Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Thankful

Phantom smells of roasting things
Waft into my work days, my alone nights, 
I mimic them now with Food Television
And the planning and I 
Remember the days when I was 
Too young to know better
Than to know it would probably never
Be better than this
And that then, more than ever,
Was a good time to be 
Thankful.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Kaua'i

And in the background of the loud
And angry noises of the street,
Behind the cold and dirty smell
Of citadels of concrete, beneath
The whirling, caffeine-buzzing
Frantic din that was her mind,
Amidst the cackling catcalls there
That her sanity did bind:

A rolling ocean. Ever so 
Discreetly tumbling o'er a soft
And sparking shore. And on 
That beach was planted
Strong and stalwart palms that
Whispered promises in her tired ear
Of a life that wrapped her 'round
With love and comfort and a faith
In the infinity of the sound.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Temptation

Don't
Do it.
With all the fight
You thought
You had
You're stuck here
Dreaming of it
And all your soul
And mind
And heart
Screaming for it
And yet
You can't
And therein lies
The shit of it
As you
Toss
And turn
And deal with it.
Don't.
You can't.
You mustn't.

Dear lord please
Give me
One
Good reason
Not to
Aside from the
Thousands
Of reasons
You know
You shouldn't.

But should you?
Life
Is short
And epic
Things like this
Simply don't
Come once
In a short while, or
A long one.

But NO.

Don't.

Breathe.

Shit.

Survival

Heel to nose, back broke
And worn, pained, kicking
Up into the back of the brain
Where you thought you'd protected
Yourself,

There is a certain sight.
You've come
So far. You'd normally be broken,
And deposed, and insane,
And reaching into the back
Pocket of "I used to be like this,
And see what I deserve?"
Like a sad destiny played
Out once more.

But you're not. You're strong.
You've gotten over what you couldn't have imagined
You'd get over, ever, never
Thinking for a moment that
It might.
Not.
Be your fault.

And all the horses and
Kings' men and moments
Couldn't put you together again,
But you did. Immediately. As the breaking
Happened, as your own skull was shattered
In front of your eyes
While you begged it not to be, BEGGED.
You stood strong.
(Or laid supine, as it were, but only
In comical and physical expression.)

You waited for a moment.
A moment you thought you wanted
So bad, so hard, that you thought would never
Come, and if it had, you thought
It would redeem you,
And be more than you thought.

But it was. Not.

In the very moment your whole life
Focused on for months, you
Were shot
In the back
While sleeping.

And awake,
You got up, you put on your clothes,
You brushed off the latex and shame
And you carried on
Without weeping, without
The prerequisite rending of garments
Like you should have,
And here you are.

Again, at the start,
Fresh wound to
Stir you on
And on, and on

What I deserve

Not talking is like talking,
Unfortunately that's how it has become,
Or, more truthfully, how it always was
As I stared, trusting, blindly, into the eyes
Of what I thought I saw.

But I will not dismiss
What I saw, or myself in that seeing.
I saw a beauty and a hope and a dream
And then, in a violent moment,
Saw it slide down the drain
I never stopped to think 
Was inevitable, but it was.

How stupid was I?
I put you above that, beyond
And through because I was down,
And before, and stuck
In a place where I couldn't see
That.

But I know, despite the perspective,
That it was what it was,
And it was that: beautiful, tragic,
Abusive, wrong, and right,
And now, I must move
Through into what I don't want,
But what I do, despite all
That I thought you'd see me through.

And so I wait. I wait
For the new. And hope
That it might, somehow, redeem
The total heartbreak; the absolute
Face-to-floorness of where I am now
Into the true-ness
Of what
I "deserve." 

Just know, beyond all
Shoulds and coulds,

Despite how I was left behind
Over and over
The love I feel, or as I'm told, felt,
Will not go.
It's you.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

A difference


Every day, giving up sits on
Your chest like an 
Inevitability.
Buried in impossibility,
Sitting on the edge of a mountain that 
Should be moved,
Barely breathing for the weight
Of the weight of the rock
Before you,
You feel it is your right to give up.

But in you, beyond the din
Of the laughs and the
Punches and the piles heaped upon you
Day in, day out,
There is something. 

Some thing moves you
To move your tired, bleeding hand
To the small fragment of rock beside you
And toss it off the pile.

And it rolls down, down, beyond
Your line of sight and you are 
Tired. Done. "What is
The point?" you sigh.

And your eyes close,
And your lungs begin 
To give out while your tiny,
Tiny rock rolls down, building momentum
And gently taps the head
Of the one below you
And wakes them up, and then
They move their tired, bleeding hand
To the small fragment of rock beside them
And toss it off the pile.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

A life borrowed

A life not one's own is
A life borrowed,
Stolen, but  not quite that deliberate;
Only used for a time
Over and over,
Year after year shifted
From one consciousness to the next.

I live my life in segments
Taken from segment taken
From dreams I've had, or
Not had, or meant to have but
Haven't, stirred about and
Launched from
Could-Have or Would-Have
Or Couldn't-Have-Thunk-It
Moments in time.

This can wear on a person,
Peering each moment into
A life not her own,
Wondering What-If if what
She'd dreamed had
Actually Been
Or Seemed
Or Been Known.

So I cling
Precariously to You
Who is the only thing
To ever bring
Me so close
To Home.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Seasound

The sea cycles, roars and quiets,
Ebbs, flows with my soul between
Disquiet and on-the-edge surrender
To the beauty who threatens
To engulf the din in my head
And leave me, again,
As small as the vastness
That creates us both.

The seasound is but
The small, inconsequential
Manifestation of the greater force
That sucks the waves back in,
And absconds with the senseless
And exhausting identities
We erect, precariously,
Like a card house,
Around the intuition that we
Are smaller than we are told we are,
And just as small
As we need to be.