Gasping for air

A tidal breath
must move boulders
to let fresh winds blow.

———————————————————————–

One of the hardest things to do is to forgive, to learn to love again despite the repeated disappointments. Being led to believe one thing, or a number of things, then have everything you build and counted on based on all that pulled from under you, leaving you not only with nothing, but coming out of it the “bad guy”.

This isn’t about fault finding, not really, cause you can mostly just blame yourself. But how do you come out of it less scarred, less cynical, less angry, less vengeful at the world and yourself? How do you come out of it with high hopes for hope, when most everything you learned to hope for about good, justice, love, fairness turns out not to be?

How do you move forward into becoming a best version of yourself when the good version brought nothing but pain, heartache and disappointment?

 

 

Transient follies journey away from routine and purpose

Do not go out softly
but like a free verse
rain into the Pacific

splattered then spent.
Odious vessel,
dry and salted.

Come watch comets
graze mountains,
with their audacity.

And eclipses! Behind
blue lights and fluorescent skies —
foibles of exigency.

Form was not made
for free spirits
to crash into. Watermarks

dance lively now, like petals
that once spiralled
outside our window.

beyond vanity, beneath pride

If I should fall a thousand steps into your arms,
will they not wait? For I
let not Cassiopeia move beyond her throne
to encroach my bed.
.                                         Let gravity
seek its master upon my feet
and warm itself in my slippers,

carry me through curtains
and clouds of deceit to reach a haloed moon
in an airless night. If I

should wait a thousand years for a single step into your arms,
will they not open? For I
let wide the gates, and fiery the oil

to relinquish the kingdom and forge
against the current into the quiet distance.

First Light

What it is,
tethered to your arms?
Sex has gone.

Intercourse hurled itself
out the door and into the highway,
lured by the hitch hiker’s course.

Your penile shaft bears
no resemblance to a sheathed dagger
that once slayed

indiscriminant of pussy lips and vulvous tongues.
Hands that hailed eyes
shut to meaning, mouthed

delirious to more than ailments of corporal pleasures.
Flesh to flesh,
breath to skin,

sweat of your brow
dripped into the last sheets
soiled and saturated.

But what is it,
tethered to your arms still?
Transfigured

to what lingers beyond
a look and a touch,
strings the web to another bridled day.

Throw-away love

There once was a young man
lost at sea.

For days his mother wept.
An old man came.

Solemn, she begged,
“Bring him back.”

“A life for a life,
that is the law.”

“My years are at an end,
his has just begun.”

That night she bled
until daybreak.

The men appeared, fished
her son on their vessel.

She smiled with no fare-wells,
and left.

Her son held no funeral,
made no tears,

became a drunkard
and died just the same.

Fire-chaser

Nobody talks of love thrown into a gutter.

There is no glory in leaves
rotted to mulch,
turned with dirt.
They drain
and clog.

One look begins our pain,
one sweep ends their suffering.

We attend
at all times
a need to strive
and tend our strife.
To clear the heap,
we burn,

return to ourselves in a corridor of light,
and make do with the bareness of our hands.

The mind follows,
the will carries.
We reach

and let go.
Our smoke
glides the current,

for dreams do not die,
only granted
to the passing-by.

Markings

He  asked the farmer, “What is holy?”
In his eyes,
it is the sun that burns
his crops.

He  asked the fisherman, “What is holy?”
In his eyes,
it is the sea that drowns
his ships.

He  asked the laborer, “What is holy?”
In his eyes,
it is the earth that burdens
his body.

He  asked the soldier, “What is holy?”
In his eyes
it is the battle that destroys
his home.

He  asked the priest, “What is holy?”
In his eyes,
it is the cross that bloodies
his soul.

He asked the child, “What is holy?”
In his eyes,
it is his father that treads
his worth.

Flowers of War

They march
withered but undying
with mud
trampled sweetly on their fallen faces.

A new sky and a tender wind
grant severance from the sea.

Haunt us no more
with your pikes and arrows.
Blend our moanings and call our names:

the sunflower,
the wind,
the moon sheen breaks

a mirrored frame,
a knighted sky,
and iron cast in embroidered lace.

I lay my hopes in
a hinterland of grace/waste.

What will a soul bring
that a body cannot
in sorrow or in death?

When sentiments of corpses
hang high from windows
paneled by offense,

stars fall on broken strings.

Do not fear life
nor death
but being caught in between.

And the fallen

dredge in mud
knee deep
but sky high

trudge the sludge
plod the crud
and form tracks

nearly sighted
look far
to reach

growth will follow