Blink

And where is the sacrifice of love?  No one to blame, no one to point fingers at, yet somewhere along the lines someone dropped a very heavy stone.  Was it me, with my high expectations and inability to accept love in degrees that don’t burn as white hot as I need?  Will I be alone until I can learn the fundamental law that no one can love me as I need to be loved, or is that settling into defeat? 

Were my sacrifices weak and minimal, or were yours? 

In isolated moments I exist with you, the simplest exchange of breath between lips, electricity beneath fingertips.  Were I able to confine us to this memory, to paint you in permanent black ink, I could live forever in the design.  But that’s not the way it works, is it?  You lash out like a child, showing no restraint even as your soap box fills with sand.   

Across the distance I catch your eyes, staring at the ceiling at night, feeling the time, willing memories into colorful pictures dancing like light, and I know we’re still building.  But I’m bleeding.  I’m throwing stones at your walls, but instead of throwing them back you’re pondering whether the stones even exist at all.

ache.

I feel your eyes on me, and I try to see through you.  Distance, time, the immoveable object of my desires; these things pale in the cold heat of your new eyes.  Is your heart pounding yet?  Where’s the gunshot awakenings, the steady beat of your nonexistent heart?  Does it bear my name?  Do you come tripping into my dreams out of curiosity now, or to catch even one whisper of hope?

Hope.  When everything crumbles and you’re left standing at the ruins of a failed masterpiece, the colors dripping down into puddles at your feet, where do you look to find the starting point?

There is irony here, in that I feel you closer to me now as I say goodbye.

speak it

I need a revolution, a permanent solution, a TNT explosion and new twists on old emotions. Held hostage by my intuition, I’m breaking free to a newer part of me, the untouched anarchy within this soap opera parody, sharp-lined familiar faces, there’s nothing left but traces of who I was and who I’ll be, it must be somewhere in the summary.

Driving (it) home, rain like bombs on my windshield, microscopic force field, I’m shading my eyes but my intentions are revealed, pure like driven desire, my heart and my head have agreed to conspire, and I’m weaving in the lane, drunk on your name, wondering what we will do with all this fire.

Everyone lies, we say, as we struggle to forage our way through the thick and thin of battles akin to the Id and Ego of Freudian days, and this is a new way for words to play, bouncing like sun rays off the main stage. . .Exit, what will these words beget, birthing through experiments and I haven’t even pushed yet.  Watch me break, the head is crowning, and I’m drowning, or trying to, because sinking will bring me closer to you.

You, my deep sea king, wounds like tattoos fading, against your light I’m raging, waiting for that rush you bring, and I can’t help but give you everything.  I love. . .the way you strike me with your eyes, I’m captured and hogtied, supernova particle exchange, my body’s up for ransom and I’m digging for the change.

In the works. . .

Poetry is two-sided at times. To pocket a word, and unleash it transformed is an art. To weave it into a delicate phrase which inspires our hearts or opens our eyes is a gift.  But to feel it, to be so astounded by the tragedy of the heart’s reflection, or the depth of a single blue iris, to condemn to paper that which only exists in the spaces between our thoughts and our dreams, that is the ultimate release.

But oh how words can sting.  Words break the skin, extracting flesh and bone, pushing you down and down until you’re eye level with the linoleum, begging for mercy and struggling for air.   The night tears through me, leaving me empty-handed, fumbling for a sentence.  I’m digging on hands and knees through unopened chests, the vaults of my mind that I can’t access, all in the quest for that perfect word, that single noun, more likely an adjective, which will reflect things in that new altered light, my light.   

If no one reads this, does it mean it was never written? Is the spirit like quanta, nonexistent until observed?  Is the point to make my mark, or to bare my soul? It’s my belief that if even one person passes through these gates, that would be enough. Why then, could I not write one page a day and leave it on the bus, the 66, where it could be cherished or burned, accepted or denied, and I’d never know the difference?

Why do you write?  Because. . .it’s. . .fun?  Because it feels good?  Split my heart with a scythe.  Perhaps, like me, you write because you have no choice, because words dance around your windows at night, rapping on the doors, taunting you, shaking the shutters you don’t even own.  You live in a 1970’s ground floor apartment.  Shutters?  Wisteria? Bathtubs full of candles and hydrangeas in the sink?  Whose world is this?  It’s the one that exists in the movie reel blips of my reality, and I have it memorized down to the secrets swept under the rug.  I know the skeletons in the closet by name and hear their bones rattle as I try to sleep.  Gunshot tension in my veins that could split the sky, and I’m standing in the rain trying to collect the drops as they pass me by.  Precious, like that perfect ending, or that word you didn’t realize you knew the meaning of until it slipped into place, like the sun slips over the horizon of the unwritten dawn.

random

A perfectly constructed sentence becomes separate from its author as soon as it’s written, taking on a life of its own.  Is that what writers strive for, to create new life and become gods?

self 2004 – so relevent still

What is it we want? What are we always fighting so hard to learn, or to grasp? Some inner peace we’re all looking for. . .we’re so concerned about being true to our real selves (hopefully), it’s a process we’re always working on, making sure we are going to “the core.” But fear still drives us, still leads us by the hand into spiritual death. What is the power found in fear? What do you really want? There is an ideal we all have for ourselves, a top notch utopia we can see in our mind’s eye, some place we see as a final outcome, where we want to be in the end, where all this hard work is going to pay off. Kind of our final mold, if you will. We keep shedding our skin, straining to better ourselves, for what? What is your final outcome? What color are you underneath all those layers?

I am translucent, shimmering under layers of dust and dirt, anger and pain. Whole and complete, but ever changing. A masterpiece of time and experience, driven by impulse and action, instinct and intuition. I grasp the world by the tail end of the tornado, and ride it out tumultuous and frightening, real and invigorating. I do not fear the demons in my head, those little mind miners who pick away incessantly. Sometimes, all I really want is to write poetry, to gaze at you from across the room, and kiss my baby on the mouth.

Where are you going? And what is holding you back?

What is the grand illusion you’re holding onto? Let the curtain fall; it takes no time, no experience, no traveling, no aging, no great event in your life that is going to open your eyes. Just open them, and realize a few things: Nobody cares. They are too wrapped up in themselves to give a damn, and if they’re not, let them love you. Nothing really exists, that’s the easy part. More so, your existence is what you make of it, it’s all in your perception. Damn I sound so cliche. I’m trying to explain something to you! That you are beautiful. Really, that’s all. It can be found in something as simple as a kiss from a stranger or the death of your mother, but beauty surrounds you. In the simple act of your eyes scanning my words, we are making love to one another.

I wish you could see yourself as I do.

Last Supper

The rain comes down to this part of town often, but we forget to let it wash away our sins, our throats gurgling like the gutters, as we choke on the has-been’s, the were’s, the coulda been’s and what if’s, stilettos breaking as we shuffle and shift. 

30-something’s stuffing, their rolls in spandex florals from forever 21, guts bursting out because their egos are numb, somewhere between 4 and 14 they lost sight of a dream, barbie doll plastic hair, melting, chiffon and cream.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but all I see is hopeless getting older.

And the gutters keep running, down by the bus tunnels, on the corner where babies beg me for cigarettes and I’m trying to hail a cab because my feet and morale are making a killing, but people are still spilling out of the bars and slurred offers of hotel rooms ring in my ears like your finger on a wine glass, first class, and he’s just helping her find her car.

Half empty

I still have the smell of us on my hands where I reached down to push you into me, that perfect moment where you truly do complete me, absolutely filling me.  When I gasp, it is because I am steamrolled by you, emotions, desire, the way we conspire, all coming together in that first perfect thrust.  And I still trust, even though it scares me, our pitch and perfect harmony, if you’d listen to yourself honestly, you’d be scared too. . .because of what people do.  What we can DO, or what can become of us, one is in our control and the other isn’t, thus, we walk this tight-roped path and I’m looking to the past, hoping to avoid the pitch-fork in the road, our stories left untold, I deal with the devil but my soul’s already sold.

Soliloquy

When I imagine that part of our life, the boat, the weather is always in extremes.  Thunder, lightening, waves upon crashing waves rocking us, while we rock each other, one to a million miles from shore.  I imagine the cocooning womb of our quarters, your arms, the perfect seclusion of our secret wishes come alive in this sanctuary we’ve created.  The water surrounding us is met with Fire, in the sky and between us, and the tide ebbs and flows with the rise and fall of our sighs.  I think a boat is representative of us, the energy that exists in the small spaces between us; the refuge I find in your eyes. 

The other extreme is silence and calm - the water, a sheet of glass, reflecting points of light in through the tiny windows, penetrating us in the peaceful silence of our sleep, gently reminding us that the world is still going on.  Rise and shine to the splinters of reflected sun, to the crisp air that living on the water brings.  A tiny vase of white lilies on the tiny table, near the bookshelf that holds our few, most precious books.  Soliloquy, oblivious to the world outside, contentedly alone in our togetherness.

on fear.

I want to place my hands on the weak and weary, promising them beauty, a fortune-teller with nothing but aces.  But like the gypsy, I roam through these moments, these lives, some are touched and some destroyed, all the while creating the person you will come to despise. .  or love, try to see it from above, from the outsideness of it all, the inevitable fall, from grace you place your life upon my own, keeping time to a heartbeat drum. 

I’m nostalgic today, wild and gnashing, teeth smashing, an excuse to see inside of you, to see what you will do, what happens when the things I own begin to look like you?  Dripping pieces, melt waxing poetic, living rooms ablaze and you’re pretending to be stoic.  I kiss my way right through you, roots twisting deeper, into my core, repetitive and sore.  I’m split apart, tentacled heart, but I’ve never felt so fucking alive.  Pulse. Heartbeat. Trigger. A word.  I’m reading between lines but the letters are blurred.  Brought to life by a chemical reaction, dropped dead in the heat of a fatal distraction, I’m splitting atoms and developing bone, but I wear my skin thickly, because at least it’s my own.