Heartbreak (for "Million Dollar Baby")

It was heartbreak that did it.
It was the break that did him through.
A heart was meant for breaking, for breaking . . .
The pain which is seen with tiny eyes inside.
A broken nose doesn't hurt too bad,
But break the heart, the soul,
The unseen backbone to it all,
To existence--
That is what did him through.
Stabbed with an immortal blade,
These wounds will never heal
And he will never come back to us.
We break and break and break
And cry until the tears come and wash us.
The sweetest water that ever washed our garments.
And tears will save us,
But what when the well runs dry
And we are broken again with no water
To heal?
Life holds its appeal
Only to the brokenless.
Because my arms won't move if hers won't.
She without limb; now me without heart
We are the same.
And death follows.
We are built to be broken
And broken to be built again,
But his heart was rent the last time
And he held nothing in his hands.
Life's blood ran out his soul
Like water drains through bullet holes.
The devil took his heart and wept over it in hell.
Misery loves nothing.
It's just misery.
And the devil weeps forever without tears.
His worst burden is the immortal blade
The Lord gave him, and he breaks the hearts
Of man until they can not mend themselves.
The irreversible pain is sent to him forever
And the broken man to God.

It must be so
For there is no answer to the broken hearted down here.

--June 2006

Becky Joe

Can your trouble really outweigh the joy of a back scratch? Who can drown the perfume of a flower or the rain upon your face? Nothing can. Not a heartache or a doubt. Not a C-grade or a D. Not a famine or a drought. Not the man you fear is better, nor the mock you feel for failure. You are the King of every moment and the Queen in every mirror. You were not made for moments, but moments made for you. You are the topic of every line and the subject of every play around you. You do not play supporting cast in your existence. You are the star, so every flower was grown for you. And every snow flake the blessing of your eyes. The world is yours. Not you the world's. Of all things you are most gifted, for you can choose the curve of your mouth and move of your hand. And God risked everything to make it so. The riskiest of His creations, you have all power to choose your smile or frown. God wills your smile, but allows your frown. For your freedom, He risked your heaven or hell. And He wills you to Him with all He has. All God Has. God has it all, but you. Until you choose Him. How it must pain Him to allow you NOT to scratch your back or smell fresh mango or taste big snow flakes or see wax melt, so that you can choose it. Because you hardly ever do. You choose to worry it might all be gone someday. And what if it is? If it's gone then you must be. For alive, you have it still. And dead, you have it still. Get used to the happy flowers here; in heaven, they're everywhere. But if you can't see it here, how will you know it there? You've only learned to spot trouble, so when there is none, you will be confused and empty, with nothing to worry about and no idea what happiness is--no idea what you're experiencing. But what of the bad? Can a man simply live ignorant of trouble and still grow into a man? No. But you no more need to seek out pain to know it is there than a fish needs to seek out air. Trouble waits past every stroke. And trouble may kill you, but don't beach yourself before you're beached. Don't miss the rainbow scales upon your skin. Take all the pain and breaks and loss and blow them through your arm hair. Billions of sensors on your skin wait to make you feel them. Don't wait for trouble to pass first. Make trouble wait for you. Your feelings are otherwise engaged. You are feeling the hair move on your arm.

then

don't look at a picture
at a book
at a word
at a mark on a page
and see anything
really anything

don't hear a song
hear a note
hear a sound
hear a noise from inside
and listen
really listen

don't ask me for the words
for the notes
for the anythings of somethings real
how could it exist for you
if it doesn't

I can't give you that

is not

Why talk.
Why speak your mind
When not
Inside of one.

Why voice the thing that isn't
loud enough to know.
You can't forgo
the speaking of what's not.

It isn't not.
The same unspoken thing,
the not alive and not existing,
erupts the inner walls resisting.

But talk to let it out?
Expose the thing unliving?
Reveal the unrelenting
pounding of still air?
It isn't fair.
To feel so much of nothing.

Forgiving

Give me an unloved heart.
An unheld hand,
A friendless part
in life's great play.

Send me forgotten books.
Works out of print
That no one looks
at anymore.

Make me the starving child.
Neglected soul
left to the wild
earth writhing.

But let me love. Don't take
from me my needing
wanting, pining
heart--
the pilot flame
that lets me start
my life again.
If I can feel
my fire of living;
If my heart loves,
I am forgiving.

tiny hands

Do it for tiny hands.
Those fingers grip mine
when swinging the little person attached.
Those fingers hold mine
when pleading for the smile I have.
Those fingers stroke mine
when nothing's left to do but stand.
They're always in my hands.

Because my hands are strength.
Because my hands are love.
Because my hands can heal
the wanting from your little frame.
Because you trust your world through mine,
And see the start and end of time
in every moment just as kind
and full of hope as ones behind
the ones you're in.

You are the reasons I still am,
reminding me no reason can
give justice for my lingering soul,
so bent on hell from lost control;
But you--the reason part and whole
That I'm allowed new youth at all.

Then look at you and feel you mend
my damaging, weakening, reckless trend
of growing old.
Who could have told
me standing there, I'd be so bold
to live again?
--rebuilding soul with tiny hands
And making heart feel young again.

Don't Worry

Don't worry the man so distant.
He's only real that way.
Don't give of yourself unassisted.
Your guide, he's not, nor stay.
You'll only fall when resisted,
And feel your world something twisted.
He's worried sick that you've missed it--
his need to go away.

You can't think
But you want to.
You can't feel
But you need to.
You can't wish
But you seem to.
Not knowing anything,
remembering,
experiencing,
foreseeing,
anything.

She believes in fate,
He believes in will,
You believe in both,
Not making sense of it.

It's supposed to make sense--
You should feel reason.
Of course it doesn't make sense--
That's life.

Life is up to you.
No one will do it for you.
You aren't yours.
You didn't do it--He did.

Work like it's all up to you.
Pray like it's all up to Him.
Be glad to be totally confused your whole life,
Split between a straight and bent neck.

You shouldn't be confused.
Don't you read the Good Book?
Good people aren't confused.
Pretend for now,
I'm sure you'll be good someday,

When you don't think so much.

I want to be good,
but I want to think.
Why is good so unreasonable?

It wasn't right. Tom never healed completely after the surgery. A surgery he never should have had. Where's the nobility in giving up a part of you if the void kills you? Tom was perfectly healthy. It wasn't his accident--it was his brother's. And if it had happened before medicine considered itself advanced enough to transplant body organs, back when nature had more power to play its hand, Bill would have died and Tom would have watched helplessly. But nature was forced a different turn. Tom didn't even think about it. As soon as they told him Bill needed a kidney, he gave his. There was no question in his mind. If something was good and possible, Tom never thought about it. Good and possible always meant one thing: do it. But it wasn't Tom who would have to live a lifetime cursing the consequences of doing the possibly good. It was Bill. Tom's month-long deterioration after the surgery and eventual death drove deep the resentment Bill harbored for being alive. He knew he should have died. He was living with a dead man's kidney in place of his own--a dead man who had at least seventy healthy years left to live, had he not unwittingly given his kidney to his brother. And Tom was the better man anyway. Like Tom's unquestioning instinct to combine good and possible, Bill never questioned which one of the brothers was the better man. The world deserved Tom for longer, and it would have had him too, had nature not been crippled.

They said Tom would be just fine, that transplants of this sort happen all the time and both parties live out remarkably fine lives. Tom didn't live anything remarkable after that. And all anyone could tell Bill was that Tom's death should inspire him to live out a remarkable life for the both of them now. But Bill only felt like spooning Tom's kidney out of himself each day he awoke and remembered Tom should be alive and him dead.

Cupid

Those cupid trends...
gave me a girl who pens
my love in lines she bends
to compensate for ten-
-dencies of men
she wishes other.

Follows the cut that ends.
Not still at least just friends.
Love breaks, time mends,
but never sends
more sugar.