The Lifting Love

I peer into a room from above
and see lots of little people
all running around, headless.
They’ve lost their heads.

Hands like pincers open; shut.
Needing any scrap of life they
can gnaw on, and they rummage
through the waste of joy.

I wish so dearly I could lift these
poor children out of their cage,
but they see themselves as free
under a multitude of their words; breathless.

I am no better, and I am no worse.
I AM, and I use that as my right to be.
Suddenly complete, and suddenly free.
Throw your heads up, reach high.

Little people you are your other half.
In the dark world you are your light.
Suck down the sweet air and release the pain.
Burst those bubbles, and laugh out loud.

Happiness is not justified; it simply is.
Like angels all around you it is there.
Breach the shell of fear encasing you
and bask in the love; the lifting love.

Picking Pears

Plucking pears from branches
hanging low bearing their children
and I can’t tell if your eyes are
wondering amongst the fruits or me.

The next morning light I awake
and thoughts of you seem so weak.
The lines speak so many volumes in
between, but the story seems surreal.

Funny stars twinkling in cahoots of
what I imagine must be a celestial joke.
Jokes; I stopped worrying about what I
seem like from the outside of myself.

I can be honest, and make concrete claims.
I wanted you, but not really you yourself.
It was really the idea of us together that I wanted,
because I thought cohesion could cure.

Your eyes are on fire for those juicy pears.
You only brush my hand when you reach past me.
That being so I’ll let you taste what you desire
and I’ll love the wonderful person I already know.

I figure if one wishes to have me then
I will know; these pallid half-hearted hopes
are beginning to make my head float uneasily.
Impulsion has been my signature, but perhaps no more.

Saving

Willow tree in the breeze
sing to me with sighs and keys
to unlock doors best left shut.
Pull her from this well worn rut.

I thought she was growing
but it’s back to black.
Relapse I never saw coming,
and I’m sitting by the tracks.

She’s running from the
tangible, the everyday, the
world that bore her.
This life isn’t so bad.

Strong inside, but hiding it.
Leaving her strength under a
mountain of decaying excuses that
she’s been shedding for all these years.

I want to buy her freedom, but
no price can satisfy the demands
made by a heart so unwilling.
I want it, but she has to want it.

For her sake I’ll hold myself up.
I will set my heart in my mouth
and let loose light from within to
guide her back to the shore.

While I reflect on plans
she is spinning spinning so
violently into a sleepless frenzy.
What saves a cyclone, save serenity?

Full

Inside of myself I was shaking
when I first touched you.
My fingers were newborns
as they braved your soft body.

Thoughts of you stole winter’s
breath away from the hillsides
on my way home from all my
unimportant engagements.

I was once a child in an adult’s skin.
I once thought you would dispel
all the nuances of monotony.
Rolled eyes now fill those empty ideals.

My feet are heavier than yours
and I find my spine is made of steel.
You are running; I raise my chin.
I can face the world alone; without you.

In dens of distraction you’ll find
no substance or saturation of life.
I’ll walk down bland streets and
need no human indulgences.

I love life, and all it holds.
The suffering we all shoulder
permeates even my resistance but
I rise to meet and challenge pain.

Where are your forceful hands?
Probably finding pleasures in the
crevices of some shell of a person.
Meanwhile I bask in strength; free.

Babe, I was a fool for too long.
When I thought I needed you to
hold me up I didn’t realize that
in my arms YOU are who thrived.

Dreams of Me

It begins like a dream
where a river runs between
my destination and me.
Feelings run as a tepid dirty trickle.

Now I sing a rusty hinge lullaby
that keeps every thought child
wide awake in the moonless night.
A landscape of dead diamonds.

Swept on like a fancy leaf dancing
at the water’s head, well now I know
where those leaves end their journey.
My talents seem so over-the-counter.

How long will disappointment catch
in the hairs of my desires?
I press down on the peeling sticky
stars on my old report cards.

I just want to be something.
In masks of glee and favor I
put the boy who had dreams
of being one with the heavens.

That boy rails inside my ribcage.
He whispers in my ears and begs me
to play with him again back in fields
holding up a window into the blue.

Dreams of every me I could have been
leave casualties within the me that is.
But, the me I hold now has never lost the
power to climb the peak I’ve eyed for so long.

Glance

Endless umbrellas floating in
the sky catching the light to
swallow into colorful bowels.
A wedge of light made it here.

Past the blues I made it through
and into seas of green that threatened
to stop me. Reds mixed with
yellows to give me everlasting summer.

The rooms my heart is hollowed with
house many stories that, like weeds
or gardens, can contort the appearance
of my purpose in ways I can’t explain.

Ask me what I think and I can’t
answer better than this: I see boats in the
treetops, and cloaks on the highway.
I see outer space ticking, and oceans of color.

My head swells with fanciful imagery
that sometimes include you.
My visions are dreams, but
does that make you a dream?

Angels flying low over fields of yellow,
and sunsets mingling with planets on the
horizon. Windmills on clouds, and
subterranean children diving to crystal caverns.

Then there’s us, and this car.
There’s the road, my job, my life,
and more bills than I care about.
Touch my hand if you exist.

Knock Knock

The door is splintered and
the whistling world seeps
through every crack and I
close it with candlestick sweat.

As desperate as it seems I
need to shut the blinds from
moments of brightness were
I can feel every searing eye.

Daddy if you had been here
when Mom’s tears rolled in the night
and if you had held me would I
still need someone else’s arms now?

I can’t figure out where the path
breaks nor what constitutes an
opportunity, because every now
and again they are no more than pitfalls.

Light my lantern. Navigate this with me
because holed up in this shack I
have lost all sense of direction.
Just open the damn door.