Ah, yes, poetic Thursday

where your tears have fallen
there are riverbeds
etched winding into the previously unmarred
landscape of my forehead
visible to me only
i can see them like a fingerprint
on the topography of my reflection
feel them like a memory
on the map of my soul
i carry them like a whisper
like a melody
like time
and smile secretly over the many small ways
you have already begun to change me

so altered, i am only yours

love.

On Beginning

6/6/10

i cannot speak to the you that you have been
cannot witness the unnumbered hours you lived
well before me
they are not and will not become mine to point to
and the pages and volumes that make up your once was
i can read only in fragments
scraping up sentences and coveting chapters
i may never see

but here, in this you and me standing
my face and your fingers
your laugh and my eyes
these few pieces of you are mine and mine only
your words and my hoping
my arms and your smile
they are only nothings, the smallest of moments
but into them i will start to carve my picture of you
upon them i will build my earliest knowings
the things in you i am sure of
the most in you i can see

these pieces of you i will use to begin it
add them to seconds, and somewheres, and time
and watch as the spaces that loom in my learning you
crowd up with memory
render you mine

love.

A long, long time ago...

Vintage poetry today...

10/29/06

you who has been always, and nothing...

you appear here in lines yet unwritten
offering a vocabulary i couldn't have anticipated

the heart of me knows what follows
it recognizes in you the ancient-once it has loved equally -
curiosity, undeterred by self-preservation, requests you

mildly

just behind my eyes
so subtle, your arrival there at the front of all daydreams
quietly quickly and
firmly denied

there are risks my body still cannot fathom
parts of my heart it can no longer trust, and justly

i who have broken you always, and never
can't be selfless enough not to risk you again

an improbable proposition - yours is the safest rejection, all silence and miles
would you hate to know there are parts of me that still wake up with your name

my lastly well-loved boy, imagine...

i may be sonnet to your prose
you, all irreverent language
i, always, the fear to oppose

love.

Thursdays I'm a poet.

7/13/10

some nights i believe i've only ever written what i fear
only ever recorded the ends or beginnings of feeling
the lost and the losing
the broken and the unclaimed
written only the empty space born of loving alone
of the restless elation that accompanies your hand on my shoulder
of the silence that follows the abrogated beating of breakable hearts

i am constantly to wonder if theses thoughts and the fears that bore them
are merely dog-eared pages of someone else's novel
tadpoles in the widest river
a wriggling army of identical echoes and photocopied emotion
my mind here written only the same drumbeat
heard by a thousand others a thousand times before

some mornings i believe i've only ever given what i lack
only ever offered empty vases and blank pages
the vague and the unworthy
the hopeless and the unnamed
given only the shadows of things you have left me
a woebegone recital of pieces i've cherished
a slapstick production of a symphony i can't begin to claim

i would have you dance where i can see you
in rooms where you have always played me songs
i would wrap your stories around my fingertips
and squeeze them into pencils
and rejoice in knowing i have nothing left to say

love.

Springtime Love Song

6/30/10

i will begin, as always, with words already written
unqualified, i, to redefine spring
but today portland is the sun-hungry skin of Your body
that something always that glistens justly
and i am
glad for the prick of grass blades on bare ankles
tempered by the nearly violent sting of midday on the back of my neck
composed of only lazy almosts and flirtatious possibility
cradled merely by a swaddling of wildly vibrating mazarine sky

i am captive to the birth of hand-drawn freckles
arriving on my shoulders like a signature
like stars

every miracle is You and You only
there is he, there is spring
and i am for You wholly
i will place Your songs in evaporating puddles and watch the city breathe them
i will write Your name on the pavement
i will wear You home

Teach me to see...

Sorry I'm all poetry and no fun and games lately... I'll get you something silly soon. In the mean time, I like this little worship song I wrote this week, and since I'm very unlikely to ever actually play it for you, I'll just post it here to get it out of my system.

How typical of me to try and define Your majesty using my own words
When you write my life like a song, like a melody, in a language I have not learned
You who placed the lights in this expansive sky, that I may walk right by and not see
Then bring You buckets full of tears to wipe away, and beg You not to leave me

Teach me to see

I know You promised You would hold me like a child, but like a child I never listen
Still You whisper that You love me every day, a thousand ways, until it sinks in
You who carved the very earth beneath my feet, You take the time to know me by name
Who am I to doubt the wonder that You are, that You have been, that You will remain

Teach me to see

Sometimes it feels so quiet in this place, all of these faces they don't know me
And this hope of You I carry in my heart, I only see in part, can You show me
Paint a new horizon on my day, take the hurt away, let me love You
Light up this whole world, teach this little girl, how best to love You

Teach me to see
Teach me to see


love.

Seventeen

7/12/09 11:53 pm

i used to love you madly, madly

i remember still the way
we were all and nothing
for hours on end
content in the breathing of
each other's secrets
lost in the passionate warring of
angst-riddled youth

you would put on your
faux punk rock defiance
and i would stand frozen
in my insecurity
captive to fear and
your hands on my face

you could pull me out of and into all silences
i laughed hardest in your arms

i used to love you madly, madly

Good all the time...

a.m.

today the world accosts from all sides
the man on the bicycle wobbles only once
before
offering me his finger and going darkly on his way
the rain begins
and silly me, i have again forgotten
to change the blades on my windshield wipers
i drive with soggy vision
the streets are treacherous
and the radio politely refuses to play

i wear Your love like a merit badge

like armor

like skin

I thank you God...

As you well may know, e.e. cummings was certainly not a religious man. He did, however, write one of my all-time favorite pieces of worship, and it is perfectly, eloquently, exactly that which has been bouncing around my head and heart all day:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

happy Sun Day. :)

The Darker Days of Pollyanna

9-5-08
the man on couch corner wears his rings well
tightly clamped, he keeps them
around eyes i'll spare myself from meeting
as we pass
he is the last and first example
of what i may become in your absence
- resolve tucked snuggly in at the corners,
scars where opportunity no longer knocks -
to the dog, this man
with his layers of sweaters and regret
is a king
the prince of yesterday's garbage
the lord of all delightfully unholy things

again, not unlike you.

The city is a concentration of extremes: the rich with the poor, the sane with the lost, the very best and the very worst of what we are, or what we are capable of. Today I am witness to the clash of opposites... one man who fails to live up to my very smallest, most pessimistic hopes for humanity opposing another who far exceeds any strength or grace I am capable of. It's difficult to maintain perspective when moments like these occur... each man has his own story, neither of which I know. Each man has led a life that has steeled him for this confrontation, and who am I judge? Who am I to even have an opinion?

It's sad, though, plainly, to see someone rise above... someone who has faced ugliness so many unmentionable times that it is no longer worth acknowledging it. It's maturity, it's grace, it's the right thing to do, to rise above. But it sucks. It sucks that we have become the sort of jerks who make each other rise above our crap.
I wish we could see each other. We wander around so wrapped in our own egos we don't bother to connect, to notice, to care. How sad we are becoming.

You will walk past many people today. I hope you look them in the eye.