Snapshots of a Whole

When I wake the light is always behind you.
It makes so you come into focus slowly,
And I get to see each feature clear and alone,
Until the foggy waking mind can put it all together,

The scent of sunscreen and tree bark will always remind me of you.
Like pink booster seats, Stephen King, high ceilings,
Burnt butter and thick coffee.

These things are mine -
The stitches segmenting my life,
Into ours.

From bus stop walks to high school dances,
Those moments pulling heart-strings, always knowing,
When you need to feel me close
In reaching you'd not find empty air.
My hand would be there.

Knowing this, one day we'd start again -
Fresh and newborn,
To live the stages I didn't share with you,
It fills me now, how deeply my heart longs to.

I'll watch the lines of our story deepen
Around your eyes and mine.
Settle in the truth of time gone by,
The joy only felt and known
When we've stayed long enough to see it.

Sound of You

The sound of your slippers padding around
While autumn calls and songs fill my days
Again.
Your feet slush across the floor coming closer
I can't tell you the comfort found in this.
Laid up vulnerable, ill with chills
Filled and brimming with gratefulness.

Even sick feels best with you.

Love, old or new,
is hearing your clatter in the next room.
Is the sound of your sigh and the thick breath caught
in my chest while my eyes well up
with the rest of the whole
Truth,

You.

Separately Connected

Write to me the way you speak,
In your own mind at night,
When you're too tired to fight fears, dreams and secret thoughts.

Unveil who you are, behind strengths clung to in waking hours,
Moving you through moments... right now, and now...
Outfits viewed by those around you,
Filling in holes of roles unfulfilled
For yourself and others.

Tell me your truth,
With or without constants.
I want to watch you in growing motion
See what brings you from there to here,
And know that while you go,
You'll keep me near.

Held Here

It's the summer of my adult heart,
Who survived Winter's song, cold and long,
And Springs of growing pains.

My soul is wider now,
Having slept curled in blacks and whites,
Safe beneath their weight.
In the end it was the grey that brought the light,
And lines drawn so dark and deep between the Universe and me -
They fell away.

I saw her then.
Sitting across from me, swirls of energy,
While soft light sparked in eyes and hearts,
And background chatter played over
Jazz notes and drink orders.

I sat so still.
She looked searchingly at me,
Trying to see what she already knew.
I hold her in my mind there;
Under transparent masks, unprepared
For what she'd find in our spaces combined.
She didn't dance outside for long,
Her soul so brave, determined, strong...

I observed awhile, didn't trust
Myself enough to move an inch.
Patience.

She called me out so slowly,
Not knowing it was when she didn't try.
The way her head fell back, the thoughtful sigh,
The scent in her breath of the air inside her
Whispered invitations to explore.

Her lips...
My fingertips felt so alive
When I watched the soft curves in that slow smile,
And heard my hands plead leave to reach out,
Let them touch that mouth,
Swim in the sense like my eyes did the sight.

But I won't hold them tight for long,
I know what it is she speaks of now.
Instinct longing to be unthinking.
I'll let it take the rest of me,
Let go the hold on a sense of safety I,
no longer have to seek.

I'll learn what it means to set myself free.

Clean Hands

Naked hands open to last year's hurricanes,
Blown clean and breathing
Freedom.
I remembered then
What my skin feels like
Smooth and young,
Uncovered.

I let myself in on my own secret;
I never liked the feel of it there.

So strange to wake from moments
Floating between
Presence in my aloneness here
And random thoughts of you -
To discover my thumb checking,
Between second and third fingers
Involuntarily.

Shake Your Fate

Rounded eyelids, heart shaped lips,
Free fly, despite the tethered feathers,
Finding pleasure amidst the ever
Resolving past mis-hits.

She learned a lot, she knows her part,
She stayed in darkness long enough
To know the glow that told her,

No.

You gotta turn it on.


There is no dawn that shines in shyness,
FuckThatShit.

Light the fire that lives inside you,
You weren't meant to dim it, fake it,
question where it came in.

Just jump the gun, who says that's what
Can keep you grounded?

Maybe you were meant to find
A brighter light to take it higher,
That's what it took to discover
It ain't outside you.

Your inner sun, bringing you one
Who sees right through you, knows it too,
And has the strength to hold onto
Desire, the inner kind,
That finds a way to take today,
Make it what you always wanted -

That's the trick, it makes no difference
How you get there.
The universe, She doesn't care,
Until you're ok where
It is you are,
I'm right here.

Gently

Write for her the story of
The souls inside us.
Where all the heads are held high,
and space finds safety,
In the quiet between breaths
Of our heartbroken,
Beautifully bare and alone,
Body shaking cries.
Where cold and cutting
Pain finds the undying smile
And they linger there,
To hold each other awhile.

Courage = Desire > Fear

I need to write this down.
I need to hold this like I would a small soft thing,
Fragile and precious and God given.

I need to walk with it in the forefront of my mind
This gorgeous warmth, and acceptance,
This break from the mind to know oneness
That exists when I stop reasoning.
It's in reasoning I fear.

Love. Trust.
What already exists, what is there to be had -
I am listening to you.

I will sit in my soul and know
What is in your eyes, is in mine.
When I look to me,
I recognize you -

It is not a need,
It is not something to hold onto,
It is not even ours -
*Love is a tree that grew, and we are the shade.

I will be it's shade.

Separate, alone,
Strong on our own.
It will grow.
Falters included,
Our own goals will renew this.

Here is what I now know:
Realities need not discourage,
When all there is
Is my part
And that is enough.


* From Rumi's The Intellectual is Always Showing Off

Love Me Right (Song Lyric)

girl stepped to the music and the walls bent back
danced like a fox with a wild wild cat
girl smoked out the water and dried the sea
girl stopped the world spinning when she looked at me

oh yeah she loved me right
loved me right all through the night

she got a smile like the devil and a bite that stings
then she's oh so gentle make the angels sing
she can rock me heavy make my body shake
then turn on a dime make my poor heart ache

oh won't you love me right
for your touch you gonna make me fight
c'mon baby now just be nice
for that fire I got a light
oh can she love me right
straight down the barrel got me in her sight
yeah girl can love me right
love me right all through the night
love me right all through the night

Discovering Self

In life there were times when I've tried on different suits, seeking self.

I've seen a lot of this in others, tried a lot on myself - oblivious to being lost. In fact, believing with conviction to the contrary, by clinging so hard to ideas I had of myself.

A daughter, a sister, a supervisor, a manager. A below $--k to above income.

A wife... (That was a big one).

A poet, a singer, a writer... a million things.
All my own definitions, created for my own reasons.

It takes real, grueling work to open up and step away from these ideas of self.
What will you be without them? What shame will surface?
Will I be right to have, at times, despised myself?
Will I learn that I actually neglected myself instead?

And will I understand how, and why - and forgive and give love to the all-consuming part of me that was floating with no roots planted, full of false pride.

Forgive, so I can go home to me, and live from her.

Home.
Human.

Changing, always changing - just like life. Like watching a river flowing.
Water, appearing as one body. But each drop is changing, moving, flowing faster than I can see. Each drop is here, then gone, replaced by another, and another... it never stays.

Or the cells in my body, morphing, splitting, recreating, never the same.

Or Time...
Time is always changing.
One second replaced by another, continuing to change and never be the same again.

I can flow with life. I can flow as life.
And if I can accept that about myself, the truth of change -
then I will see, allow, accept it everywhere.
The love, and light, and connection in it to those who live and love with me.
I will see and accept it in the plants and animals, the space and city, the Universe,
the people I'm surrounded with...
And I will let them see me if they can, and understand if they can't.

I will see that no one thing is who I am.
No role, no job, no property, no country - it's in the whole that I belong.
The whole that is only discovered in the world after it is discovered in me.

That is where I'll open to all that I am - which is everything.
Everything and anything, lives in me, and I can be and do it.
All jobs, all properties, all titles, all countries.
I am a part. I am the universe. And I am me.

... humans were made different it seems. Something more to ponder:
Made with ego, awareness, and the ability to see outward goals.
To, (potentially) be conscious of our motives.
To choose our motives, and our thoughts.
Perhaps this is why the struggle to sync with the rest of the world - the earth, the seasons, nature - is just that: A struggle. Maybe it's the point of our creation, to learn our place.
(I say "our", because I know it as my goal, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in it.)

And perhaps that's why it's so powerful, so awe-inspiring, soul-shaking;
such a drastic change in our mindfullness, and, subsequently, our lives,
when the goal is attained - if only for a fleeting moment.

I find the more I aim for it, the longer I stay in it.

Cold House

Spring came in again.
Five days long she rained love but,
Summer is delayed.

Winter finds it's way,
Sneaks back in uninvited
To fill new with old.

Stealing away breath
Sweet air that gave life to death
Dark must be complete

For summer freedom's reign.

Stop and Go (Song Lyric)

While she sits her silence fills the room up
As he paces across the floor.
She smiles an empty smile and faces him
Is convinced he doesn't see there's more.

He wonders why he's there at all,
Just to watch her take her time
to tiptoe all around
when what she means
is let me go.

He wakes tired of eyes wide open daily
Waiting on a change to come.
Packs a bag and leaves his love on the railing.
She comes home and there the chase has begun.

They say every other season changes,
They say sun will always follow the rain,
We go back and forth between the spaces
Always occupied on different days.

And I wonder why I'm here at all
To watch you take your time
in tiptoeing around
when what you mean
is let me go.

While she sits the silence fills the room up.
Through the pain a little light can be seen.
The ties unbind and despite the breaking,
Be still and feel a sense of relief.

The Best Thing God Created Is A New Day

If it's a joke then put it on me,
Send your caution carelessly,
'Cause it's not me who minds.
It is the sky and it's inside me.

I know the kind, I know,
I'm new and fresh and young,
Except that I have seen the sun,
Grow old and tired of storms and fire,
She falls to cool beneath the sea.

To give her rest, I would that it were me.

Stay quiet, don't you say a word
Don't resist the breath of hurt
You hold it all so tightly,
Let it go.

No need to say you love me,
Just hear what I am giving,
Let it sit there, let it sink in...

On paper, just appearance,
Ink in a plastic figure
Ball point rolls away
and I am tired...

He wrinkles in his sigh,
But just around his eyes.