Sometimes I wish I had
something to say that was
worthwhile, worth the wait,
and sometimes I wish there was
some way we could
just learn life
while we sit by someone’s feet,
waiting for the end
of another commercial.

But no, I have to go
through what life gives me,
what I offer back to it in response,
defiance or acquiescence;
what comes out
after the chicken crosses
the road.

Crying inside, because that’s how
you pay for the things that matter;
a little bit of happy that’s inside you,
for every inch you gain,
tossed to a wind that does not
come back to you,
however you wish otherwise -
something people pass to each other,
like a link that’s hoping
to get somewhere lasting,
somewhere beyond one lifetime -
growing older,
just another gray hair closer
to dying.

There’s a lot of us, you know -
people dying a little every day
while we go about business;
people finding new ways to hurt,
the same way we go about loving,
people finding they want more
than life could give them,
never mind if they have to trample,
or kill other dreams, other people,
to get there, wherever there is.

There’s a lot of us, loving
like we die every moment we do;
every act of kissing a king’s ransom,
every kindness a queen’s dowry,
every touching an exchange
of kingdoms.

There’s no help to it: we touch,
for good or ill; we are diminished,
or expanded, as we give;
we gain in wisdom, everytime
folly catches us
in some well-meant word,
but ill-advised murder.

Dry as chaff, I turn away,
even as I permit my soul to linger
a little bit more,
in this now, in the never,
before wisdom, large as regret,
overtakes me and leaves me dry.

Nice, Red

(((((T)))))

((((R)))))

I am deeply enjoying this corner of your world

Thank you a deep thank you

This is unspeakably beautiful. I took my time and read everything you wrote so far. I hope you keep writing. Just... wow. So uniquely brilliant.

You are too kind, really. But always welcome to come sit by my little corner.

It wasn't your words that left me speechless, so much as the sincerity that flowed with it. Thank you.

ending a talk with you
is like the tail-end of a deep kiss –
i know the loss of something more
than the breath of another life.
it’s like losing the scintillation
of one of those twilights clearer than all
the ones i’ve ever tasted.
i know we have lost this one
even as we go back
to our, once again, solitary nights.
no one saw us throw out thoughts
into the void…
as if we were never strangers,
truth and truth, as the instants
bloomed and blossomed;
the only hesitations, those that were
caught in the cusp
of extended definition, meshed
in the possibility
of more implications
than we might have been prepared
to discount, coming in.
no one saw us leave, once more,
with the false courage of unarticulated fears,
knowing we have lost this one twilight
like all that have gone before.

i can see on hindsight,
the train of sunsets caught
against the backdrop of that distant
mountaintop
of craven, wordless, longings,
pieces of insight nestled between
spontaneous lines like embers of moon
burning their last
into the palms of my hands.
here, i treasure your words…
here, my soul, cherishes you
with a sadness as eternal
as all i know of beauty,
knowing how my regard was
as fleeting as my life’s hold at time...
saying goodbye for the night,
and, for all i know, for once and for all,
when an eternity ago, another soul seemed,
so in tune with my own,
when all of understanding lay before two,
when all of possibility was only
another word away.

it seemed trite to ask, then, or now,
why would the all of...let's call it...wonder,
the grasp of it, come on me at a time,
when all i had in hand was hindsight,
wrapped in the grief of knowing you,
for a piece of a dream i should have
realized, before this moment, when i feel
so old so wise...and all of you gone
in the twilight?
why must you always, always beat
a retreat, through the nights,
always where the sunset time marches along
erasing shadows...

Funny how I got reminded that I’m still human enough for air, for another hope at another exchange, down the road, where the perhaps always lurks, when winning and losing don’t mean as much as watching you light life into me again, simply by being.

Who coined love and minted it
over the gold of friendship?
What fool first painted sunsets
and made them backdrops
for so many leavings?
Why did they have
to come up with a word that spells goodbye
so awfully well?

I like love when it’s just a weight
on your belly; a glance, a regard, longer than most,
a hunger, deeper than words,
a nameless longing to hold,
and be held.
I like love when it’s just a smile
that fills up the hallway,
and possesses your fifteen minutes
without taking.

And isn’t friendship like that too?

Who coined love
and made it selfish as gold?
Who priced it over Mastercard?
What’s loving you more means
when it’s not worshiping the ground you walk on?
What’s loving you less entails
when it’s you walking through the remains
of my entreaties?

I like love when it doesn’t make me cry;
the possibility of you, the possibility of me,
etching shadows, and curves,
and sunshine on bedsheets without regret.
I like love when it’s just a hunger
meeting your own like a long lost blessing;
a fulfillment of a set of memories
gently colliding with another,
like finding the future in a yesterday
that wasn’t meant to be
back then.

And isn’t friendship like that too?

Ms Lace

I wish you enough of all that is,,
I have fully enjoyed the journey thru your soul

Soar ms lace,,,,, soar

LAMom, sincerely, I like you. There's an openness about you that immediately inspires a smile, though we have just recently crossed paths through our shared love for words. I like that you visit every window, even mine, because you seem to care what's inside than what's merely under the sun, unlike most. Thank you.

Pancakes

Though the argument was its own excuse, familiarity with a language other than his own did not give him a license to write excruciatingly-bad poetry with it. In the same vein, the recognition of a kindred spirit in someone just met should never have given him the impetus to break her heart.

Bake a cake for a voice ignored. Too complex, he judged. Pancakes, he decided. Just the ticket!

He had met her in the dark, a while back. A pinpoint of light in the void of a language his semantic explorations would never be able to plumb simply because the language of his prose was not his. She was as empty as he was, waiting to be filled. Or she was as full as he was, seeking to be emptied. Only he did not realize then, that one emptiness could never fill another. And his brimful, multiplied, might consume them both. Or maybe he wanted his turn at a windmill other than his own.

He opened the cupboard, checked out what he had. Flour! He measured a cup, like so many words, into a bowl. Baking powder, yeah? Yeah. Two teaspoonfuls of it, like simple gladness enhancing the thought of beauty beheld. He didn’t have regular milk – too bad – so he heaped another cup of powdered milk on top of everything else. A dash of cinnamon, for possible piquancy. One, two…five tablespoons of sugar, to make the heart beat faster.

Now, what to do? He melted half a tablespoon of butter on the microwave, hot, and then cooled, like ardor stoked and stored. Cracked an egg and dropped both white and yolk on the flour mixture. Nothing like flippant poetry to round out the flavor. A cup of water, to slake the thirst of his soul. Then the cooled butter, like an endearment not left behind.

Ah, a wooden spoon to stir the hornet’s nest of thorns and sharp edges of two souls until it was smooth with longing. A batter of two for the frying pan, moistened with oil and set a bit below medium setting at the stove; every good start begins with just the right amount of heat between wishings.

He was Plato discussing his Dialogues through an experiment for pancakes, from scratch; she was Muse, a beautiful distillation of all she’d ever wanted, a most-delicious scent wafting into his imagination, requiring his poetry. Tugging at his commitments.

He didn’t have himself. That was his worry at the start.

The batter seemed dry, so he doled out more water while he stirred thought into a proper muddle.

She was so beautiful, and everything he’d ever wanted. She probably could not cook a damn, but that was alright, so long’s she was close by to egg him on with a hug and a kiss while he messed up the kitchen. He remembered thinking all that, a rocketship of hope savoring his soaring expectations. His old man had told him, “Once you know you’ve found the right one, boy, grab hold and never let go.” But he had not owned himself, didn’t he? How could he be selfish?

A marvel how hearts could build castles out of hope in a single hour, from a single poem. Written. Understood. Reciprocated. Everything he’d always sought, waiting there for his going.

So many people he had learned to love during his lifetime. So many people close to him, who loved him. And not one single one of them had bothered to read between the lines of anything he’d written. It took strangers he had never seen, to see him to the core. If he had any single tragedy in his life, then that was it. Bah!

Oi, he’d gone and flipped and cooked six pancakes already while he was flirting around with his mental calisthenics. Two more to go, he thought before he was done. Some things were easier ended than started.

Time. It took time to cook panckes, the same way it took time to appreciate what he didn’t have. What he would never have. Like a woman whose poetry scrawled its longings up and down his spine, whose empty life was spooling out one abyss away. Like a stranger who might have been able to make of his house a home. Like a Kiss before dying.

She had herself. He didn’t. He had baggage. Thus, he could not have her. He owed her something. If only the freedom to achieve her joys.

That wasn’t even IT, he reflected. Women were the most realistic creatures he’d ever seen. They might dream, but, bottom line, they did not sit well with promises. Today! That’s what they want, what they work for. He could not sustain a dream without being able to exchange – no, to give! – a caress. He did not have today. He did not have another lifetime. He had not the clean slate to gift her. He loved; frightfully, deeply so. He could not promise today.

Hello. Goodbye. He was saying those words a lot, too, these days. They felt heavier, held through the memory of a baby’s first cry, and brought closer by the immediate sound of a respirator valiantly holding death at bay. Such poignancy on hindsight. Such a loss.

His cooking was done. He rinsed out the utensils he’d used, carefully stacking them on the washer. His cleansing was almost methodical; his hands going through that simple chore. Like Pilate.

He ate the pancakes he’d cooked, every freaking one, while silent tears cut out new trails down his cheeks.

The taste of cinnamon was there alright; so much the fleeting kiss of mocking moonlight on dewed grass, as elusive as the faintest scent of autumn grass, after rain.

A wonderful story to start the morning off to, Red.

((((((((((((((((((((T))))))))))))))))))))))))

Thank you! You should read the one I posted on my fb.

If I close my eyes long enough,
I can bring you back to me,
memory and sound to my ears,
sweet and light as some future day,
waiting to become.

If I close my eyes long enough,
I can feel, as deeply;
the pull, the thrill, the call
of your imagined lips on mine,
as real as all the mouths
I’ve ever learned to feed on
before,
yearning to be honest,
scared to discover otherwise,
longing to be given back
what might be given this day
only in silence.

If I close my eyes long enough,
I would forget you were not mine,
and my time not all of yours,
and all we love, more and less,
not standing between our affections.

If I close my eyes long enough,
I’d find you again, day or night;
between the pages of my life,
tucked, like a shriveled leaf,
and all the memory that’s left
of a moment rife
some years and a day before,
between my waking dreams,
between the bookends my arms
have now become, where you
might have stood still,
might still leap up from,
in eager green,
given proximity, given a miracle,
long enough to show me
what home might have been,
if the time had been right,
and all that was forgivable
safely at our side.

If I close my eyes long enough,
I’d learn to write again,
to say these words
in a thousand more ways;
each day a song distinct,
yet all different, taste and feel
and sound, for love’s sake
uplifted, uplifting,
yet ever meaning
the same…

if I close my eyes long enough.

Humble am I,,, I've come to enjoy watching you soar Ms Lace,,
Your soul has a brilliant delight and a warm welcome when one
close's thier eye's and just listens...

Its these little journeys that make listening such an art,,

Quite moving.. i felt the tears run down my cheeks this morning,,
I have learned that when one is ready to open there eyes,, ohhhhh the beauty of it all remains,, intact.... and then they dance