There are whispers of the winter in these branches
though laden, they, with trappings of the spring
There are echoes of your footsteps in these chambers
though I’ve bled them empty in my suffering

We were obstacles surmounted to the north wind
To the hillside, we were shadows on the sun
till the twilight brought the moon to bathe our madness
We were lovers once when we were very young

In between the broken earth and endless ether
bow the supple forms of every thing that grows
lower still as we learn futile is our reaching
tethered as we are to forces far below

There are murmurs in the music of the water
and the river’s voice grows fainter as it strains
to recall the roots it fed before the harvest
to hear the coming of renewing rains

What are we alone, we bones
and blood, we minds and hearts
animated then stranded on our rotating rock
to grow above the heavy handed, to walk
in search that reveals more than find
What are we in the darkness
but children, feeling our way blind
down these vacant yet familiar corridors
fingers poised to touch the light
we’re moving ever toward

Hope passes the blurred masses
on the streets wearing the face of a stranger
and so afraid to meet his eyes, they won’t know him
How fortunate the few that call him friend
and turn in bold degrees
to see him clear, to shift the shadows of the past
into the mist of their peripheries
How full my heart today, my friend, how light
How well-weighed with love for you
these words I write

ghostsandonionskins:

There are titans on the apex
there are monsters for the flame
I think I was a mountain too
when Jesus was my name

I think that someone moved me
when Allah was a quake
Seven billion hopeless prostrate
to a thousand war mistake

You went dancing in their flowered wakes
we went rolling in their smell
There are urges in your silken dress
to scream sweet proof of hell

There is nothing but the infinite
the universe impressed
The space between our trembling lips
The songbird in your breast

This is painfully beautiful, and I thought, hey… you guys might like to read something painfully beautiful on this here Friday evening. :)

I dug a hole in the backyard, approximately
three feet wide and four deep and afterward
couldn’t remember why I’d done it
so Kristin and I made a pitcher of Manhattans
and lists of all the things small and insignificant
enough that they could be buried there

A few more people left, a few more arrived
It’s like a bus (terminal), life, I guess
and after a while, the lady at the ticket counter
stops playing that game where she names each face
and writes them into her romantic tragedy
and simply directs the traffic toward the end of the line

I met this generation’s Cohen
He doesn’t have ears to hear that, but I still have
enough wonder left behind these blind eyes to believe it
and I locked the doors and turned out the lights and sat
for a week with a tea kettle and a whiskey bottle and exorcised
every word I’d ever spoken in my dreams to every ghost
and made them permanent and then slept

I went to the hospital once or twice where they refused
to believe me when I said my heart was beyond repair
and I took up painting and converted the garage into a studio
and then a gym and then an office and then a studio again
I wrote letters I didn’t intend to send, jokes for the people
that don’t realise they’re playing the game and confessions
for those that do, and I photographed undefined moments

My cat died and Erica’s cat died; it was a bad year for cats
apparently, but Kristin pointed out I’d found a use for that hole
It was too late, though; I’d already filled it in with July
Jeremy, August, my father, October, Christmas at your parents’,
what was left of January, and the year’s only snowfall
and looking now, you’d never know it was there at all

How many people will wake up tomorrow
with something in their lungs
other than the I love you
hidden away in that satin-lined box for a special occasion

We are too young, you know
to say I would have been
if only
and so today
I am a poet
and you
don’t have cancer

How many people will wake up tomorrow
to the realization that mortal coil
was just the broken box spring
beneath a borrowed twin mattress all along

Patrick, I’ve walked in the footprints of saints
a sinner in summer silk, barefoot and born
of the same cradle song that spun its constraints
through the paladins’ downcast, leviathan scorn

Patrick, I’ve prayed to the first light of morning
the fiberglass idols adorned on their thrones
to the sweat and the solitude, false and forewarning
the gathering host and their pride-purchased stones

Patrick, I’ve bent for the meek, and I’ve burned
for the frightened that drape in the guise of the bold
and I’ve wept over boxes and bowed before urns
but the way is still long, and the night is still cold

A pawn, a rook, a polished night
onyx against the alabaster
wood and stone, would she alone
move kingdoms if you asked her

Thursday with a hammer
Friday with a sigh and curve of hip
and lesser men have lain down arms
for less from looser lips

Broken on the bedroom boards
fine china, dawn, promises, hearts
A maddened mind’s mosaic
fashions absence into art

and fills the empty spaces in
with ether, air and light
then leaves the sad to do their dying
silent, shamed and out of sight

I leave poppies on the park benches now
for the ghosts of the young soldiers
imprisoned in the old men’s eyes
They lie a scarlet offense to the grey-green iron
defiantly alive against the rotting wood
until the church bells break the silence
to mark the slow march of the bent and weary
and defiantly alive; and the silence reclaims

as they pause to let the others pass-
the ones I can’t see- before pinning my offerings
to sharp lapels and plotting their strategies
behind neat formations on well-worn chess boards
And I will stain my lips a scarlet offense to quiet words
wake early on Sundays to spin ringlets through my hair
and blush demurely as they ask for a song
all for the chance to see this dying desert
for one moment bloom a Paris spring

I did the best favor I could think of
for the man that told me the backs of my eyelids
must shame the walls of the world’s great galleries
-I didn’t fall in love with him
not by that knee-jerk definition
that sets off alarms on biological clocks
sends every shadow-spooked soul
afraid to sit alone in a coffee shop on a Saturday
rushing to the hardware store for hammer, nails
and white picket slats

You can mislabel
virtually every other human emotion
love
but not that lurch in your gut
that trapdoor free fall
that sends people like me
jumping out of airplanes
in a vain attempt to replicate it
and people who forgot
to the end of a rope

He calls from Zurich or Austria
and with his eyes open
and mine closed
I walk down a Saturday cobblestone street
through the shades of history
and join him for coffee

Outside on the patio
the man that says he still loves me
stares into a bottomless night
and says he can see a flowerbed
a lawnmower and a fence
just because he knows they’re there
You can mislabel that
faith
but I think it’s the death of magic
and not all ropes
are merciful enough to snap your neck