All Mine

I've been waiting for a moment like this.
Where I can lay my hands on my head
and let my fingers slip through
the lines that were once kinks.
I remember the shame
of my beads not hanging long enough.
Now, it's all mine

I've been waiting for a moment when,
I could make something all about me,
all of me,
and not have to sanitize it for anyone
who might not be able to relate,
but I've had to.
I can finally look in the mirror
and not wish another was there.
Now, I'm all mine.

Been waiting for a moment to
look back and grab the beauty,
the power,
the grace,
the majesty
of my legacy, of my ancestry
and bring it forward.
Like I do when I put my hands on my head
and let my fingers slip through the lines
that were once kinks.

It's all mine.

Tender

look up
and watch how clouds roll passed
unhurried

embrace moments
as they arrive
they are wise

let tears fall
in them you are replenished

ache and reach for
dreams dormant in the invisible

and when you find a heart
as tender as yours
hold it close

then look up
and watch how the clouds roll passed
unhurried

Agape

Unknown
you will always have one in you
I don't know
So I serve you
You are a stranger

Close to you
you tell me your heart
and I treasure it
You are my friend

Supported
and protected
I encourage you
You are my brother

From my womb
I will always listen
always be attentive to you
You are my child

Secure in your arms
I honor you
I give you the fullest respect
You are my father

Kisses like honey
my passions flow
embracing you in every way allowed
You are my lover

Manifested
a temple for the glory of creations light
I worship
You are divine

You are my agape love

Someone Else

Streaming through the sky
try to grab
take hold
flowing through fingers
into someone else's hand

Touch
without feeling
feel
without lingering
take a bite
then spit it out
someone else gets to swallow

Listening to words
meant for a moment
or life long
never knowing which
someone else giggles
do those words belong to them too

Holding out time like a apron
catching thoughts
in order to break them to make things
waiting by the void to hear the ding
of when someone else
is me

Worthy

I sort my tears
letting them fall in boxes
is it
is it not
wishing I could
break these feelings on the line
like graham crackers

walking up to the image in my mind
I can't help but measure
how far I am away from
folding my life into
what it was from what it is

missing lips never kissed
arms never reached for
a heartbeat never heard
I realize where I am
and it needs no clipping

it doesn't stop the tears
from falling in boxes
is it
is it not
worried about being worthy
knowing sun rays are sunshine

Don't Say

Don't let it take your whole life

make sure you say it

say it loud

make it robust with meaning 

Don't let another month go by

live it full out

savor it in your guts

roll it around in your being

Don't let another second go by

if there's someone you want 

someone you need

say it 

choose them

Don't leave to living 

to figure out the words 

Living will send the breeze

to tell them you don't need them

It will be what you don't say

that will put another in their path

who will say what it will take 

your whole life long to say

Dedicated

You look like a friend

Intimacy running through this 

like veins in marble

Taking the time to listen

your words leave little room for confusion

your actions mimic your words

and echos back from 

a revealed spirit

I can take you seriously

you know what you want

So I dedicate myself to

peeling back and

sloughing off the past

allowing the future to unfold 

in ways the present can present 

Dear friend

you've loved on me like family

taken my hand when it dangled by my side

empty

when my soul was congested with 

broken promises and mistakes

you offered your patience and guidance

to clear the way

and you let my light shine in you

I dedicate the story of my life to you

In you the conclusion is the conclusion

and I am happy you look like a friend

The Gates

Responsibility wraps us up
tighter than a straight jacket
keeping love from flowing free
I don't want to think about it anymore
I simply want to be

Fill up on me loving you
if it gives you permission to open up
pour out love like waterfalls
flow free in the ways you need to
in the ways you want it
knowing all along
it's your love you're feeling

Don't commit anything to me
feel it flow through you
filling up the empty spaces in yourself
so when you find yourself full
and if there's still a thought
that I could be the one
choose me
it's that simple

Then when living the mechanics
of this artificial way of surviving
latches the buckles of our being free
we will slip back through the gates
and replenish each other
from the Tree of Life

Waited So Long

Your kiss
quenches the ache in my gut
and touching you feels like
the moment before a long hug is ending
Nothing is better than your voice in my ears
Nothing more comforting than
being your place of rest

So satisfying to my soul
my head in your lap
your fingertips on my skin
the smile on your face
You are precious to me

Daughters of the world
I slept too long
Do not make me miss his passing

I must have been Queen Sheba in a past life
You are nothing less then my Solomon
I push my face deeper into your chest
to get lost in the scent of you
as your left hand holds my head
and your right hand enfolds me

I am not ashamed of my tears laying under you
receiving kisses that feed my soul
being feed life from your being
each time you enter me

I waited so long for you
waited so long to find my home
within your arms

O daughters of the world
awaken me when he is close
being buried in his love is what pleases me

Experience

Love is the experience

You can hear it in the voice
of one who is earnest in their love
and faithful in their action

Wrap yourself in it

It's in the trust of children
who watch adults fail
and still believe in them

Look for it

It's in the cold glass of water you drink
and the cool breeze touching you
on a hot day

it's yearning for you
gulp it down
let it saturate you

How a person lights up seeing you
and the way sunbeams gently touch you
even as the sun beams its heat

Know this peace
feel it deeply inside

Love is the experience

A Way Out

Cornered
can't move this way
can't go back
Risk looking crazy
for not speaking
or becoming crazy if you don't

They enjoy it
the closer they come
oozing disingenuous feelings
like pus from gangrene
they enjoy the pain in your eyes

but don't hide it

Every whisper
wiping away your credibility
every eye looking you over
you know
they are tearing you down
to prepare the next victim

They plead the case of the innocent
getting others to perceive you
as being off balance
when others don't see
how they lay the full weight
of their treacherous intentions on you

Don't forget
they enjoy it
Don't forget
you are an object
Don't forget
there is a way out
even if it's hidden behind your tears

Say Love

You say you love
I ask
have you drained the
lake of tears
you created in ignorance

You say you love
I say
go and recover the secrets
of your geometry
tell me the givens
show me the patterns

You say you love
I see
my inability to conform
to the pictures you create for me
my being's too large
it's busting the seams

I say I love
you hear
and before dawn
you become a misty memory
floating away on the dew
adding to the lake of tears

Playing The Part...

Life roll out the repetition, please...
It seems like that's exactly what I asked for and Life is obliging me every step of the way. Good thing I took the advice to notice what I notice or I would be missing some important lessons right now. One lesson being the ability to relate to others while being myself. Seems simple enough, but when you've spent a good part of your life living through other people's perceptions, knowing who "you" are is a pretty daunting task. Then, once you are introduced to yourself, there's the task of knowing how to discern who to share your life with and who should remain in orbit. I haven't reached this pinnacle yet, but I've learned how to recognize the path to it.
We can't escape being in relationships. Even isolated, we are in relationship to ourselves and whatever is in our environment. To me, this means, at our core, we already have the essential things we need all the time. It seems, our issue is how to take off our conditioning long enough to recognize it and learn to harvest what is already present. I'm finding the space between conditioned mind and what can be is very narrow with too many doors to choose from. What's frustrating is going through the same door over and over again. What's frightening is learning it doesn't matter which door you take, if you haven't first learned how you got in the space in the first place. From this space, I can see my choices weren't actually choices. They look more like repeated reactions based on things I'm afraid of or what I've agreed love is. These thoughts lead me to this lesson.
Much of our living, if we do not awaken to the patterns, is spent repeating our past. (duh! I know.) Much of what we call learning, is taking the past and bringing it present. Sometimes we try to change it, most of the time, we leave it as it is. We repeat this in our relationships, too. We take all of the memories, conscious or not, of all the relationships we've ever had and bring them to the present then wonder why they don't work or why they lack something essential. Like in learning, memory is the boundary, the limiting factor, of our relationships.
Around family and close friends our memory is a script we hand to each other. Often, we use these scripts to elevate the perception of our value and worth to ourselves and to others. We remind people what their place is in that circle and any deviation is taken as a treat, especially if that person is doing better than we are. Around acquaintances and strangers,our memory acts like an invisible assessment sheet that evaluates worth and value, always according to who we think we are or who we want to be-- aka projections. Until we can look past our memory, we cannot have authentic relations. On every level, we will repeat the patterns either with others or on ourselves.
Having an authentic relationship is about being able to perceive it as it is, not as we wish, want, or hope it can be with using the past. Righteous judgment is revealed when we've moved past the past. Until we are able to look at people as they are, we don't know them. We may know things about them, we may even know their patterns, but we do not know them. We can only know a person when we are intimate with them. Intimacy happens when we can share the smallest, most insignificant things of ourselves with another, without feeling less than. It happens when we can share our present experiences with knowledge that these experiences are inexhaustible. This is the moment when we know who to become intimate with and who to let stay on the periphery of our lives, in love.
If you find yourself surrounded by people that can only speak of what you used to be or do, they no longer know you. If they cannot speak about the person you are now or the things you are presently doing, you can either refresh the relationship or let them go. People who are unwilling to let you grow in their minds are invested in the role you play in their life. Give them back their scripts and walk off the stage.

Demands

I puffed out my chest to Life
made some irreverent comment about
being an illegitimate child of the sun
about being left to this earth to raise alone
and she had far too many children
to pay attention to me
rolling on her own axis
making love to infinite darkness
she had no time to love me

Snatched from her breast to soon
I spat her milk in her face
threw my head back and laughed
sunlight filled my throat
nearly choking me

I poked my finger at the sky
knowing it had no end and posed no threat
I tried to make it flinch
wildly punching at it with the emptiness in my heart
I needed to feel some kind of power

I walked up on a weeping willow
dared it to come at me
when it reached out for me
I fought it until it entangled me
it tickled my ear
and whispered the sounds of the sea
until it uncovered peace

My fuck face to the world
I tried to grab air by the waist
and angrily pound my way free
slamming myself against unfulfilled hopes and dreams
using the pain to numb myself from living

I demanded life to care for me
I didn't ask to be here
I demanded it do what my parents couldn't
I didn't recite these curses over myself
I demanded it never leave
even though I know it will be
 long after my last breath

Mirrors

fun house thoughts
keep me distorted in my own eyes
other people's words
judgement of being
appearances of reality
I keep laying myself naked
to people who judge my fingerprints
as broken

these other figures
rip me at with imaginings
that what I am is not enough
for myself
let alone Life
I keep agreeing
because I think them
more trained to partner Life
when Life obligated Itself to my dance card too

labels and boxes
stickers with descriptions
of being only what they say is
I scratch at the reflections
blood streaks my face
that's when I understood

the words
the thoughts
the collections of distortions
are me screaming at myself
my attacks on others for my sins
my beliefs of who I am deep down
my resistance to the stories steaming
from the maladjusted psychopathic
collective thinking
I keep nodding
I keep agreeing

then someone came along
grabbing my hand
image just as distorted
I looked at them
seeing light encased in stories
and through their eyes I recognized
myself as one of the distortions
pretending to be the real thing

the mirrors cracked and crashed
and without border and boundary
the Light dances and sings to eternity
and merrily down the stream we go

Frustration

Push.
Push!
Push!!!!

My arms are limp
my face is swollen
my body aches
I'm weak

I'm weak in all the ways a person can be
and darkness is so warm
it keeps me safe from the prying minds
who want to know but don't even care

The darkness says comforting things like
sleep
don't think
that's important but don't worry about it
but it whispers
you will never rest
I will be your thoughts forever never ending
watch it all fall apart, it's your fault

My arms are limp
my face is swollen
my body aches
I'm weak
because I can't seem to
push through these frustrations and fears
I can't give birth to these dreams

A Poem

There was a poem here

it was full of words 

that would've spoke
straight to your heart

but I deleted them

you don't need to know 

I still think about you

Right here is where 

there would've been something 

about what it felt like

to touch you

listen to you

This is the place where

I would've told you how it felt 

to be with someone like you

the miracles and the magic

the butterflies and the anticipation

but I deleted them

Here's where I told
the concocted version of you

because the only you I knew
was the you in my head

birthed by what you didn't say

and the master-ship of my imagination

And the conclusion was

something like a reminder

that when it feels like family -- run

and when you can never know the truth

so chapters close

a poem can be a fitting beginning to the end

 

Everything

My love is like silence
full of everything worth it
leaving everything one
and alive

My life is rich and round
like a mother's belly
I count fingers and toes
though stretched minds
anticipating and laughing

My love is like nothing
leaving everything I am

Speak to Me

So receptive to you
everything in me questions
the idea of the duo
we seem to be

I yank on the strings
of my inner being
your voice rings in echo

Harmonies were made
to emulate the staves of your voice
I close my eyes to see
life's spectrum descend
daisies bloom in your shadow

I watch for you
your appearance
like a person who
can see to the heart of mischievous child
alighting it with love

Listening to the walls grow around me
You say
speak to me
my response
your servant listens

Of the Earth

Looked at myself this morning
tilted my head forward
to watch the lines form in my eyes
practicing the smile made of silicon

If I peel back the layers
of skin to reveal the fake I feel
I think I would disappear

no matter how long the hair
how crisp the diction
how clear the intention to know myself

there's always inside me
the voice which sings to me of
my failures
my manipulations
my irrevocable choices
I rest

I don't look to my past to blame
or the various cutout faces
pasted together to create mine
I can't blame anything in my birth chart
of the way the galaxies parted
to let me enter life

falling down from nothing
a fireball of light to enter the womb
the wretched of the earth
I could be an angel fallen for my knowledge
I could be an angel fallen for a mission
to be the arch in the cycle of eternity
that leads back to peace