give. of purpose

Gave you my heart after all the heartbroken, unspoken, the best chance I ever risked it all on

I gave you my heart and
you loved me out of blue
and all the colors run not
so disturbing
now

when I was alone the
monochrome was familiar
not unkind

I got used to the singleness
now I am used to
you

december upon us

the month was turning over like you, beside me, in bed. i knew you would be there for me and that was the point. i got so tired of getting passed by and passing by and i began to understand i deserved more, i wanted more. but first i had to understand how to be alone and be good with one, at peace with that. now it's december and not so cold, anymore.

light in august and shredded mail

The guitar. The bicycle. The running shoes. The webcam. The laptop. The unopened mail. The opened mail. The shredded mail. It's August and sure enough I risk being overexposed again. Doesn't take much nowadays. I do my best work predawn. And I'm sorry to the ones I love whose lives are not yet settling with the dust. There's little chance I will be able to open my doors to let you in, this month. 

August and the light cannot be intimidated by glass of any thickness. From a distance I see (and even feel) your struggle, for it only takes a few words or an image to convey. Maybe you want to stand before me so I can see and know more, but what good would it do? We both know I am not the solution to your troubles, though I may make a petty salve. Triple antibiotic. I offer my heart, my mind, my spirit. 

I would so like to say I love you, the spirit of you, the best in you, but what good would it do? You should know by now, you should. Deep down I think you do, otherwise you wouldn't be inviting me back in again. I am honored, too. A few years ago nobody was inviting me anywhere. I was always tryin to be so hard and now I have softened again under the sun, how did I become so soft and hard like glass to light? Who am I to be a walking contradiction and how do you walk, this way?

August. I think on Faulkner who somehow captured it for me, or wrapped my sense of it with his own personal papers. He made August more real for me. There may have been others but I cannot remember. I think of Rodin, but only because his first name was August. I won't have any children, but if I had a boy I might name him the same, for we could nick him - Oggy!

We see no end to any summer in August in the valley, the light and heat will have their way with us through September and often into October. And some of us, what once was me, will see no end to misery, misfortune and pain. Nobody should be told they brought this on themselves, but if you have been there like I have, you also know that you had some part in it, and maybe even the largest of all the roles. For you are always there in the center of it, are you not?

Learn your lines well, my dear, and know you are not alone. I am behind you as well, with others whose parts are also to be played. I will take that deep breath from behind the curtains, steady myself and walk in under the lights with you in my own time and when the script demands it. Your stage presence in your own life is irrefutable. 

1983

Tonight again I miss something we had, the je ne sais quoi from 1983. Togetherness. A bit wild we were in an America no longer the same, and I was a kid only ten... smell of petrol and tools, and cars that broke down, water that froze in the pipes in the winter, seasons we spent without cell phones. And where will we go when the earth meets the flow of the sea? Storms and long thaws, and it was never easy but we had eachother, laughing and bitching and fighting. I cried and I sulked when I couldn't get my way. We ran ourselves ragged by the end of each day, and tired at night all slowed to half  the pace, then half of half the pace - then a resurgence as the kids put to bed, the ice I heard clinking in the cocktails, new laughter arose and I wanted to be anything but tucked in, and found any excuse to go out to Mom and be with her then. Back to bed now, go on! The music stops playing and all is quite silent while under the water, heat lightning flashes the sky to highlight these tides, seen through the screens of the porch. The wind whistles.

We won't care so much when our senses our gone and an unbroken dawn cracks and poaches its whites by the sea, I promise, the rolling is fun and into the sun with the elements the same and no one to blame, neither you, neither me. The loss was magnificent and tragic, and you may never love that way again. And again we won't care so much having been there, in the sharp cutting glare where all is exposed as a life that has died as life always does, again and again, and again. So push up your hair with your hands, see where it stands, and roll your eyes all around the earth. You will see that we share an uncommon bond, untouched by time and strong as the vine, and wide as the sea may be long, so you can smile and laugh, sing a sweet epitaph, and roll your tongue merrily along under the names of the ones you have loved, again and again, and again. In memoriam, 1983.

soft so sweet

These words may not escape
the page to tell of human suffer age

the type set down
conformed
now weighs
the anchor of the mind
for days

who knows what falls
what follows
next

in line the sheeps keep ewes
in check

before E the eye
of goddess
rest
before you the Q
only the best

four times the power
of the sun
four times
the grave's recedent
depth

eight days a week
or more
the images drop the
feelings pour

out on to some blank lonely
space some
cloud banked in sky's silk
blue lace

would the words
simply obey
would they scream so loud
toward May

the spring she dips our fields
in green the asphalt falls
beneath the scene

i love this so the path unseen
the fleecing of all thoughts to
clean

i love you long like rivers
run i love you to the set of sun

let us lie together
 feel the heat
and kiss so tender
soft so sweet