ONCE

Walking along, I roll up my sleeves

And let the rest fall away.

I am a ship captain, flying blind

And “time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore”

(said my first-mate, once).

These are my wings, fluttering like the golden specks of god that billow and fall — a symphony — catching bits of heaven on the way down.

My converse too beat up to be anything but happy to still be here

A UPS driver smiles and winks at me as he drives by

A dog chasing after, stuck in the now, with nowhere else to fly 

 

One day, this will all be contained inside a single tear, shed at a song played on the radio (if we’ve fixed the world enough to keep such things around. Sadly, when I look around, I’m not so sure anymore).

But maybe you’ll sit on the top of your car, let the radio blare, the tear falling down to the same ground I once sailed on. 

Let the sky swallow you whole like the sea I walk upon.

​

PRAYER IN THE COLD

I press my hands together

to feel the warmth of skin on skin

the chills chanted by the wind

Pervading all my senses

There are, of course, times when the wind gives you blessings

Light, soft, like wings of a butterfly.

 

Butterfly kisses under the sun, on my blanket. The sandwiches you made. The grass clear and soft.

 

There are times I wonder if to kiss another body means to be kissed by the body of the world

As if, with the gesture, you invite the gesture:

the love of every flower, fish, bird that flies through our senseless senses.

 

In this chill:

My bleak, restless mind finds solace in my hands—

The symbols sifting through my fingers as I blow

I feel the coldness of a sharp, shoulder of snow

Uninvited

To process: to be in a boat, on a lake, moving slow

Understanding the way things come and go

Letting your body learn to know

The ebb and flow that swells below

oh-so light

oh-so bright

Chaos melts clear out of our sight

Or conquers the night, without a fight

– for chaos is deemed so only by the struggle against it – 

This wild disorder is a primordial force

I have no voice. My throat is hoarse. 

I have no will to fight the force. So it holds me in its coarse, warm arms.

We dance a samba, in the snow. I feel myself filled straight from the source.

 

The snow becomes a fire. It lights my lungs with thick, molten lava.

I expire the fire, and it floats up

A star in the sky

A sight to behold, there for all to watch, glowing in awe.

The fireflies give me kisses. Blessings received.

Thanks be, thanks be.

​

A NIGHT AT THE THEATRE

Standing in the kitchen doorway,

Gasping for air

Clutching his throat

“I could die right now,” he thinks

“Nobody is here to save me.”

 

It all started that evening at the play

Entering the theater, he saw her name on the program

(and misspelled, too. He wondered if she knew or cared).

He watched her kiss another man,

watched as he undressed her.

Her body, naked, the color of Chinese black tea

soaked in artificial moonlight (coming from just off stage-left).

He missed her body, then, wondering why he ever left her.

 

Walking home, it all shoots through his mind like bullets:

him, her, the man onstage; his muscled calves,

The words they spoke, the playwright writing them,

The playwright living them;

Great loves found and lost

like children in the park.

Obligation, paralysis,

The first touch, the last touch,

The barrier of touch — a membrane only able to permit being passed through twice, no more, no less.

His behaviors, a bored child, repeating without control,

without thought or consideration.

His loneliness – a parasite

 

He’s throwing up in the kitchen sink,

Hoping it’s all over, that he’ll never make those mistakes again (he will, but he’ll never have to watch himself live them like that, unless he chooses to go to the theater).

The moonlight, clear, graspable on the oven door

Her painting pinned to the fridge.

 

The real subject of our story:

The Playwright

Living it all over and over again, in search of another story

to make men throw up in their sinks

​

ORANGE SLICES FOR BREAKFAST

An orange with a little nub on it

rests on the table in front of me.

7:30 AM, my stomach rumbling.

And yet I stare, unmoving, at this small orange friend.

It’s wrinkled, spotted, imperfect

(Like all healthy oranges, like all healthy people)

And it’s happy just to be here,

like myself

on this Wednesday morning

where birds chirp outside, and

February has given us a taste of spring

​

SO

I’m Afraid to be seen

So?

Afraid is a word like any other

It works like a parasite, holding onto that which gives it power

False power, disappearing soon as you 

Look at it

a lake fading

Fading into the dirt quickly

Fake, long hair running slickly through your fingers

Then gone

 

They say to be the wave and the ocean underneath

Afraid to be the secrets that hide in my teeth

It’s hard to imagine a dagger with no sheath

Find solace in the waves, for they will bequeath

More knowledge than paper,

Than principles, rules

More truth than worries, doubts told by fools

A mirror reflecting unto you as you are

A picture from a foreign, heavenly star

 

Time is a cyclone

Balancing ferociously

With a sharp grasp,

Grabbing precociously

But imagine, for one minute, you can be held. Trust that you can be held. 

And carried back to the stars.

​

RED AND BLUE

Her eyes always seemed to be made 

of sea glass

Blue (the rarest kind)

A translucent night with

Waves crashing at the walls

Once sharp enough to cut

A child’s foot

Don’t break into shards, 

I beg

Don’t hurt me again, for we are

Still those children, approaching 

with bare feet, the

rocky terrain, feet as dogs,

leashed to our aging hearts,

pulling us forward onto daggers, 

Unknowing. 

And yet the waves

dull the glass, wash away the blood,

lap over our aged and wrinkled feet.

Our hands still on fire, alive but 

useless. Shaking, pressed together in 

Prayer for something not

so delicate, not so difficult

Not so dangerous

As seaglass

​

I have so much work to do but instead I’m thinking about this:

Driving on Grace’s Vespa – moving faster than I ever thought I could. And feeling the illusion of time.

She’s talking about what it felt like to fall in love. Like, before, she was on a boat in the ocean, scared of the water. And then the boat was ripped out from underneath her. Just gone. And she realized she could float – could fly. It took a few tries, some scattered, shallow breaths, lacking the hard, sturdy wood that used to hold her, but also barred the possibility of flying. Of feeling the motion of time underneath you. Reflecting the big blue sky. And suddenly, life becomes what it is. Flowing, like water. Shapeless, formless, evaporating before you realize, like the words she shouts back to me from the front of the bike. The words floating back in the wind, echoing into the past, 45,000 years back to our ancestors carving drawings on cave walls. Remembering what it felt to look at those paintings, me with my blonde hair, wearing the stolen cap and shorts from someone already gone in the grand scheme. Like I was looking in a mirror, through a telescope, seeing someone wave hello from 50,000 years in the future – when the Earth has chewed us up and spit us out (rightly deserved), recreated life anew, and hopefully, this time, they do things right. Looking at the stars and knowing the grass I lay in is the friend I’ve lost. Feeling time shattered like the mirror itself, leaving me awake in a dream, feeling the world keep moving, unsure if I’m left behind or moving with it, or all sides at once– the cave paintings, the painter, the humble traveller, staring at the wall in awe, and the future being, 50,000 years in the future, simply trying to get it right this time.

​​

FENNARIO

Marching towards Fennario hand in hand

Unlatching the Gates (of Eden?)

A flood of yet-unnamed colors

A horse and carriage just for two

Carries us along

A New Path to the Waterfall

Through symphonies and

Mariachi bands

To the beat of the calendar

Our hair grows long

Longer and longer

My beard starts to itch

The carriage marches on 

the world expands

Heading towards farewell, 

I turn away

Behind me, you smile

Wipe away a tear 

tuck a curl behind your ear

hum a little tune,

Gently, sweetly.

I keep moving. Heaven awaits

​