New Language

I taste your touch in the texture of every Word.

this is what we are,

distant longing in souls held close

hearts shouting through the Infinite

only to be heard by each other.

Words in thought yet unspoken,

raising ecstacy in wanting hips.

these are our hearts

bent in succulent extremes

during our stolen moments,

dancing in electric space

while fingers speak,

while souls reach

moonlight in a diamond eye,

shining in the Love we build.

all easy we flow even still,

even now,

vibrations still manifesting,

resonance ever moving,

tasting imagined sweat,

drawing forth milk and honey

to pour onto the alter of our desire;

flowing through night and space

believing in the Truth of union,                                 

the seed of Cosmic storms.

share my pain in the dream of the now-

this singular moment

hanging between the sky and the ocean

as we sleep hand-in-hand under the idea

of our virtual orgasms-

in the deep purple time.

freed from planetary shackles,

from our worlds of work and responsibility,

to swallow the evening summer breezes;

the water leaping in the late sunlight,

and in that moment, divine,                                            

speaking new language.

I cannot bring me back from there, that place,

That distant aerie where your soul my heart did touch.

Lamentations

It has always been easy for me to write.  It is part of what I am, who I am.  So as I stare out this window, across a moon filled night that I’ll never again share with you, I write.  Pen and paper, the only two constants in my life.  All that I had when I had nothing, and all that I have again.

I find myself writing anything these empty days.  Phrases from old songs, random thoughts, hell even grocery lists.  Anything and everything. I even copied, word for word, that Bugs Bunny cartoon that you used to laugh at.  It’s almost funny when you think about it, I’ve been writing since I was 10 years old and never have the words been so available, so prolific or so meaningless.  Hey, if it was somebody else’s life, I’d laugh myself.

At least I can still call myself a writer.  I mean I still put pen to paper, or fingers to keys if you want to be all technical about it. And that’s what writers do, right?  Even if all I manage to do is rehash bullshit.  The only original thought that I’ve had these last months is that when you left, all the color, all the magic in my world went out that door with you.  I see your face every time I breathe.

I am a man of words caught in a place where all my words are no more than pale memories.  If I write “eyes,” my hand does not drown the way my soul did in yours.  No matter how many times I whisper the word “kiss” it is not the excitement of your lips, not the racing of my heart.  I can say the word “touch” until it echos off these empty walls, but it will never be the hand that placed my hand on the pulse of the world.

All in all, I have learned two things since I’ve had all this time to reflect.  The first is that writing is all bullshit.  It’s worthless.  I can, and do, write the word “stop” until the cramps make my whole arm tremble.  But not once has it kept us from arguing that day or you from driving away. I can and do, scream the word “no” until my head pounds and the tears start again in these eyes that I know should be dried out by now, and it doesn’t keep you from walking out that door or that car from hitting you head-on and taking away my love, my life, my Art and my future.

The second thing I’ve learned?  Well, I’ve learned that the saddest thing in Life is that Life continues, even when our hearts tell us that it should not, that it must stop; that living just goes on and on whether we want it to or not. 

Three Crows at Sunrise

I often awaken in time to see

Dawn’s initial understanding,

But at first light today what appeared to me

Were three crows, off in the field standing.

I wondered, ‘Is this some kind of warning,

Or the unseen world’s shorthanded way

To let me know that my death comes with the dawning

And this is to be my last earthly day?’

‘Should I run and wake my sleeping wife,

Tell her one last time of the depth of my Love,

Give her all of the hidden secrets of my life

Before I am called back to that I was made of?’

‘Shall I hold my son one last time

Praying and imploring him to grow to be a Man?

Or should we play and sing some silly rhyme

So I can hear his laughter as I hold his hand?’

I awoke this morning, as always, seeking the sun

And found instead three solemn crows.

Now, wondering if my life is now done,

Should I shoulder my lifetime of woes?

‘Will she remember me to the children

While I lay rotting in the ground?

Or will some other man grow with them,

And take all of my pictures down?’

‘Will she cry for me in the night? ,’

Is what I ask these hateful crows,

‘Or forget me once I am out of sight?’

I guess I’ll never really know.

But then I stop my breast beating and ask,

‘Is this how I am, is this really me?

To see three birds, casually hopping past

And let myself start to feel all melancholy?

If these that I love grow to forget me,

Then that is, of course, their right.

But even if they won’t have tomorrows with me,

They’ll all know that I loved them last night.

I tell these crows, ‘Yes they may find another

If with you I am called to go today,

But if you look into their hearts you’ll discover

That my memory there will ever stay.’

‘So I won’t be split by this internal strife,

Stupid birds, if you’ve come to carry me on.

The saddest thing that I know about life

Is that life must always go on.’

‘I will not let my soul be lost

Even,’ I say, ‘if it is time for me to die.’

And with that the crows as one take off,

And silently up, over my head, fly.

‘Be gone,’ I say. ‘A good riddance to you,’

I scream at their ebon tails,

‘Love is Love and that stays true

Even when all else fails!’

I stand a little longer in the doorway

Just enjoying the fair weather.

And on returning to bed, I have nothing to say

Finding my wife, newly stilled, lying next to three black feathers.

October thoughts

October is one of my favorite months.  It's generally, depending upon what part of the country I may be in, not too cold, not too rainy, but cool enough to dress like an adult. (I still believe that shorts, while they have a place, should mostly be worn by women and children.) We always called it "gettin' right for the weather" and I still look forward to it.  Plus October is the beginning of the death of the year, so to speak, and that has it's own attractions creatively and psychologically.

Maybe it's a holdover from years of "hallowe'en indoctrination" as an American, but October brings with it a certain taste of death.  For Al Davis and Steve Jobs more than a taste this year.  Culturally this is when we are allowed, even encouraged to seek out darker impulses, physical or spiritual. Americans don't really deal with death well, individually or collectively.  We tend to either romanticize or demonize our dead. But we lack a cohesive mythology as a nation, so "national" deaths become political. On second thought, I take that back. Politics is the national religion of America.

Invocation

Will you drink with me,

Of the earth and the days

Which have passed upon it?

Will you drink with me,

Of the sky and the words

Which have passed between us,

My breath to you and yours back?

Will you drink to the fullness

Of the fire we kindled together,

First in spirits soaring, later

In singing flesh,

As our essences mixed, becoming

Starlight to radiate reflected in

Our sweat?

Will you drink also

Of the seas we’ve created,

Oceans brought forth from that

First glance; waves from you

Engulfing me as I submerge you;

Not just sweat, though it too flows-

Attaching chest to breast, lips to neck-

As my deeper fluids inundate you

While yours splash against my soul?

Will these things set us on Isis?

Will this guide us through the spaces in

Our togetherness?

If so, then let your wing`ed self

Stand here in the courtyard of the

Temple and drink with me.

And when the soft rains come

Let us think of each other,

And our few, precious days,

As we continue to grow and become.