulets
babbling in whispers
and I’m numb to forget
the secret, fervent vespers

Muted veil across the earth
and sky, neither light nor dark
diverts from bringing the past
to the high watermark
these rainy days halt our time,
and I again take a trip
to chasing butterflies in the open sun
while you licked your lips

I know you, always I will,
when gray insulates
with finger to mouth
hushing the disconsolate
Whether we’re both dead
walking through our phantom lands
and I never see you again in flesh
I am marked where I stand

and knowing you is part of who I am.

I get these moments…
When the world seems cold
Shoulders and toes
And I belong
Nowhere with no one:
Old like
I’ve overstayed
The slightest welcome
And I see the back door…

And I think,
“No one would miss me
If I stepped out now.”

Sometimes
Tired of me, the days shove by
All elbows and heels
I want to yell, “Watch it!”
But slink off in silence
To eat sour grapes and herrings red
Waiting for something,
Anything else:
The wind against a window,
A bird call, a clock chiming.

I’m learning, slowly,
To shake off the dust
When goodbyes get lost
In the white-noise of apathy
To let them fall mute
And walk on happily
Because family is family
Across all distance
And distractions
And social conventions

Sometimes
Family costs something:
Some wild-eyed trust
And purity of intent
Concern for each other beyond
Ambitions and aspirations
But nothing is lost in the wake
Of honest refusals-

Time is gleaned:
Some time to travel
In other directions
Return to your peoples
Or build a new village
Find some savages
Whose hearts are clear
Of guile and show
And twisted desire-
In bare feet, dance around the fire

Of freedom and simplicity.

How does one, into madness,
Descend, but that sanity
Is certain and solid? Sadness
Rips not the fabric of vanity,
Should all be vain.
Even the squalid should sparkle
Through tinted panes
Or against a dirtier, darker
Standard- how should we stand
Without ground and legs and gravity
And the heavens to stretch forth our hands-
Heaven’s purity reflecting our depravity
What measure may stretch
Across the division?
A man is a priest is a wretch
Who has been forgiven
And needs no new sacrifice:
His One High Priest saves-
Can a man die outside the Life?
Can he come alive in waves?

Can we evade the weight of tragedy-
The misuse, the gnashing, the vain,
Our farthest fall is the apogee
Of our highest reach- The sane

We measure by blindness and momentum.

How I shiver, tremor, ache
As crumpled paper, here I lie
Balled and crushed by some mistake:
The folded plane that could not fly

Ill again am I.

These bouts predate
My conscious choices
From wee, broken state
Come I, but the voices

Of wrung-out being accuse:

These frailties exist as punishments alike-
Penalties for all I cannot be-
But how unlike Him to strike
The confused and weak, with infirmity

They cannot understand

When He forgives the ones
who err in ignorance.