Posts for June 2, 2019

Ashes

How can you fit into a small wooden box?

How can any container hold your spirit?
You were so much more. . .

than what remains

More than your body has been removed

The tangible ashes that remain contain

No song or sense of humor

No whimsy

No warmth to the touch

No exchange of love that came from your twinkling eyes.

Oh ashes of the one I love,

are there any lingering embers of life left in you? 

How I wish my longing for his presence could

cause you to burst into flame

and love to rise from the dust.

AH – Yes!  There is a phoenix of love waiting to ignite!

Bittersweet tears of remembrance kindle the undying ember

The warmth and joy of love rise from the ashes

Love that will never die lives on!

Even in separation –

                Love lives on                  

I have trust issues
I have a problem with opening up
People don’t always understand me
Comprehend how I can so easily let them go
But it’s only cause I never held on in the first place
My emotions are like a swinging vine in the middle of the jungle
swinging back and forth
and back and forth
Like a never-ending roller coaster and
the only one screaming is me
I scream for someone to hear me
For someone to pull the Emergency Stop
But the only voices I hear are the ones echoing
back from where they came from
But I can’t forget the ones in my head
The ones that tell me I’d be better off dead
that I have no purpose so it’d be better if I left
Yet in the midst of my self-destruct
There’s one voice that sounds like the mere whisper of the wind
A still, small voice that speaks in a place where none has every entered before
telling me I am loved
I need no human satisfaction
Or worldly pleasures for they are all forsaken
For on that cross of Calvary
on Golgotha’s tree
He set me free

miscellaneous time kept, unkept
and clustered. it’s a lot of the things untouched
that I keep in this now dust-filled apartment.
how many unknown memories
burnt under this night sky like dollar bills?
I lost my abacus by the river.
soon I must learn to swim again.

Cruelest month indeed,
even for those who don’t plunge
hands into dirt, turn
soil in hopes of harvest. Implicit
month of promise, when some
days the sun is an absent lover
returned even though
he never left the room. Something

      like that. Some warmth

to soften the rimed edges
of my heart, some color
splashed in the empty corners.
Something more than the placebo-
action of turning catalog pages,
their florid images of seed packets, knobby-
legged bushes, leafy stubs.
Their funky names, grandifloral premises.
For me, I simply want
a single rose

     to keep its promise.

Preserved I am
in a state of grace
from untimely death
on a whaling ship.

Preserved to become
a trader in whale oil
and a trans-Atlantic
shipping magnate.

Preserved to partner
with the aptly named Grinnell,
also known as the bowfin, which stalks
its prey in the shallows at night.

Preserved to be remembered
as obstinate, generous, and eccentric;
Huguenot, Quaker, and Episcopalian;
yet pardoned above all.

Bits of comfort;

trust and calm—

a narrower line of sight.

Fly,

free from certain outcomes

awake without rain

without music

without wind

without rest

Tiny silver hope;

bring forth an empty platter,

for tomorrow it will be filled.

Isn’t it

That you are you

And I am me

That this is life

That your car runs

The trees move

You think this

They say that

How weird

Yet beautiful

That grass is green

the ocean is blue

birds sing

Fish swim

I find it hard to write this

For the thought of the

Weird and beautiful

Is too great of a reality

That is often destroyed

Physically and spiritually

So much distraction from it

The chaos blinds us

The power blocks us

Confused?

To think too hard is alienation

Sometimes no sense

Makes the most sense

I feel like I’m crazy

What a fucked up masterpiece

This place

Our brains

Us

Everything

No explanation

Being you

Being me

Living

Isn’t it

To think different

To look different

To be different

Different… free

Isn’t it

So weird

But beautiful

I’ve never believed in reincarnation
 the idea that our souls are stretched
across different bodies infinitely
through the hard-edged timeline
some claim that it is to balance
things like karma and life
that nothing can ever be destroyed
or to explain that moment
when we step into those places
and feel the heartbroken feeling 
of home in a strange alien place

and if this is really true
where I keep coming back
I don’t want to anymore
I’m tired
weary of living and the faces
that, no matter where I go
they’re all the same
with the stories
and problems
that they keep spilling 
more than they do their drinks

if there’s a cosmic time clock
someone needs to show me how to punch out

I am the shore. No – hear me out:
I have long been a collector of things, a rescuer, harbor
for the tempest-tossed. Two years ago today, these words:
     ‘sometimes the whole world cracks open; sometimes it’s just your own heart.
      sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.’
And today, this thought: I am where things come to break
or rest : read that as you will.