I love the poem
taciturn
love the voice
love the roots
taking space
within me
love the crisp
turn of the phrase
the vile
love the hauteur
of importunate words
strip teasing me into surrender
I love rainbow in your
eyes
What do I love
but barking times
of restlessness?
You will grow but only you will know for how long.
Friends will come but many will go.
Family will stay but some will leave you too.
Relationships will be built but many will hurt you.
Success will show but not always before or after you fail first.
You will gain it all but you will lose it all too.
Love will come but will betray you because you won’t know any better
first time around.
Mistakes will take place and you will be wiping tears off your face.
The bathroom will be the safest place you can be yourself. As you look
at the mirror and go through many thoughts.
You will fall and feel alone in the dark.
Influential things will take its course but ultimately its up to you
to be the victim or the one who avoids it all.
Fights will come but not all punches must land on your face.
The beauty of fights you don’t always have to run but stand tall and
walk away.
There will be tests brought to your attention but you don’t always
have to pass them.
Learn from mistakes and don’t recreate them.
You start your education after graduation. Never let anyone tell you
any different.
Teachers will teach but you will only remember the educators. Listen
to them.
Secrets will be shared but you don’t always have to pass it along or
hear them.
Sometimes things are better said and also not said at all.
I know you will get confused and not everything must make sense to
you.
Not all you will go through must have an answer.
Understanding is key but you create the lock to the door you are
trying to open to life.
You will try and fail. You will try and fail.
You will try until you realize that trying is better than failing.
Life is precious don’t end it right away.
Speak to someone.
Listen to what others before your time have to say.
Stress will occur.
Solutions will come.
Conflicts will surface.
Circumstances will dominate.
Take a step back.
Breathe and rejuvenate.
Live life not like is your last day but like you just started life
today.
His brown eyes open,
absorbing every experience
that has been his to know.
A looking back, sorting
mangled bolts of history.
His story. His remembering.
With dying hands he strokes
the threads that have
unraveled around him.
He blinks, and he lets
a single teardrop glisten
on his lived in face.
There are miracles and
there are no miracles.
Either way, the prognosis
is what it is. He knows
everything he knows
and yet he
knows almost nothing.
Tall buildings and concrete streets.
City traffic on major roads.
People. So many people
occupying the urban sprawl.
In the midst of all this he
speculates on any number
of significant resolutions.
How cold his heart feels!
How resigned and dark
are his thought patterns!
With gratitude, perhaps,
he reminds himself that
one thing often leads
to another. There is
neither rhyme nor reason
to what is to come.
And when the droning
that inhabits his thinking
becomes too loud to hear,
he can shut his eyes.
Close them tight.
Let his eyelids be
his entire world
and
sit
like
a
rubber
hammer
banging
nails
into
his
heart.
Were she here with me now,
by the waist I would raise her,
a chalice of wonder.
I’d bellow hosannas
and whirl her around,
tell her again that I love her,
press my face moist
in the pleats of her skirt,
ask her to sprinkle
phlox on the curls
of our children
if they are with her,
ask her to stay a while longer
while I do so much more
were she here with me now.
More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.
For promises that grow
In marshes,
To a pristine river to flow,
Such are the ones
We hope to believe,
To drown in, of disbelief,
Deep below.
There prevails the dawn
Hope
To herald a dusk
Of darkness beyond,
A whisper from therein,
“Rise, wise; arise,”
Look for a promise,
In the dead of the night.
Still your heart; Stay your mind
Unto your soul, be kind
Promises to the wind,
May well be, are never pinned
Love is right, calm the whirlwind…
One kind of pigeon,
one kind of snake,
as far as I know,
puff up, inflate.
There’s the bullfrog,
of course, and
peacocks have tails
so I tell my wife
what she already knows:
Once I become
whoever I am
then will
I love you.
More at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/.
She’s taking the first steps
out from under the wingtips of her mother. Leaving.
She’s shaking, stepping deliberately in
every puddle she can find, her sneakers and bones
soaking in the frost as it thaws.
She’s sinking, wishing the blurred reflections of
naive children’s dreams in the sky could be more than that.
She only wants to wash away what memories she has of the past,
because she’s more afraid than you can imagine, wishing
on every burnt out match she can find, stealing
glances at the clock, shivering alone in the newfound cold
like a child left on a doorstep, crudely wrapped in term papers
and school reports instead of warmth.
It’s not about the future, not about the blue and the red and
the inevitable black that comes afterwards.
It’s not about the past and the yellowing photographs of
happiness and safety that are stapled
securely into thick photo albums collecting dust
on the shelves of a childhood home.
It’s about this moment, her toes catching fire as they touch
the wild infernos for the first time, caught like a fly in amber,
eyes wide open, tears threatening to bleed out
and obscure the carefully written words on her cheeks and lips.
She’s leaving and there is nothing more terrifying
than standing alone beneath the open skies,
not a cloud to shield her from the cold, hard stare of the universe.
I try to hold her hand, but she’s already gone, faded away in the
moments between the flickering out of night lights in her
childhood bedroom and the sputtering beginning of
the slow, persistent hum of a dorm room air conditioner.
Sitting alone on a foreign mattress,
she takes out a photograph and
sets it on the bedside table, brushing away
the marks of time from the frame.
Her heart falters along with the air conditioner
as she lies awake, praying to smudge away
the letters carved into her skin
and retreat back into the dimly lit haven of a mother’s arms.
Rain until the rain ends,
sadness until the cluster
leaves, mourning until
a fresh feeling crops up.
The better sometimes
comes quicker, but the
easier is a more appropriate
way to put it. Those who
love us leave there, a tattoo
on the skin, which will never
erase. Nor do we want
that mark to fade.
Metal against metal
Causing a terrible friction.
People mashing down on the pedal.
They don’t have any conviction.
Wood and bricks and chiming bells-
It’s not all music to my ears.
Breakfast’ s cooking, wafting smells,
Honks of horns, am I the only one who hears?
I’ve tried to get some sleep,
Only to toss and turn.
Someone’s going beep-beep,
For some quietness, my heart does yearn.
My mind a sky tumbled; a glass of thought.
I want to pour on to paper pearled drops
Of dew to quench the hungry, thirsty pages.
Bluely burned and lit words are forming you
Into a being of strange landscapes glowing
Dangerously; death darkly brooding and rank.
Each mental recess an avenue of despair.
You channel rivulets of words pain-bound
To a sea of messages sliding silver-grey
Beneath my hands. Pain, loss and soft beauty too
Shivers and something silk and richly woven
Has begun to sew itself to my clouded
Mind, despite the angry disapproving
Unbelieving staid stares and prying glances.
Past is alive and a throbbing agony
And all memory is vermillion.