Winter's Song
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My face is clouded by the shameless wind. My head is bowed by the heavy sky. I make my crooked way unseen and unheard. My legs are bowed. My feet are splayed. My bones are brittle. My teeth are all worn. My breath escapes me through a hole in the world. My thoughts like quicksilver slip out of my grasp. My body, bent and distorted by time's embrace, Stumbles through what's left of my life. My ears are numb. My vision's blurred. My passion's spent. My soul inured. And yet I continue I still go on For no other reason but to hear winter's song. The cold clean air that bites at my cheeks The stark still shadows of a December's Eve. These plain simple things become so precious and real Each breath each moment that might be repealed Each step is my eternity. Each day my infancy. |
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Mine
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The anger in her eyes Cannot mask the pain The rage he left behind Has left her forever changed I cannot help her I can not heal her I can only stand by and wait She can't seem to cry or talk it out There are no words It can't be named I want to hold her make the pain disappear But there's no escaping memory When I look and see him in her eyes I see my own masculinity That I can't change or fix what he did to her That I can't save what now has died That I can't save her from his suffering That the shame that lingers in the room is mine. |
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Did It
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Please. Close it and lock it and never ever open it up again. Not ever again. Close the door. For your sake. For my sake. For our sake. Close the door to keep me out. To keep you in. To keep us apart forever. Close it and lock it. Forever. Behind your knee in the hollow where the skin is soft and where you're ticklish there is a tiny scar that even you had probably forgotten about a long time ago. I wonder where you got it. I wonder if it hurt. Did you fall off of your bike and catch it in the chain somehow or was it a piece of glass that you didn't see on the ground? Did it hurt you? Did it cause you pain? Did it make you cry? Was there much blood? Who did you run to to make it better? Did it hurt you? Sometimes I wish I was that piece of glass. That chain. Something. I touch that scar and kiss it so softly when you are half asleep and you smile because of the way it tickles. Your smile is everything to me. It doesn't matter why you smile or who makes you smile when you smile my whole body smiles with you. And when you laugh. When you laugh there is heaven. The scar the little scar behind your knee in the hollow where you're ticklish makes you smile. And sometimes it makes you laugh. It makes you laugh when I tickle it just right or when I do something silly like blowing farts with my lips against the skin in the hollow where you're ticklish. That scar. This thing that has caused you pain this wound to your body this reminder of an injury to you gives you pleasure. I wish I could be that scar. When you sleep you are completely silent. Completely still. I have to listen sometimes just to hear you breathing. I wake up and I'm sure you aren't alive. I lie there with my heart racing too afraid to touch you in case it's true in case you don't move you don't respond so I'm as still as I can be and I listen. I listen for you to make a sound. Any kind of sound. Time stands still and I wait for something some indication that you are still alive. Time freezes. Until I hear a sound time ceases to move forward it is frozen and I am frozen in waiting. And then you move or make a sound or I see your chest rise ever so slightly and I know you are alive. You are alive and everything is the same. I lie there watching you for a long time treasuring your every breath until I fall back asleep. I fall asleep to you. Knowing you are with me. Knowing you are alive. Knowing you are... Knowing you are. I fall asleep to you. The first time I saw you. You were hidden in darkness. Alone. A shadow across the room. You were a shadow. Too many people everywhere noise making the walls move the music and the voices raised against each other. And there you were. Apart from the people and the noise. So still in the darkness I wasn't even sure you were real. I thought you were a mannequin or a plaster something at first because you didn't move and because everything about you was in darkness. I looked at you for a long time and sometimes I thought I saw movement. Which made you alive. Which made you real. And then I was sure I was imagining it and maybe I'd had too much to drink. And then I became certain that you were all imagination. Not even a plaster something or a mannequin. My imagination. There was nothing there and it was all my imagination. I began to move. I made my way through the crowd. I pushed and squeezed past the too many people excusing myself making myself little making my way little by little. There were so many between us. So may bodies and so much noise that I almost gave up almost went back to my little corner but I didn't. It took a long time. It took a very long time. Crowds and noise and cigarette smoke and the smell of sweat and overly perfumed bodies. It took a long time. I got close to you and your head was down. You were still in darkness but now I was sure you were real and alive even though I couldn't see your face. I could see movement. I could see you breathing. I thought I could see you breathing. I stood for a long time waiting for you to move to react to me but you just stared at the floor without moving without speaking. The noise and the smells and moving people surrounded us but we were still and alone together. I wanted to touch you. To be sure you were real. I wanted to shove you. I wanted to hit you. I wanted to kiss you to be sure you were real not some piece of furniture. I'd pushed and squeezed my way and now I was waiting with all the too many people around us and I needed you to be real. Your eyes moved. You looked up at me. You have the saddest eyes I've ever seen. There was pain in your eyes that was bigger than you and suffering that was older than you could possibly be. Your sadness took my breath away. You looked at me and I stopped breathing. I stopped moving. I stopped thinking. I stopped. You looked at me and the world disappeared. The noise the too many people the smells everything that ever was everything that ever would be disappeared when I looked into your eyes. You didn't speak. You looked at me with your eyes sadder than life itself and you didn't say a word. You didn't need to. We stood there together and yet so far apart with the noise and the voices and the smells all around us and we didn't move or say a word. There was nothing to say or do. We looked at each other and there was nothing to say or do. We just stood there. Looking at each other. The world had shrunk down to just the two of us. Unmoving. Unspeaking. Unaware of anything but each other. We spoke to each other with our eyes. We spoke to each other with our silence. In the darkness my world was as complete as it ever has been. In the darkness I was as complete as I have ever been. I do not remember if I was before you. The memories that go back beyond the day we met are vague and cloudy. Like dreams. Like someone else's dreams that I carry around but have no connections to. I have no feelings for those memories. They are not mine. They are not me. My memories did not belong to me. Until you. The memories that follow the day we first met are sharp and clear. I am part of them. They are part of me. They are real to me. I can feel them. I can trust them. Those memories belong to me. I belong to those memories. I was not real before I met you. I was not me. The first time I got close enough to smell you I knew you were the thing I was missing. You smelled like tomorrow. The first time I touched you it was like your skin was my skin. I could feel me touching you. I touched you and I could feel what it was like when my fingertips brushed against your skin. The first time I touched you was the first time I breathed. I saw myself in your eyes the first time. I heard myself in your ears the first time. I tasted myself against your skin. I saw myself in the mirror of who you were and i was not complete. I was unfinished and you were the thing that finished me. That held me up. That kept me from falling. That kept me from dissolving. I saw myself through you and without you I was... I was not. I was not before I became aware of you. Before I met you I was... Not. |
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Children
Of our parent earth
Who is a child
Of the universe
Children
Of a child
Of a child
Of a child?
We are infants
Of an infant world
Reaching reaching
To hold the infinite
We search the past
A year a century
To find some hint
A what will or will not be
We are but children
Reaching for the sky
Sometimes falling down
Only to get up again
Children's children
Caught up in earnest play
Uncertain rituals
Some profound and some inane
Another year
A thousand more
Creeping creeping
Still to be explored
We suffer through
Our growing pains
Hoping dreaming
With each and every day
We are children
Of the universe
Learning growing
Each day begins as our first
One more new year
Two thousand past
We earth bound children
Together face a future vast
Will we grow old
With wisdom learned?
Or destroy
The gifts we have not yet earned
We are children
Of our parent earth
Seeking seeking
The reasons for our birth
Borne of a child
Conceived of a child
Reaching grasping
By our own selves beguiled
Child
Of a child
Of a child
Of a child?
Being
Seeking
Dreaming
Beginning?
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