Quicksand

Life

Is like

Quick sand.

The more 

You fight

The inevitable

The harder

The inevitable

Fights you.

And wins.

Immune

A foot forward while the earth spins

Your body back, but gravity

Fortunately

Does not affect your soul

Which is all places

All times.

To forgive divine (as if it were an effort)

It's not a matter of forgiveness

Which would imply

A possible next step

A need for more

Or reversion back

To where things were before

They all went so, so wrong. 

I do not hold on to the

Ugly mornings, the sweat-streaked

Days of locking and relocking,

The bargaining with god and country

That they would follow my first request

To be simply left alone.

"By the way, no hard feelings
Your threat is exactly what you should have done to protect yourself."

It was, as it always has been,

Assumed I was concerned or

That I could care whether or not

There were hard feelings there

After a near week of sleeplessness and fear

And more,

The assumption that I, “seasoned” in this as it were,

After all my years immediately forgiving

(Otherwise, I think, while staring sleepless at the ceiling,

I would not have this recurrent problem)

Could have any feelings left at all.

To want to be left alone

Is not a feeling.

I have forgiven them long ago

As many, shocked, can attest to.

“But they hurt you.”
No. They hurt themselves

And if they stopped to think

At all

About the fact that I, and all of us alike,

Wished most of all
For there to be a lack

Of need

For forgiveness,

And that forgiveness is a way of life,

Or we'd all be dead,

They'd comply with the initial

Request. 

You were forgiven long ago
As you should have done yourself.
Now go.

 

Friendly fire

Some people learn from experience

That during dark hours

You hunker down

Build the concrete

Kryptonite walls necessary

To protect yourself;

Alone, spare a few cats.

Rarely, some people are kind enough,

Persistent and smart,

Who know the right combination,

The right morse code knock,

To get you out of your picnic cooler fort,

Even though it goes against your instinct

And you might fight them.

But once you're out

With them you see

There are angels around that are simply angels and

Not vampires with close-mouthed smiles

Disguised as such.

Right and true

Daydream of a place that's

Soft, and cool, and low,

Where sounds

Of water

Emulsify the raw,
Exposed

Nerves that ache

With the constant scrape

Of what

Could be contrived

As fear

But it is not.

It's just the wear

And tear of life

Lived on the edge

Between the "norm"

And what is right

For me.

The water flows

When I expose

Myself to the idea

That what I am

And what I do, and what 

I've done

Is right

And true.

Mistrust

Creeping in again, that mistrusting cold

That breaks through the possessive heat

And the two forces battle

In my stomach, unsteadying my hands

And my head floats above itself

Gazing down confusedly on the whole,

Shimmering lot.

I am not the fearful type,diving head first

Often into the sort of

Situation that people purposefully avoid,

But the normal sort of things

That others do without a thought --

Like breathing steadily, or

Picking up a phone, going

Out the door when work has nothing to do with it,

Or sleeping --

Shake me from my core.

What keeps me here outside the fishbowl,

Or in it depending on the day,

Either way peering through the warbled glass

Inward or outward, eyes catching

Glimpses of steady images that, once

Caught, change shortly after,

Most times unrecognizable in their

New form,
Making my brain cells leap
Like a cat when you drop something heavy
On the floor.

How do you trust your mind 

When it will not learn to expect,
Even after all this while,

The constant betrayal of the subject of its focus

As it turns abruptly to something else

Every single time?

Ode to the lost

They can take my beating heart

And drive the pace to crazy.

They can take my energy

And steal it when they're lazy.

They can wake me from my sleep

And force me into panic.

They can shock me out of trust

And wreak me into havoc.

They can try and shut me down

And beat me 'till I bleed.

They can take my honesty

And chronically misread.

They can enter and attempt

My sanity to dismantle.

They can gossip till they choke

On more than they can handle.

They can talk themselves to death

And hope someone believes them.

They can constantly spin tales

And pout when life deceives them.

But they can never touch my soul

Or even claim to near it,

And when the reckoning arrives

They're way too lost to hear it.

And when they try to feign the

Righteousness they've never known,

Believe me when I say you'll never

Kill me with a stone

That's thrown in anger, fear, or narcissistic

Act of self deception.

And when salvation knocks, you'll

Be too deaf to the perception.

So best of luck to you, and may you

One day find redemption.

Newborn

I saw you and I thought, "Well, this

Will make me feel one of two ways.

First, that I am justly afraid

Of having one like you, and second,

That I will want nothing but

To have one of you for my own."

But neither feeling came.
Instead, I felt

A kinship in the way you slept

And woke

And slept so fitfully,

Flinging yourself unprompted

To and fro, and hardly rested

Much at all.

And so I thought, "How could this 

Be so, when you are only

One month into life and have no 

History that keeps you from 

Resting peacefully?"

I wanted you to feel the peace

That I have never felt, and I

Was more disturbed

By the nagging, self-imposed fact

That you, untainted, restlessly

Could find no comfort in the arms

Of those who loved you endlessly

And showered love and love and love

And still you cried --

With a mere month inscribed into your empty book --

So inconsolably.