---

∴

sometimes
you come to know a person
well enough
to know
they’re not worth knowing,
at all.

this is hardest to accept
when you have let
them mean something
to you –

or worse –

when you let yourself think
you meant something to them.

and a slow realization
peels your fascination,
like a slippery, silken, gossamer bed sheet
that gift-wrapped rubble,
and reveals their hypnotizing fallacies
as nothing more
than a snake charmer’s tune
and a play
in which you played
the fool.

 

this is unlike me to say.
it is naughty
and un-ladylike,
i’m sure.

 

but it’s true.
you know,
it’s true.

 

once you realize what mankind
can be made of,
it is an act
of unfathomable trust,
i think
to offer friendship
and more still,
to offer love
again.

 

but we do.
you know,
we do.

 

some lessons are harder learned than others.
and much more humiliating.

but if learned well
and taken to heart,
are worth their weight in gold.

∴

 

 

---

 

---

∴

the disadvantage of writing –
and writing quickly –
everyday,
is that you do not have time
to censor or edit.

but of course,
you could say
that the beauty of writing –
and writing quickly –
everyday,
is that you do not have time
to censor or edit.

you must include fact –
at least, fact that is truth to you –
and just enough fiction
to make your truth
worth reading.

it makes me think of fact
as the solid black lines
on a child’s coloring page
that give the shape of what is.

digestions of fact are the colors
you choose to fill those lines in with.

and of course, in a room full of children,
all equipped with the same,
solid black lines,
you would never get two identical pictures,
not even if they tried
to copy each other.

no one really knows all the truths you live with
and consume
but may come to an understanding
if in the end,
they look
at the picture you’ve made.

i am writing now
as one doodles on a scratch pad
while talking on the telephone.
i make boxes and circles
to delineate boundaries
and organize the traumas
of the past year
and try to make sense of the design
that’s left behind.

perhaps the act
of crossing my t’s
and dotting my i’s
will balance some
facetious scale
that once made level,
will straighten also,
the picture i’ve been coloring
for so very long.

∴

 

 

---

---

∴

they say
in the west,
you marry who you love

and in the east,
you love who you marry.

 

i say
the sun
keeps going round
from east to west
and back again

and love is choice
and giving gives
when to love’s
keeping
you attend.

∴

 

 

 

---

 

---

∴

this journey seems to have led
to some strange dead end
where a reflecting pool greets me
and is clear.

there is no shape of me
to recognize
so i wonder if i’m the water, itself
gone
and waving away.

would it have been more spectacular
if i had caused a flood
or parched the land with drought?

would i then have been able to show
i had changed?

but how do you quantify
the new drops caught –
like rain in a barrel and filling –
while the seams of me
seeped out
the rest.

though i may not seem
more full
or more empty

the contents of me

have been stirred.

∴

 

 

---

---

∴

you can tell me that all this nature

is unnatural –

given how out of season it comes –

but every part of me

nestles into it

with force,

like cattle coming back to the barn,

breaking fences to return home,

cause they know

they could die out there.

some storms

require shelter

to survive.

∴

 

 

 

---

 

---

∴

in a sea of children,

there are only a few
that are still searching
for magic;

and there are fewer still
that generate
magic
on their own.

i don’t mean
a hocus pocus kind of magic.
no, not that.

i mean to say,
the ineffable wonder
at our mutually held creation
and the nearly supernatural
sculpting
of thought

that makes our creation
come to new
life,
enhanced
and dancing.

those children are rare.

they grow –
as we grow –

some succumb to the regimen
of adulthood
and adopt their uniforms of state
with trim corners and
manicured lawns.

some go out to the woods
and never come back.

(i wonder sometimes if they happened –
unluckily –
upon some witch’s cottage,
or if they became the witch,
themselves.)

and some are fortunate enough
to be aided
by a wrinkled old raisin of the flesh,
whose spirit still flits like a butterfly’s wing,
and whose eyes are still sharp
for the spark of magic
in others.

though it’s in me to be,
i am not really
either of those –
the child
or the raisin –

but at least,
i can see them.

and i watch
and feel delight
when they grow into each other
and change little corners of the world.

∴

 

 

---

 

---

∴

we all must find a place
in which our voice is unadulterated ours,
in which our still pens go freely flowing,
in which our eyes alight on beauties
that we find beauty in.

in which our questions can be safely asked
and our possible answers be pondered.
in which our inventions be welcomed fails
and our successes be privately cheered.

for there will always be the place in which
our value provided and values held
will be weighed on duty’s wearisome scale
and wear away oneness of one that we are
and forget us to our promising selves.

 

take heed and find it –

this place of sonorous secret knowing

– and therein live true.

∴

 

 

---

 

---

∴

am i under a lightless sky?

for the young ones say
the moon was too inconstant
and must be gone,

and the sun too hot
to be trusted,
and is banished
from the heavens.

but we the old,
who recall the daytime warmth
and the mystery of glowing nights,
are left stirred and wanting
for ancient lights.

must i disarm the stars too?

for they remind these green and stripping barks
of the bulbs of yesteryear
and incite in them
a fierce and religious fear.

but i tender and withered,
and under dark skies plead,
no day without both lamps lit can be.

as it is in you.

as it is in me.

∴

 

 

 

---

 

---

∴

it is said
that Mother Teresa of Calcutta
went to India
after God told her to do so.

it is also said that
even in her early struggles,
though she would ask,
He did not reply again.

i understand that she waited –
throughout her entire
life-long
service –
to hear more.

but no more came.

and she persevered.

 

it makes me wonder;

 

what love is this?

 

that can alter the course of humankind
on one request, alone?

that can feed us
throughout the ages of ourselves
so nutritiously
that we are sustained
to go empty
and full?

whose memory is enough
to embrace us in arms
that intangibly hold.

 

what love is this?

 

and why,
for so many of us,

is it not enough?

∴

 

 

---