You are with me when the dogs bark at each other

A grinding of dry soil
a ping of chain link
fencing
Warm air, still air
two dogs bark
and speak to each other
The end of a street, the entrance to
a desert
Just myself
and the Creator

And it all made sense
The loneliness which used
to be in my heart is
no longer
A despair which felt as hot and unmoving
as this night
is gone
and I can be alone and hear silence
not my own thoughts

Life if unforgiving
that is why we come together
that is why i searched
and searched
and found
the one who never left my side

It was you
who I wanted
It was you
who I desired
and still it is you
who is with me
when I used to be without

I cannot wrestle with the angel
for it has already struck
me lame

You have made me settled
you have given me peace
in the most peaceful settings
And though you may think I never wanted you

I chose you

I chose you to be my companion
to be my stability in quake
to be my solace
from everyone else

You are the shimmering lights in the valley below
the warmth emanating from the ground
you are the shadow of mountains
and the shine of waning moon

You are the howls of desert fauna
you are my muse
for now and forever
You and I
will never be away from each other as long as both our heels
touch the solid of the Earth
and I suspect,
(once we are beneath it)
then as well

We are two specks of dust
in a sea of dunes
at the mercy
of wind
and shake
and time
and flood
But we will always track
along side one another

You are the beauty of this age and the next
and you are
mine.

Love incarnate

Everybody speaks like they are giving the speech at the end of a movie

Everybody speaks
like they are giving the speech at the end of a movie
precisely measured
perfectly metered
impassioned
emotioned
baby talk

Pure drivel
A prayer to
self indulgence
faux intelligence
served on a platter
of inconsistent volume
and movie anti hero charm

And gone
Gone is the thing which makes each person
great and small
themselves

I consider it a triumph
for a mouse to speak with
a rodents diminutive speech
and not the trumpet of an elephant

And most of all
I consider my own voice
the ringing in my ears
the self regulated song of myself
I struggle to tally my breaths and sentences
and hope that simple arithmetic does not prove
my only reason for breathing
is to endlessly use a voice
which

I consider foul
distasteful
tinny
And over utilized

I long to be a star of the silent film
The Golden Age of Hollywood

A maintenance

I cannot push you
cannot will you to do what I want
it isn't my place
I cannot sit by wayside
and try to keep the clay
from crumbling off
because

I did not form you
you did
and others did

And you did not form me
though
I wish you would try
You do not have a sculptors heart
But that of an appreciatist
of art

And I have the sculptors eye
and no arms

I hope you do not crumble
I don't want to see that
to see your youth and beauty
not only fade away
but never fully realized

But I cannot save you
You can.

I cannot even convince you
to save you
only
You can.

I have to look away
and hope that every time i look back
you're still there
like i remembered.

Afraid of me

The eyes
sheepish, doggish
sluggish
of a worried face
expression says
"We're sorry"
body language leans away
nervous chuckle

The movement like a hyena
around a lion
tenuous
calculated
none too careful

I am the lion
but not the large maned
kings of the savannah
but the fringey
mangy
young lions
who wander aimlessly from carrion
to carrion

Rejection
like a scorched valley
black and brown
distraught and dissolute
They creep around me
hoping I wont come out of
a brooding daze
and charge
but anger is not
the unstable emotion
i feel

Embarrassment
For being what I am
for not being good enough
a pariah of the pride
without pride
a car salesman
worse

A cell phone salesman.

A cursed wanderer
"Where is my path?"
I have no help
no solace
not on this earth
and Coptic glyph, cryptic
advice from on high.

Unsure of each movement
unsure of each step
and everyone tip toes around me.

A voice crying out
in the wilderness
John the Baptist
of the Inland empire
Asphalt rivers
for renewal.

My head prepared
for the platter.

Buoyant

Your kind words
kiss my lips
like bleach laced
darts

They try to life me up
but grasp only lapels
and cuffs
removing my shirt
and leaving me bare

An ugly
unpolished
misshapen
very nearly unholy
ugly

too real for me to see
when i look in the mirror

18 was the last year
my confidence rose
through photograph

7 years
since i could say
I liked myself.

I feel alone
because nobody can relate to me
weakened by my distance
from ideal

If 18 were an oasis
i've walked through the desert
and am in a salt sea

desperate and hopeless

You hurt me when you try to help me
You love me but I despise me
I have let myself
and you down.

Weighted down by
disgusting bloat and waste

I deserve to drown
dragged through the abyss
by my excess mass

Instead I am made bouyant

Sitting on the surface incapable of overcoming
its tension.

not able to end
what little life
I feel i have.

Revelations

If the world ends tomorrow
in gargantuan upheaval
with torrential hurricane
whirlpools, tectonic plate shifting
madness
If the world ends
with all the crops withering
sparrows falling to hardened earth
and minnows washing upon shoreline

If the world ends
with politicians screaming
guns thudding
bombs crashing
lights flashing

If the world ends with men
prophesying,
young men having visions
and flames

I'm glad I found you

I'm glad i saw you
and kissed you
holding your soft skin in
my arms
Holding you
laying with you

If the world ends tomorrow
in all the fury of an ancient God
it wont feel like i had anything more to gain
in my life.

If the world ends tomorrow
at least I had you
in the end.

What used to be

You are so fragile
you are the petal of
a glass vase

Its so hard to be delicate
around you

to feel shattered when you crack sooner.

It's like I am made of glass
but you are made of ice

I am so sorry i cracked you
for so many years.

I was foolish
but half the time i didn't know

I wish you could have told me then.
But,
many a difference
would have been invited

You were caught betwixt
myself, ego, insecurity
A flourishing mess
a soup of desire and despair

You were always there for me
a solid place
in liquid time

But i eroded you
unbeknownst to me

but known to you

And now
I know.

I know you say you couldnt hate me, but you did
and i didnt know it

I thought you loved me
I thought that by giving you part of me
You could get some of what you wanted
and i could get some of what i wanted

But neither of us got what we wanted.

Now we do
we have each other
fully and completely

We have the sun in july now
we had clouds and night before.

But i have a hard time forgetting what used to be

Paradise lost/regained

Something pushing behind my eyes
a pressure
getting worse
To be something
or
do something

Just something

To have more go right
than wrong

to be that unlikely story
to be the blind fish
who live in dark caves

Who gave up their eyesight
for immortality

and what would i give?

What scares me the most:
I don't know

That darkness
is so looming
and dense
like an oil slick

It chokes me
stops my words

I'm afraid i'm not good enough.

They say those fish in caves,
evolved separately
over millions of years
losing their color
their eyes
any semblance of their old life.

They took something common
and made it spectacular.

And which brave fish
all those eons ago
jumped from the clear mountain stream
into hell

And if i had to rule in hell
would I too
lose heaven?

Who knows
They always admire the brave ones
the stubborn ones

The fish who gave up everything
for a little freedom.

Breathing and smiling

You burrow
deep into my side, rubbing and adjusting
like a mutt
found a warm sun spot

It feels good
in a way nothing else could
it makes me feel high
like alcohol
or cigarettes never could

I bend a bit
sniff the top of your head
because you love that
I do too

We cant get any closer
but we have to try
we wont be happy until we
are within each other
permanently

You are so happy,
that all you can do is breathe
and smile
because im talking to you

its too simple
this is too easy

Why was it so hard before?
And at night
we curl around each other and sleep

together,
breathing and smiling.

Pre Cambrian

There is an emptiness 6 years long
when I wallowed in the mire
when you lit a fire
1000 times over
One thousands time
your beautiful smile
over a thousand times
the colorful dresses
and tan skin
curly hair
short
straight
curly
I feel like i didnt exist
in those 6 years
and there is very little evidence
that i have existed since i was 14
and the 11 year break
from visibility
was exhausting.
And now im trying to hold on
trying to grab the hem of your garment,
save me
to bring me back to life.

The fog last night
was a soothing dream
muffling any human sounds
it was just me
and the chirping of crickets

we all sang the same song.

A laker loss

This is hard
beyond understanding
to the old me
the one who ached
for it so deeply

It must be pruned
it must be fed and dressed
and painful
It was said that every rose has it's thorn
but I say

Every thorn must break skin
to keep the rose so red with blood

And deep oxygen rich blood
the kind which runs out
like a well
gushing and life giving

You cut hard,
grating me
challenging me to leave
you fear my absence
and nearly push me away

You are the rose who does not sit idly
but shoots her thorns like arrows

But i wont let go
I can't.
It hurts
Im sorry
if it hurts you too

But every second is so worth it.

Wart

Warts
cover my hands
my finger tips
a dull pain

Scratchy, bloody
expanding cancers
they hurt
and never find relief

Mend the wounds
my secret
little wounds

At night
a cracking leaf is
a death sentence
so is the lingering stench
of cigarette butts

Put them out
hid them
my little warts
my little cancer

So many things to cover up
so hard to rid
for every one
i've killed
three more have taken root

Weeds
unwanted
unfair, and fair
consequences natural
and artificial

I have a hard time holding it in
the little tumors are building up
inside of me

I'm way beyond medicines
of a traditional sort

Stay quiet
for the day of reckoning approached

The little electric swirls
spinning violently in my sleep

The warts are but a visible tip
of a rotted iceberg

Flighty warm happiness in january

I heard a leaf
Scratch on pitted asphalt
On a thirsty
Night

Tonight and you were that leaf

My arms grab both of your sides
While the future
Embraces mine
Our lives scratching the ruble
As we are blown this way
And that.

Better to love you
Than pluck you from the branch
And I do
Despite my pruners
Gloves

You make me face the day

Sometimes I am impossible to find
I feel the urge
to shrink
to dissappear
like dust, i long for blissful
glide on sunbeams
but just out of sight

I feel your hand
And i still want you
but I dont want the hand

Sometimes I freeze myself in the mirror
and wonder what my body
looks like
underneath my body
like i'm in a shell
or a cocoon waiting
to step up into full
healthy maturity

I think to myself
some days it's better to stay in bed
than face the day
but since we've been together
i've faced everyday
regardless

You make me face the day
and I'm suffering
waiting for
my metamorphosis

You cascade around me like a pure stream
and face the day with me
And tomorrow
again.

Coins

The hand and pen
together to death
shall they never part

But you paused them

We are two coins swirling
round
the yellow plastic
basins
at Walmart

Charity without
thinking of it

A small thrill
for alms

I will write again some day
soon
I can feel it
pushing against the cages of my
consciousness

Until then
All the beautiful things
I can say
are yours
are spoken and not written
are free versed

I will return to metaphorical
pen and page
But not yet
not
yet

Like clarity

I'm looking at you
In the drivers seat
In blue
In contentment

Your smile widens
I don't believe we are here
You say something to me
And I mentally pinch myself

We embrace
Passionately
Like folds in a blanket
Soft, random
Warm

I am not here
I cannot come to acceptance
This is it
I am a fool sometimes

I want many things
But I never want to be
An intellectual
Or an artist
For neither

Will capture the beauty of this moment
With anything
Like clarity

The tired ones

Heaven and Earth shall pass away
but the tears in your eyes
will stay
with my immortal soul
for all eternity

For longer than the dust on the ground
all of the stars that ever were
and ever shall be

You cried in your car
because your
body wanted to
betray you unto death

I held you
warmly
but conscious that I shouldnt
put you to sleep

there was water on the ground
the earth was weeping too
you and earth
together
cascading your feelings
upon me

You said it
I said it
We'd been feeling it for longer than we
were willing to admit

The water on the ground made a slapping sound
like tiny whips
cracking as they touched the asphalt

And your tears will
last longer
than any of this.

In the greener grass

It was past
three in the morning
I was smoking
I kept smiling

It was cold
tomorrow was supposed to be warm
I rested at a stoplight
and took a drag

And lauged

So this is what this feels like,
I thought

and I was suprised to see
that like sadness
it was not a static
emotion

And unlike sadness
it built
strongly
and I could feel it building
and I smiled more
and I took another drag

These cool early morning drives
on the freeway,
I never go faster
than 65

It doesnt feel like betrayal anymore

Warm and silent
as close as possible
water on the windows cover us up
and I grabbed her
held her firm
and as close
as I could

I wasn't crying
but the sweat on
my brow
may as well
have been tears

We don't know what
we're doing
and I don't know
to what end

But it doesn't feel like betrayal anymore
and I like that

Stronger swimmer

It's good to be a strong
swimmer
And it was so difficult
because I was always
drowning

My limbs thrashed
into cool liquid
trying to keep my head above water
so I could just
talk

Salt water rushing up my nose
and filling my mouth
that horrible salt
burning my eyes

I could have been better maybe
but everyone seemed to swim away
farther than I was ready
and I wanted call out
"Slow Down!"
but the thunderous water, pummeling the beach
the commotion of so many people;
sound at the beach just gets
lost

And my toes could barely feel the topmost layer of sand
the most unstable base
I wonder what I could have done
if I'd ever been able
to set my feet


Eventually I'll get out of the ocean
i've already taken some steps toward the beach
to the sticky moist sand
and then fiery
dry which isn't kissed by the tide
to towel off

and don't you know
that when you dry yourself off at the beach
you've conceded victory
to the ocean.

All I will be able to do is watch
and let the sun
beat my shoulders