She sent me her soul,
Her song, and I sing it
In the dark I linger
Ancient sparks flowing
Lost years crooning
The vibrato rythyms we all
Tapped out on our prison walls
Our stretched voices in tune
Sing.
Sing these lost years,
Like velvet green leaves
Ripped from spring trees
The storms appear,
And we dissipate, but
We do not disappear.
We suffer loss, yes, and torn limbs,
But we live again, and
Our song is here.
All my life I’ve heard
Who I ought to be,
What I must deserve,
And how I should believe
And believe, I do
From the core of who I am
Whatever facets I eschew
Change not the slightest gram
Of the rock that won’t erode,
And the hand that can’t release-
I know that I know that I know;
I believe what I believe.
Then why don’t I conform?
This I cannot say.
The world, to me, feels worn-
And an infantile display
Of youthful promenading
Feathers flaunting wide
Perpetual self-serenading:
A ballad of blinded pride.
I don’t have the energy,
Nor the desire,
To bow to pop-liturgy
Or lift myself higher-
All my oddities abound,
I see they keep me alone.
I wander the hard ground
Ever out of home-
Even these I speak of plainly
I do not dream as accusation
The lone state that pains me
Is of my own creation
Unwilling, or else unable,
To put aside where I am bent-
I don’t fit into the label-
Does that mean I can’t be sent?
Yet in my diminished condition-
Here am I.
Beyond trend or tradition,
I ever testify.
It all boils down to these:
I am, I exist as I, and I believe.
Whatever else they may say of me
Cannot negate these three.
Walking again in the familiar skin
Of my own isolation.
I commence lobbing Hail Marys over the fence
Against my own common sense.
I can’t be sure what crosses over, or
What falls to the floor.
I’ve tried to resist, but I subsist
On this persistence.
Maybe I was never meant to oppose this
Maybe this silence composes
Some clarity of purpose.
New Life, so seemingly fragile,
Blooms, stretches, yawns into existence
Her entire cycle ahead still,
As she tries on her persistence,
And sleeps off her resistance.
The beauty in the fresh blossom
Sings of hope and resurrection,
Winter left us solid, solemn,
Frozen in derelict dejection,
Seeking warmer affections.
New Life breaks like sunrise,
Like a thief into the strongman’s purse,
Bringing a swift demise
To the fallow curse:
The icy hearse.
Sometimes I go down to the water
And I plunge myself underneath
Where the noises won’t follow
And I won’t speak
To see what will die,
And what can’t.
It isn’t fair of frame.
There must have been a day
You wiped drool from my face
And I’m not there to do the same.
It isn’t sound.
You must have stooped to ground
When I toddled down
Below the crowds.
It stands askew.
Before I ate solid foods,
I subsisted off you
And who leads you through?
It’s enough cost:
The years we’ve lost
After the bottles were tossed
And before your vigor exhausted.
It totters in the wind.
Inequalities sting like sin-
Yours or mine, I can’t defend-
But I see all that’s bent
And bowed low.
These small things
Do not dissolve
In Your Great Hands.
I’m commissioned to sing
All I’ve seen,
All I can understand
An open witness- this I am.
Sharing where I’ve been:
My mistakes, my sins,
My redemption
My emotion-
And there are a million facets to what I feel,
Every surface is real
And solid.
Because we’re giants, we see
Only two sides to the coin,
But the smaller we can be
How much more
Spreads like a galaxy
In every direction.
Blind I wait against my will
For the fury to build
Unleashing silent impenitence and
Over-compensatory sycophancy
Waiting for the blood to thin,
The vessels to expand, or perhaps
Contract to emend
This current course-
Pain coursing as vascular regret or disillusionment.
Arrested in step
At the sudden lightness
Of curtains caressed
By an unexpected breeze
In the midst of an otherwise stifling heat-
Dancing in waves,
Touching my face,
Friction giving way
To cool… to calm…
To quiet relief as comfort.
Beauty hiding in the whispers
Wrinkling the curtains.
An unexcavated strength,
Veins extracting their toll,
Forms in the deepest, darkest holes,
The abandoned mines of broken-down souls
Possessed by the weakest parts of the whole-
Strength that screams
With foamy lips never dry
At unseen ghosts in black skies,
Weeping for the strangers hobbling by,
Dreaming of consciousness as a closing eye-
Strength still, that looks,
And in looking, sees
All that is and should not be,
The kind of madness compelling, “Flee!”
And all perceived chants agreement-
And in the sweat, the sorrow, and the mud,
The hunger, the loss, the burn of chains,
In thirst, in isolation, in condemnation
The strength tarries-
The soul remains.
