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.)

A Meal of Memory

I am so angry at your big mouth...all you ate,
years and days and months and moments
MY LIFE
devoured by a cavernous appetite

and all of us cruising by,
gawking the stranded car
unaware of so many deaths...
more dead than not.
Were we at some level aware
that as long as we maintained
our steady speed
we'd see no bones?

Had we mourned,
had we but mourned
even one,
the next might have been saved.

The loss overwhelms me.
All these corpses
mine

This, my staggering void.
I don't want to move
if every footstep is dead again.
So I weed the garden
make room for life.

Lotta damn weeds.

Some photos from Delaware. Concentration problems are a functional symptom of lack of boundaries, and a clinical symptom of depression. There are so many sad and unresolved things within the brain that there is no mental space inside to work. It is almost as if you live outside yourself (for sooooo long! Boundaries are created, or not, in the 2nd year of life!). Depression is primarily made up of feelings of loss. Feelings of loss are perpetuated by concentration problems, because they equate to a loss of memory. Kind of a fucked-up Catch 22 if you ask me. I am learning so much. The things I photograph now make eye awakening sense. Had I but mourned. I guess you start class when you are ready to learn.

Every day, is day ONE.

Breaking The Seal

It's not like I don't want to live fully, unfettered and outside the box. It's just that the existing captions are so large. They seem to have been placed there by misspent ideas, as foreboding as parents. Every hallway I skip down has a mirror that mimics a serious outlook....a responsible tenure, as if adult propriety were inbred and inescapable. But not this night.

The storm gathered strength thoughout the day, almost as if everyone who cowered from it, fed it. Wind sliced the rain into sidelong glances that cut smarter than any dead stare. For an east coast summer night it was darn right cool.

It was the child who said, "Lets go outside and get wet. Can we, can we?" The beach had been there for three days. Not a one of us had yet been wet. But there was an undercurrent of youthful energy that seemed to say the milk has already been spilt, so we may as well play in it. I thought to decline. It was cold. My hair looks shitty wet. My clothes would stick to my body, which at my age is nothing to advertise. But Annabelle was tugging at my shirt hem and she wanted to play. I really had no worthy excuse that would appease her, so we all nodded what-the-hell and headed for the beach.

The sand was wet, and easy to run on. I ran fast, hard, spending all. I ran into the waves, back out, in again. We shouted stupid stuff and sang stupid songs and all the "stupid" in me had a brilliant time! It was the highlight of my vacation. "I want to get a picture of this" I said. We knocked on a door and a kindred spirit stood in the rain and captured us trying to look woebegone...

It didn't work.

I think I'm going to do more stupid stuff.

People outta be stupid more often.