Souls borne on wanderlust winds
Never their wandering fate rescind.
They wander like winds throughout their lives
Enslaved to adventure for which they strive.
Living life on its razor-thin edge
At the tip of fate’s precarious wedge,
They ride like Valkyries into war,
Not knowing what life is really for.
Some are heroes, and some are rogues
Who will constantly wring from life its most.
But, in the end, they are lusty slaves
To their itchy feet’s whims
And life’s wondrous ways.
Deciduous
At a private party one rusting noon,
Green elm trees reveled with summer on its bier,
Gaily rousing a drowsy lagoon.
Some bathed their beak-scarred barks, those on the pier
Appeared to beckon birds come for songful fun;
For this they from the grave forest did run.
But soon their blades shall be bled, as
Amber leaves wring from brittle, weary boughs,
A purging of passions their hearts did house.
Thrust up from the firmament and break the clouds.
Wring from the world the Water of Life in its crystalline perpetuity as raiment.
Bend the wind around your back and send to me the most undeniable of siren songs.
Send your mirage of eternity to these eye-blink lives longing for forever and I will bear my bones with feather-light heart to the sight of your object eye.
For only there can I see how tiny and fleeting are all my fears.
And all my triumphs.
Show me the illusion and may I know it for Smoke before the mirror.
The dreams of the Mountain haunt the step of every day.
Memories of freedom to those in chains.
What are they worth?
Nothing at all.
And Life itself.
Let me wade
deep into the water
with all my clothes still on.
Let my body
ripple in the space I occupy.
Let me swim
in the murky water
and dip my skin
in the unrefined.
They seem much too eager
to have me sit very still
for long
long periods of time
as they talk.
I am the grass that grows
between the weathered
cracked cement.
You are delirium
that takes over
when my spirit is spent.
I am the dagwood painted trees
I blossom in the night.
I own the obstacles
that stand between
me and life.
Let me float.
Let me walk
barefoot through the vineyards
where the soil can cling
to the soles of my feet.
Let the weight
of my body
impress upon the ground
some sign of life.
Let me steep
in the adrenaline
the sun seems to wring from my skin.
They seem much too eager
to have me sit very still
for long
long periods of time
as they talk.
I am the grass that grows
between the weathered
cracked cement.
You are delirium
that takes over
when my spirit is spent
I am the dagwood painted trees
I blossom in the night
I own the obstacles
that stand between
me and life.
Let me float.
No, death is not
the answer,
ever.
And although the pain of
a deteriorating friendship,
a lover lost,
a mother dying,
a world unfriendly to change,
is enough to stall me for a day
or two or three or twenty,
it is the living,
the continuing to breathe
that will fix it all,
that will mend the broken toys
in my chest,
patch up the holes in the knees
of my jeans;
it is living
that will wrap its warm arms
around my throat –
a flannel-fleece scarf,
not a noose.
I do not ask for
forgiveness
that I cannot
wring from the wet sponge
offered to me as my life.
My life
is only mine
and I will swallow it
whole.
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