The Grief Fire

I'm standing by a grief fire
that's been wanting to burn.

I finally laid the kindling

and hash-tagged small sticks, 

struck a match, and let 'er rip.

It lit up like a mid-January Christmas tree

the flames hungry for reconciliation.

I fed it more...

memories, hopes, wishes,

just twigs really

hot and hungry, wishing to escalate.

I grabbed the logs next...

the heaviest oak of priceless loss

that would burn relentlessly hot

until expended.

I wanted ash.

I wanted that flame obliterated,

but it had a life span I couldn't rush.

The embers kept their glow,

photo edges curling, snaps of time melting like wax

every dream drenched in gasoline.

I stood intimately close

gazing as my hair burned, my face gone,

dying along with the fire

and daring a Pheonix rise.

Jaded Twinkie

Disappointment feels so lengthy
like the shelf life of Twinkies...
never half price
always buy one get one,
whether you want it or not.

I say this, with the sincerest wish it were a lie,
Moving too quickly through grief
will land you back at the start,
with the finish line looking more and more
like Hank Aaron's 756th home run.

I mourn my losses hard
with the level of difficulty I assign to most things.
I give them the sadness they are due,
holding funeral to dreams while still hoping
they rise from the ashes...
peeking shyly at their memory
from somewhere between an incubating belief
and a dying breath.

You just never know.

I was never a fan of Twinkies.
I like my desserts dense, like the weight of a castle
a monument...solid and dependable like that.
I don't understand anything light, or airy, or easy.
Tough feels familiar,
and too good to be true
usually is.

So I surrender for a season,
not black, not white, not all, not nothing
and there is some relief in that.
Even while sounding resigned and jaded
I am scanning for hope to light another fire
that doesn't easily expire.
A solid vision, a weighted dream
that won't escape.


(Dreams. I remember some dreams dying on the push-push of my son's effort, and others that seemed born of the sky...falling like gifts in a way that no one could ever predict. I thought my heart would break when his baseball dream took it's last breath, but to look at him now...his success and happiness? One has to wonder. I believe God has his hand in everything, and sometimes it all gets mixed up like scrabble tiles. But there still exists...the d, r, e, a, m....and the h, o, p, e, that one day the dream will reassemble in such a way that it can only be called a miracle.)

Word Cracking

I crack the world open
each morning
with a chiseled space formed
when my lips part.

It is a sign for you to enter
with curses or kisses...
my only preference
that either one, taste red.

I've grown chapped
forcing moisture in and out like a tide
my tongue fishing around
with no bait
yet expecting dinner...

this parched tongue
having forgotten the feel
of laying brick, building damns
that would hold the waters close
and the sharks at bay.

I am hearing new lessons
resounding with ancient proverbs.
You cannot reel a heart in
if you never cast fear upon a line of words.

I heard her holler "HENRY!!!"
the name flapping wildly,
intermittently soaring with longing,
mired in disappointment.

He smiled at her.
I envied her lips.

They were not dry at all.

The Underside

I chased the sun down
on my way
to what would never be a good idea.

But we tend to race towards the most inevitable collisions
wearing the colors of our last regret.

We've not yet learned
to be the docile companion of our own lessons.
Instead we hold court
and debate the details
while the big picture goes missing.

I chased the sun down
knowing full well it always wins.
I cannot catch it in my cupped hands -
delay the moment it hides
on the underside of the world.
Yet, when the moon recants the darkness
into a new beauty I wish to hold,
mistakes just seem as stars
that light the way.

What I'm Looking For

What I'm looking for
must not be right, or the timing of it off...
like a mysterious noise from under the hood.
I've craned my ear, but it is as alien as it ever was.

What I'm looking for comes to visit.
We sit on the porch in awkward summary of each other,
while random insects circle
looking for a place to land.
I'm circling too
but the chairs are occupied with our human shapes
leaving no room for the enormity of spirit.

What I'm looking for
moves towards me haltingly
a nervous hand expecting something unpleasant
from the very thing it aches for.
There is so often the hasty retreat
fueled by fear and young pain.
Pain that has an age is by far the hardest to survive.
If the pain is age 2, or 5
only the very brave can look at the full length of it
so the running is completely understandable
ending things like a chord resolved.
It's rather expected, and peaceful
though I wish it weren't an end.

What I'm looking for
seems to find me with a degree of regularity
but stays just long enough for my own growth to disrobe
and stand in that heady space
between complete vulnerability and abject purpose.
There, I allow myself to be the stepping stone
not the landing
watching with an almost parental pride
as what I want
crosses over to what I cannot have.

There are nomads.
There are drifters.
What I'm looking for
seems to have joined a band of wanderers
keeping step with other prodigals on the healing path.

Prodigals return
What we want gives birth to what we need
and I've heard tales, that what we look for
sometimes
looks back.

Stone Aged Loneliness

The cabin stood with the longevity of a world wonder. It was as if each stone had emigrated from a foreign land and drawn together out of a need for community. Having held the same footprint for centuries, the structure was stalwart, unwavering, unwilling to concede any ground to decay or progress.  The moon would rise soon enough, feeling no jealousy over the hours it was not luminary. Though brighter, the sun could never paint the water as beautifully, and every celestial body knew it. Here, at the edge of infinity, the only other illumination would be whatever wood, oil or wax a match was struck against.

The old man was unconcerned of wattage or time. His line was cast and the boulder on which he sat was the lesser twin to the one he leaned his back upon.  Soft, cushy places never gave him much leverage, and they seemed to foster an apathy he just couldn't stomach any longer. His line was slack, but he craved the pull. Tension meant there was something on the other end worth fighting for, and life had been flaccid far too long.

There was a quiet that had settled here, long before stone upon stone built human boundaries. That same quiet was a megaphone to anything out of the ordinary. The "driveway", a worn dirt path speckled with gravel and bird shit, announced arrivals as rarely as a holiday, and were just about as unwelcome. But loneliness drove a hard bargain and after a lengthening decade, he was ready to dicker. When he heard tires crunch a hesitant beat to the symphony of encroaching night...something in his gut quickened. He didn't care who it was, or how long gone, or how long stayin'. Everything suddenly went taut...and it felt damn good.

Yellow

It's a new wound on an old scar.
Once it heals
no one will know you've been cut open
and emptied out once again.
There will be nothing to show for this egregious pain
but the new way you will walk back into the world...
wearing, not hiding, a yellowing bruise.

In the moment of impact,
even the hours and days and months and years
past ground zero,
it would be hypocrisy to paint something so dark
with a sunny disposition.

Dark is dark
and pain is never yellow.
That color does not exist when a blade slices fresh
into all you thought was closeted away.
But on the edge of healing
it returns.

Yellow rips doors off hinges
breaks locks
melts chain.
It has muscle.
It's a bad-ass color you mistake for a daisy.
Imagine the sun...the moon...the strength!

Yellow is the beam
that turns all your shadow euphemisms
into real monsters.
But it's no chicken.
It stays in the room
surrounding everything...
and you, dizzy with the need to inhale,
will gasp.

Bathed in a color so long missing
you will fight to keep it.
You will fight to be light,
with light,
in light.
You'll fight like hell
ripping a new wound into an old scar.
And how much it hurts won't matter near as much
as the bloody way you will walk
back into the world
a delightful shade of hope.


(Sometimes we receive a new emotional wound, only to realize it has a history that we've been wearing like an old sweater. It seems comfortable and even comforting until it gets ripped off like a scab. Underneath is that still-tender place that really needs the healing.)