without writing

It is safe to say, I may be lying in a ditch somewhere
- when the words go away -
dead or dying
the rain is rising around me
puddles
ponds
rivers
drowning in rain, drowning in tears
fears
the forgotten
or what has become impossible
drowning
minuscule attempts for salvation
there are other bodies here too
given up on living
bodies, bodies, bodies for days
the road remains just out of reach, where the world races by
I cup my hands to my ears
one last attempt
for hearing your voice
I breathe in the exhaust, the discarded, the damned
and for a moment
I cease to exist

know me

Measure me

With the length of your thumb

Or your forefinger

Not only your eyes

Know me with your heart

Not only your lips.

Ask the questions

To discover

What lies beneath the layers

Of me

Peel back the skin

To explore the universe

That will unfold

Breathe with me

Under the sheets and out into the world

I am
tangled
in a web of forgiveness

sand

I wrote your name in the sand

Under the cover of darkness

Where the silence is deafening

The light of day long gone

Betrayal is bitter, more than I imagined

Life moves

With a billion different motions

Separating what we created

Everyone waiting for sky and earth to meet

Some just wait for roses

I stand and wait for the waves

To come and wash you away

If M&M's Were Antidotes

When I was young I had a dollhouse built with care, made by the hands of my father. With soft wood that smelled sweet, the aroma of home. Roof shingles painted red and the front walls open to the world. The rooms were small and filled with furniture, carefully crafted, painted and placed. A bathtub, a bed, a kitchen table, the tiny dishes in the perfect place. The dolls were dressed in prints with flowers and colors, their faces perfectly content. Smiling always at me with ease. I would create their stories, each with their own life theme, the dreams, the hopes, the dashing realities. Hours would pass as I sat in front of these people writing their stories, every day different from the next. A young girl goes out for a walk and if I decide differently, in moments she is upstairs fast asleep instead. The beauty of the redo. The simplicities of moving from one moment to the next. I used M&M’s to supplement the things I did not have.  Green ones filled plates on the kitchen table. Everyone needs his or her vegetables; I learned that as a child. Black ones came later if everyone had been good enough for desert. Upstairs on the bedside table there were red M&Ms used for medicine to cure the sick child who was still in bed. The blue were outside in the yard; soccer balls, basketballs and toys, which I never had. Green and orange I ate slowly sucking on the chocolate candies until they melted away.

Twenty years later I sit here eating these small candies by the handful noticing the colors; blue toys, red medicine, green vegetables.  I think about the many years that have passed since I held those little wooden people. Who knew these sugar coated candies could meet so many needs. I wonder as I am eating them now what our world would be like if M&Ms were antidotes. I wonder what it would be like to hand the dying mother a red candy to take away her pain, and move her from one moment to the next, from her death bed to her child’s wedding. If only color coated sugar could really make a difference. 

songs

Still there is silence

In my heart

I wait for the beating

Drums

And music

Of the strings

That you play when I am away

And when I am near you hold me

At a distance with fistfuls of fear

There is trepidation of trust

But even

Dangling

I fling my arms

Open wide

And enter the dance

Immersed

In the songs of joy

I have created 

guess it's just me here

I stand before you
my body bare
chest exposed
to your scrutinizing glare
my heart beating
I stand before you
and you are nowhere to be found

sinking

Your ocean is in my hair now
tangled where the waves meet the winds
vast space exists between here
and the edge of the earth
where dark places and abundant secrets are hidden
beneath the tantalizing layers of beauty
your crystal blue
I wade into you and
let myself sink deep

my palms

When I sit and look
at my open palms long enough,
I begin to see the world
I see humanity
I see love
I see heaven
with open palms, I see possibility
and creativity and grace and giving
I see all things in nothing at all.

entangled

the dance
we are all participants
holding the throat of another
before the discard
blood drawn with our own two hands
lingering under my nails and yours
our bodies move
from one to another
where we lay in the sweet
entanglement
breathing the air of discontent
you walk away
or I do
to the search
violent inquiry, exploration
of another
starting over with the remnants
shattered hope found in being left or leaving
we enter in, prepared for the great
conquest, migration, and settlement
nomads in the land we come from
it begins with eyes and hair and elbows,
entangled, grasping, strangling, death
it is the dance- we are dancing.

your edges

At the edge of you
I wander
through your cool streams and twisted banks
I linger in the overgrowth
tangled in the weeds
consumed in your scent
blinded by the moments
forgetting the grandeur
the strange beauty of what was meant to be
exactly
as it is

woodland

The woods are full of snow as I walk alone.

The branches bend, beckoning my body home.

Thorns pull me back

it is their delay that provides my waiting,

my stillness in all this white.

The crunching under my boots is a sound I had forgotten,

yet so familiar I feel as though it comes from within.

A million memories flood me;

barreling down that hill on an already broken sleigh,

crashing and repeating until our bodies ache with pain.

My favorite Christmas night.

Hours of shoveling, a Buffalo delight.

Your coat and breath, your hands in mine.

The bone chilling realities of being left and alone.

The comfort and sacredness of home.

I walk the hills and the frozen creek beds

following the tracks of life that disappeared moments before I came.

Tears form at the corners of my eyes

and I can’t place my finger on why.

D.

Divorced

Turn around and stare

Yes, you in the blue

Go ahead,

Judge me

It didn’t make me

It didn’t break me

I am different and I am whole.

You speak the word with disgust

Dripping off your tongue

Like a day old cigarette.

And to you, someone’s mother-

Thank you for the letters

Damning me to hell

They really made it all so clear.

No ones picnic my dear

The skeptical say,

You’re so young

She must be a mess.

I wonder how you got dealt the cards of perfection

Lets cut the bull shit

Divorce

Not. My. Identity.

words and flying

Poetry and airplanes

I am tired of missing you

And kissing you in my mind

Writing about the lack of you

A distant memory

Scribbled on pages within that little black book

The words I dare not say

Nonsensical and bare

Boarding, bag in hand

One full of mementoes stowed safely underneath

Flying far again

An engine with wings

Hot tea held in a Styrofoam cup

Sleeping through the confusion, disappointment, expectation

Hanging in the night air

I am held in limbo

Between worlds with you and without

smoke

I feel the cigarette between my fingers

Where your hand once was

Standing in the mud

The rain washes over me

My t-shirt soaked and clinging

Every little curve

I remember the exposure of your skin, the exposure of your truth

Telling you of love

Before you walk away

I know your kind

Smoke lingers in my mouth

Numbing my heart and mind

I don’t know you but I want you

The cigarette drips with rain and ash

Words are wasted and love leaves

When the rains come in Africa

a will for believing

God spoke in an unmistakable voice

Sounding a bit like my father or an ex-lover

But maybe it was just the voice of an old wise friend

The familiarity of the voice, soothing

Though I could not find its place

In a message that was all together foreign

And not my own

You are capable

The voice spoke, comforting but firm

The words lingering around me

Drawing me in and pushing me out again

A place I had been a million times before

A message I had never really believed

Until the well-known voice,

That was only the will inside me

Found the power to believe

tightrope walking

When the day summons away the night I am whole again

Unafraid of what is yet to come

Until I step into that day

Which pierces darkness

And your face is found there

At the edge of my nightmares

And the beginning of my dreams

Trepidation is overcoming

As I tightrope between

Risk and hiding

The endeavor of trusting

Mystery and Mayhem

Symphony

The sounds of life and living

Flickering fire

By the light of moon

Peace is a newfound friend

While the mayhem continues elsewhere

We sit quietly telling tales

Reminiscing on the remnants

Which I sometimes scarcely remember

Dreaming, while hiding

From what is yet to come

oh you

I am unimpressed by your ingenuity

Rattling transmission of mindless knowledge

That you so gladly express to rank yourself among the best

You are, blind to truth that exists outside of you

Claiming you see the light- when in fact you are the only one who does not

underserved and bewildered

Perplexed .

There should be a better word to serve such an understatement

Fucking perplexed.

Throw in profanity

Mix in miracles and disappointments

And there is a cocktail worth drinking,

Something leading down a far away rabbit hole

Alice without animals-

Wrapped in chains

Only the differences between your heart and mine remain

Causing a chasm to another sea

If I vomit in the palm of your hand,

-A sign of my repulse-

You would rub it away as a hero in disguise

Chalk it up as one for the ego

Set on a shelf, high among the rest

You’ll fight pursuing a beauty-

As I lay my body down to hold you up?

Not today my friends, not today.