just bones again

old again,
not young.
It's youth that surprises,
youth that comes and goes,
youth that makes you anticipate its leaving.
But age is constant,
it's always there beneath young feelings.
If you are feeling young,
don't worry
you'll get over it.
You'll feel your age again,
you'll be in pain again,
you'll ache again, you'll cry again,
you'll be alone again.
I don't worry about the next time I feel young and free--
that's the doggy-treat I might get if I'm a good boy--
I worry about finishing the treat.
I worry about feeling hungry again,
feeling my situation again,
feeling my nothingness again,
feeling the truth again.

Happiness is the meat,
sadness--the bone.
and you can gnaw on that forever.

falling

I'm falling out of context
I'm falling out of line
I'm moving into reflex,
sporadic all the time

At first I had the memories
At first they drove me on
At first they gave me Sundays,
made right the things gone wrong

But summer turned to autumn
And winter followed fall
The distant sun was handsome,
but silent, cold, and small

Then lifeless all the pictures
Then lifeless friendly words
Then lifeless all the fixtures,
the constant things, the cures

For nothing saved me from this
And nothing held it back
No memory could have barred this,
the emptiness, the black

If you can't feel the sunrise
If you can't feel the sea
If you can't feel your friends' cries,
not even ones from me

Then sit still for a moment
Read Galway’s poem, Wait
Feel swept inside the current
of hope that wills your fate

At the Bus Stop

At the bus stop
I hate the bus I missed
And curse the one not come,
But welcome the wait
And in it the time to feel.

The Harbor

The boat ran aground.
I wanted it to.
The rudder snapped in half.
I wanted it to.
The oars split in pieces.
I wanted them to.
The boat started to sink.

But I couldn't let her sink.
I had to scoop madly at the water,
furiously bind the oars and rudder,
wrench the vessel free of land,
continue floating on to somewhere.

I'd rather sink
and finally land this ship.
The unknown harbors at the bottom
wait for me.
If only I could breathe down there.
If only I could breathe.

being

Who cares? I keep asking. But the page doesn't answer. Who will you stimulate? Not me, for one. And not most people. But the few who live off this madness. They're mad! All of them. And they ask me to reproduce it. Why do they live off it? Can't they feel anything simple anymore? Does it all have to be so convoluted, complex, compressed into tiny spaces unseen by mere mortals, but "fun" for those academics so washed with the language of fine matter that nothing gentle interests them anymore? Yes. Because they own me, and they've lost the power to be caressed by mortals. They are the masters of argument, and I can't argue to their liking. The servant who can't prepare the tea just right is unreliable, yet unreleased. He is hired to fail. Oh, I'll get my justice when I'm the master. I'll devour my heirs, their embarrassments will repay me. I'll shoot down all the idiot notions of clowns like me . . . as soon as I'm not a clown. At least, that's the thought I should be having because that's the thought that will drive me to madness--the happy state of masters. But I can't think. I can't understand the words on this page. It does not feel like life to me. It leaves no space for being.

My Last Crush

She makes the sunrise
And I was there to see it.
I held her face in my hands
until it burned my fingertips.

She makes the sunshine
And I was there to see it.
I played during the light hours
and ran to her with every smile.

She makes the sunset
And I was there to see it.
I was the purple hue fading
between her and the growing cold.

She makes the starlight
And I could barely see it.
I held her face in my eyes
until frozen tears shattered it.

She makes the sunrise
And I was not there.
I was making the rain fall
And she was standing in it.

My First Crush

If I could turn you into sunlight's ray,
you'd yet be with me when so far away.
The dew on every flower'd reflect your face,
but alas, without such realness and such grace
as has the moment rare and soft with you.
Me thinks I shall not want for sun, but you.
--May 2003

I wrote this for someone a long time ago. My first crush after the mission. See how simple it was to love back then? How new and harmless? My words are as innocent and free as they are naive. There is something childish about them, so lost in what I'd found, so simple in what I needed. And now when love is the prison I can't seem to escape, I wish for the first crush again, when love was a candy store, and I knew nothing of cavities.

I walk at night on streets lined with my solace.
The homes and trees and street lamps are my friends.
When I've the road alone at midnight
I think the things that make amends.

the difference

You hiked a mountain.
How long can you sit at the top before you stop feeling?
The greatest moment is the first.
You begin descending the moment you arrive.
It is the difference, the sheer difference
between a nearly conquered foe and a conquered one
that makes you feel.
And for one moment, you are alive.

But life is borrowed, then returned.
It isn't yours; it isn't earned.

You seek for pain to feel the difference.
A "high" has no where to go, but down
and a "low," no where but up.
Will you experiment with lows?
...to feel the difference?
or claw the air for matter still to climb?

circles

******built to
***are*******be
We************broken,
**again.******and
****built****broken
********to be