Turn toward the hours passed.
Size them and arrange.
Let soak in dyes of prism colors
As the minutes pass away and then
Lift them, dripping dye,
To hang in the warming sun
Over tight strung wire.
Watch the colors drip, splashing on the floor.
Wet splotches collecting in puddles
Of liquid silk to be mopped away
As the hours drip colored dye
In the drying of time.
Category: emotion
Ash and Blood
Ash soft upon the brow.
Atonement drifts
On frankincense smoke.
No one ever seeks
To wear the stigmata
Upon hands and feet.
There be no martyrs here.
Confessions worn down
By touching whispers
Of brokenness.
A shattered seeking
Of what heals in ash and blood,
Whispering of saints and sinners.
Wingless prayers spoken for things lost
In a darkness of light.
The wish of a murdered truth
Contained in dusty grey skies
Of wanting and desire
Sought over again–
To now seek and send a trembling
Hand to reach with no strength to grasp–
For a soul too wearied
From the grinding away
Of trying.
Wild and Tame
Originally written in July of 2015. Revised 2020.
My friend, the squirrel, sits at my feet.
I wonder perhaps should I be sitting at his.
He is tame
Unlike me.
I have peanuts for him.
He knows.
He is willing to wait
And teach me
All the lessons he knows
Of a heart
That is wild
Yet tame.
I marvel at all
That is contained
Within his tiny heart.
The joys of peanuts and sunflower seeds,
Being unafraid in the face of strangers,
And making friends so easily,
Of finding a home among things lush and green,
Knowing no fear to leap
Into things unknown.
Will he instruct me
In the ways to live once again
And move on?
Tell me to remove these rings
Linked to a grief buried beneath grey granite?
Can he share with me the lesson
Of what to do with all things circular,
New and old grief– link upon link of chain?
Teach me the ways of letting go?
The ways of living without fears
To staunch the bleeding of wounds
Both new and so very old?
Is this the meaning
Of being wild and tamed?
Tears of Fire
Originally posted in August of 2017. However, after driving from Dallas to Houston to take care of some business with having a home built and experiencing nearly deserted roads because of the lock downs and quarantines, I thought I’d touch it up a bit and post it again.
The seven descend.
Each with wings spread
Enough to fill a house.
Shalom not upon their tongues.
Throughout the compass points
They search to find
All the gnawed bones,
The muscles and sinew,
The heart and entrails
Torn with teeth of hate.
And once the seven
Found all the tiny bits,
With flaming swords
Used as needles,
They did try to stitch
All humanity’s bloody bits
Into one thing well knit.
Neither their swords,
Nor spirit of their breath
Did have the power to seal
The meat and sinew to bone.
And then they knew
Those who showed no mercy
Would be given none.
Their heads hung
Inshallah upon their lips
As they ascend.
Their flaming eyes
Weeping tears of fire
As they saw the pale rider
Striding across the land.
The seven knew humanity’s
Avarice and hate
Had broken the fourth seal.
Maa shaa’Allah a whisper of smoke
Within their throats.
Their flaming eyes
Still weeping tears of fire.
Wired
In this day and age
We ought to be able to be wired
Wired for anything, everything–
For hope—
–dreams
–love
–desire
Wired for it all and more
Wired for an add on room
In the heart when we’ve run out–
For expansion of sound inside
When we’ve come to love the buzz of silence.
For blood that doesn’t run dry,
Doesn’t clot to clog the works up.
Wired so we always have just one more try
Inside souls always filled
With the romantic dreams of youth.
Wired so there are stairs always to climb.
Wired so no wounds ever cut so deep
Blood runs out, runs dry.
Wired so we can learn
Yet pain be erased.
Wired, just wired,
Plugged in with a soul of shiny copper wire.
What Emily Said….
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. Emily Dickinson
Yep, that’s what Emily said. I beg to differ. If it perched in my soul, The cat ate that damn canary Before it finished its tune. And let me tell you, I never heard anything sweet During a pissed off hurricane. That dang bird knew! Away it flew While the winds whistled Away my roof. I sure as heck didn’t hear Some sweet little bird chirpin’ As I froze my ass off in the northeast. And all I heard as I sweated buckets Under a southern sun was some damn Squawking big ass crow. In fact, I think hope isn’t a bird at all. It might be a well. That might be more apt. Yep, wells aren’t dug or drilled deep enough, Sometimes. And I would imagine Much more can go wrong with a well, Like a pump runnin’ dry. Oh, hell! A well can even be poisoned! But this here well, It’s so dang dry There ain’t even any mud At the bottom. Looks like some cobwebs too. Whatever it had, It done dried right up. So whatever hope is-- A bird, a well, It isn’t always there. It doesn’t stick around, Unless you feed it Before the feathers Drift, Before the water Dries Away.
Next time– Get a Dog
You should have gotten yourself a dog. No, really. I mean it. Instead of chasing me Until you caught me. What you thought you’d found, When you found me— And that’s what you wanted me to be— A rescued dog— Full of gratitude and loyalty for the perceived rescue. With no record or memory of previous owners, Ah, an extremely important part. A wagging tail at every word or look from you. Sitting at attention, waiting patiently for you. Desperate for any command you should happen to give. Dutifully complying with each command, each wish You should ever express. No friends, no family, no loves. No needs Other than you and to serve you. That is what you wanted That is what you needed— In your own words— To be my number one at all times. After all, no one would love me better. No one would give me a better home, As you so lovingly liked to remind me. Next time get a dog. She’ll feed your ego better.
Dreaming of You
Image from lostgirlmyths.wikia.com
I dreamed of you the other night.
A dream in color and complete.
We both know I rarely remember dreams.
But this one I awoke from—fresh
With that it felt so real feeling.
Imagine my surprise
when I realized
this dream hadn’t dripped from reality.
We sat, it seemed, at some café
In Dallas or Houston,
Or perhaps, we were strolling
The streets of Provincetown,
Walking across the Golden Gate,
Hiking some trail up a Colorado mountain,
Riding the subway of Manhattan,
Driving the traffic jams of Baltimore or
Los Angeles. Perhaps, we watched the whales
Out on the Pacific or maybe it was the Atlantic.
For in the dream, the background shifted like
A chalk drawing on the pavement in a rainstorm,
The colors bleeding, fading, sliding into one another
The way we used to do.
The place doesn’t matter, in the grand scheme
And all, of any such dream.
You talked away as you always did,
Leaving me no room to breathe
Or even catch enough air to say a word,
Squeezing the freedom from my soul.
Your eyes glowed, shining sapphires with no rain.
Your golden bleached hair blowing wild in dream wind.
Your words twisted, tangled in on themselves,
Doing a contortionist’s dance,
Snaking their way into my ears and on toward
The inner working of my heart and brain,
Slithering under the door to my soul.
Once there, your words tried to bite away,
Injecting some poison into my heart, my brain, my soul
To twist me into saying all the things
You wanted me to say–
All the things your ego needed—
Like that oppressive August afternoon
When you argued nonsense to get me to say
I was to blame and beg to stay.
I never knew a slither of words
Could slide and twirl so many ways
like those ribbons of a gymnast, circling this way and that.
As you saw a snaking pattern wasn’t working so well,
I watched your frustration rise.
Your back straightened even more so.
Your eyes narrow almost microscopically,
Your thin lips disappear completely.
I woke then, laughing.
I think I startled my dog.
I laughed again—
I see Medusa
When I think of you now.
It’s a bloody wonder I, myself, am not stone,
But the well of my hope is another matter.
The Friction of Salt
Image from Shutterstock
Pieces of her broke in the waves,
Searching for wildness
In this place she always went to be alone.
She walked along this shore a thousand times
In the dawn and the dusk
As if they were quantities unknown,
And thus, in them, she could discover some truth,
Some faith, some charity, some hope for herself.
Who knew? It had worked before.
She’d walk toward the town with something—
Some small bit piece replenished.
Besides–
She’d always heard salt was healing,
So she figured she’d rub it in her wounds.
But bloody red and raw
She walks still wounded, broken,
Along the wildness,
Yet not touching it.
Freedom elusive.
She can not find what she lost.
Her wounds chains,
Binding her still
To things she knew illusions.
She waits for the friction of salt
To rub away the chains.
She walks toward the seals in the surf
And on toward the whales in the deep,
Searching for truth or faith or charity
In the wildness of the sea.
The Garden
I gave you all my roses,
The many colors I had.
Cut them all from the bushes.
I knew there would be no more,
And I cut them for you.
The last few dozen blooms
I cut them down for you.
The bushes are dead now.
They will bud no more.
I double, triple checked.
The limbs snap crisply in dryness,
Easily between my weakened hands.
No supple green within.
A single snap finishes each limb.
And so finishes each bush.
I am done, a gardener
With nothing left to tend.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 