I love you

there is no one else but you

I run to the door before your knock  

no one is there

but where can you be?  

a voice holds me still

I don’t love you

goodbye

No more howling into the wind, no more screaming into the night, no more listening for that last word, the last breath, the sanguine reply, no, not without you, I reply. Life goes on, time doesn't stand still, nor does the air during the night's chill. I savor the past, some of it at long last, the sweet smell of roses, the heart when it beats out a rhythm to write into the daylight hours. I savored those moments, that time spent together, and I'll still listen for the chime in the old tower. I always have a goodbye planned, just for an occasion such as this at the end of a story, at the end of a book. The book closes on the last chapter, the last page, the last line...there was the last word I remember. I'll pick up another story, but none so sweet, none so rare, none so deep.

A Note

Listening to the wind tonight, my heart reminds me of how it loved to sing to you, I can smile at the memory of little soft notes carried on a breeze, I can hear it in your voice, remembering; yet, without warning, you spin me inside out with torrents of pounding bassdrums - recalling more thoughts of you tonight, making me hurt - a forceful wind, buffeting my senses, a never ending force from which you come and turn me around to face my muse, my tiger, my nemesis,  from whom I am falling, falling, falling from grace.  You toss me away, you catapult me into the clouds of turbulence; disoriented, I fly with nothing to grasp - a hand is all I ask, just a hand. Listening for my love, a sweet note of music is all I ask. 

                                                       

The Train

the train

the naked sound

I heard the whistle

the high pitch like call

a bird crying to her mate

in her flight, the lonely flight

hold back the night, the lonely night

the train

relentless to brag

no soul can resist

calls the lonely near

anchored in sadness and sorrow

the night blooms with anguish temptation

the day shares her heartbreak world wide

Alone

a dropping off place, that’s where I’m left.  the side of the road on an empty park bench. alone. a pigeon, an ant, a sow bug curls up under a rock..quiet and still, alone, next to a stone.  abandoned to sit, still, a park bench.  a bird’s excrement drips slimy white goo along the edge where I sit. grime on the slats, someone’s spit. waiting, I'm nothing without you. alone.  a horn honks in the street, a skater skates by, a look to the left, right. a single white cloud in the sky. the moon came up a dozen times over the hills, through the trees, plunging down, down in the valleys. a year,  no goodbye. I sit waiting.  the pigeon waits to be fed.  I have no food.  she flies away.  I sit and wait.  no return.  the sow bug crawls to the next rock, the ant walks home.  on a breeze, the cloud lingers, disappears.  the whistle of a train, I hear.  I’m here, alone.

Air

my god, the air burns without you!

my god, the air is empty without you!

my god, the air is cold, now colder without you!

I hung up my coat, I threw down my gloves, I can’t breath the air without you!

the sky is darker than pitch, I can’t see past the horizon without you!

silver white bolts streak across the heavens, a great bright light, but my god, I can’t see without you!  into the abyss, the molten lava flows, down through the ages, since the beginning of time plunging my soul, the heat touching my heart, my veins, runs the blood of time, but my god, my soul, I can’t live without you!

 

How do I touch you, without touching you?

It’s over.

It’s hard to know when something is over, without a beginning.

The day started out like any other day, ordinary.  I wrote, I read, I went out to play, just like any other ordinary day.

I didn't know how small or how large a part I would play, but we found each other, and we played with words, around her life and in mine.  Soundlessly lurking, that’s how it was to be, for her, not for me.  Words came easy, and then got hard from experimenting with taboos, my guess.  I said, “I love you.” 

She leaned the umbrella of words in front of the sun, blocking out the rays, a shadow crossed her face.  I leaned in and pulled back the umbrella to pick up my words from across the arc, the static was palpable.  I needed to see clearly those eyes her pictures revealed, only her eyes could tell a truth she so cleverly hid with the manipulation of her umbrella.  She needed to maintain, she said, a distance from the sun.  I experimented with speaking the truth, at least truth as I perceived, but it was not how she saw it.

I sheltered my words against a wall, the wall she leaned against from her side, balance is what was between us, a solid wall of balance and shelter and protection and shadows to hide beside.   When my words got too close, the wall grew higher, when I shortened my words, the shadow receded and I could catch a glimpse, just a fraction of a nose, a forehead, a chin, and even an eye on occasion.

Experimentation grew forced, I couldn't keep it up, for wanting to see her whole face.  I was tired, I was weary, and I was frustrated knowing there was a whole face behind that hiding place.  I knew it was wrong for me to head into that space, but I was overwhelmed with a feeling I couldn't fathom as real.  I needed to find realness somehow, someway, someday.

She wasn't receptive, she found me critical and offensive, attacking her sensibilities, her norm, her quiet time, her aloneness, her cultivated art.  I wanted to change all of that, the stupid being that I am; why couldn't I just be satisfied to lurk in the way she did?  Impatience comes with my territory.  

I am sorry for my honesty with my words. Perception is everything.  Experimentation without perception becomes a danger zone.  We never established what the word friendship meant to either of us.  The deep connection, as she said, was there.  But what does that mean when two people can’t build on that connection?  It is too deep to delve, too deep to unearth, is it as deep as Murakami’s well he put his character in, that god awful well, the solitude that nothing else can describe, I felt it, yes, I know it.

Can I change who I am to meet the needs of someone else, when I really don't know what those needs are unless they become revealed?  Or is it another’s responsibility to bend the umbrella back a bit and let a ray shine into the daylight hours, or is it to be two people who climb the wall at the same time, rock by rock, one stone at a time, again and again; crawling with only bloody stumps; fingers left behind, leaving a swath of stain that marks the very spot two people gave into the disastrous place of letting go and refusing entry.

“I'm fucking sorry”, she said.

I pivot around and take in a glimpse of daylight on my side of the wall, but when I look up I see a black cloud above my head, so black I can’t recognize where the wall is any longer.  I cry for that wall, for the prints our fingers left upon each stone.  I cry for the moments I lost while hunting and not finding; for looking and not seeing, for searching by day and by night, only finding a closed umbrella and no one standing there.

I cry with that empty feeling in my gut, my throat closes, the water in my eyes stream down and fall onto my chest, my breast, my belly, my lap.  I can’t see for the loss that is in front of me.  I can no longer see what it is I was trying to find.  I can not longer see for the dark shadows that now cover my heart. 

I lost.  I experimented, I searched, I dug into that well, and I lost; the light, the only way to find an opening was through the light.  I plunged into darkness, the hell that seizes the muscles, the pain beneath the layers of skin of holy need.  I was no longer needed.  Plain and simple:  She didn't need me.

I died a death that day, there was no turning; neither front nor sideways, not to the left, nor to the right; no amount of pleading would work, for she shut the door soundly, and the window and the curtain, she shut every avenue I could walk down.  I stood.  I stood in the dark, and that’s where I remain.

No compromise - No middle ground - No mediation - Non existent.

I thought about butterflies today. I thought about how beautiful they are; I thought how beautiful my once upon a time friend was to me, once upon a time.  I thought about how these delicate wings try so hard to keep a body floating up in the air.  I thought of her.

I wondered at the human balance.  Whatever that balance was, I lost that balance in a few hard truthful words - I upset her balance; a teeter-totter balance that was difficult to maintain – I caused her to fall because of the weight of me.  I can only enter into a butterfly's world by watching from afar, I cannot touch, I can only tearfully watch, for if I touch a wing, the butterfly will surely die, and so will I.

  

Once Upon a Time

Tears came down..tears dried up along the way

I wish there were a better way to say I love you

holding you, loving  you, weeping stories, shed day after day

I clasp your hand, I open the palm and hold it to my tear wet cheek

I can feel your pulse, and with every beat I loose a dream, that last night of hope and longing for acceptance.

Do I speak, will you listen, a song never sung, a word never written, a time without laughter, and sorrow gains the threshold

lost are the glorious waves, gone with the tide; sand prickling our toes, salt air filling our lungs, filling with a richness, a harmony of music unspoken to wipe away the tears; I cannot stay, I cannot say:  I will always love you.

In my dream

a little poem when you lose someone you love

I dreamed a dream, you were in my dream it seemed

walking, hopping, skipping jumping

running in my dream, it seemed

I loved you once, I loved you twice

the second time was awfully nice

you sat beside me in my dream

you told me stories, dreams of ice cream

I couldn't play, I scared you away

to you and to me, what could I say

I let you go, I threw you away

lonely now without my dream

lonely days and lonely nights

no longer in my dreams

never to return, it seems

I cry in my sleep now

I cry in the day too

I cry every night without my dream

I cry all for you, it would seem

I DELIBERATELY

       

I deliberately said the things one friend doesn't say to another

I deliberately made you angry  

I deliberately threw you under the bus

I deliberately hurt you

I deliberately caused you pain

I deliberately caused myself pain

How many ways can you cut off your arm

How many ways can you shut a door

How many ways can you say goodbye

How many ways can you say I love you

…...and this is why I deliberately…..