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.

We found each other in dream again.
Amongst crude, ambitious men
Two classical souls cause sparks.

You kept a secret from me,
But I could plainly see
You had no malice.

Perhaps you are an idol of the heart,
A thing to tear down, and tear all apart,
But that’s smashing the Pieta.

I’m tired. I’ve done the best I could do.
Insufficient next to you,
But the rise and recede bring no comparisons.

Troubling dreams, but you are there
As some protection, or relief.
It was your nature to care,
When fallacy sprang from my grief.

But those lies and strivings ceased.
Motionlessness ever abides.
Your ruins, abandoned in peace,
Unearth round all sides.

A warm and familiar keep,
But always unspoken.
It’s here while I sleep
I see what you’ve woken.

You gave thread as a gift,
But I realized, bereaved,
Somewhere through the rift
I’d forgotten the weave.

I am diminished by and by,
Even as I advance.
The girl who never said goodbye
Never stood a chance.

Her old bones would dry and dust,
Chalk adrift in the wind,
But these waves refresh what’s lost
And threaten to emend.

The gypsy wasn’t in my blood,
But in my motivations.
After all these tiny floods
Crack weakened resignations.

I buried my head in your chest.
You wouldn’t have me cheek to cheek.
So much of me is laid to rest;
The ghostly tune rings bleak

An echo from dream to dream.

Fractured
I confused
The guilty, the accused, the
Forgotten

Aimless
I wander
Through poverty, and squander, and
Appetite

Desire
I implored
For less, or more, or
Different

Eager
I persevered
Becoming the mold, the feared, the
Elegy

I said forever was too long,
Too many variables to calculate.
I get my math all wrong.
I don’t believe in fate.
I said forever was too far to say,
But you can have today.

I said I don’t, I won’t, don’t ask.
I’m high-risk, low-return.
What hides beneath this mask,
Babe, you don’t want to learn.
My tomorrow is withering away,
But you can have today.

I said don’t fix it, just stop trying.
This record always skips.
I’ll drink until you’re dry and
I’ll pull until it rips.
I’ll burn it up, I’m burning anyway,
But you can stay today.

I was always skilled at treason.
I was always on the take.
I thought we could still break even
If we could still make a clean break.
I forced our futures on the scale to weigh,
But not today,
I kept today.

Who knew you could build a life
Somewhere inside each single day.
Now I’m a mother, and a wife.
You never listened, never strayed,
And in that gift you gave
Every day, another day,

Another everyday miracle.

Silence cease.
I wish for words
Like jackhammers
To force release,
To bleed the fever
That burns the brain
But I live constraint:
A true believer.

I cultivate silence
But when it settles,
Like cooling metals,
I threaten violence.
I stand on an island
In ebb and flow,
And only waters show
What I have penned.

Is this the end,
When will it begin again?

I’ve found the less I say,
The more I stay
Awake,
Afraid,
Or just away.

Some broken cog inside my head,
Scrawls each word left unsaid,
Heinously,
Haplessly,
And always too hastily.

I keep myself on alert these nights,
As though another hour just might
Release,
Ordain,
Explain.