"Possessed" - 11/28/03

my soul
she was moonlit
and yes we
were longing
to speak
with someone else
as doleful
as us

all humor
aside I'm
admitting I've
failed you
by unveiling
more than
I'll ever
deem yours

- - -

though I fear
now I'll hoard
hope away
yet it wasn't
my intent
(to repeal
so well-spent
a fortune

in feeling)
I promise
I'm tossed and
train-reckoning
vacuous
floating
above us
blue angels

Chagall-like
imitating
lust with an
innocence
only love's
child playing
dress-up
could muster

like young
Shirly Temple
ear-to-ear
this was
no breath
for reflection
no room for

pride's pause

"Thanksgiving" - 11/27/03

freedom
like I've never known
you hold so easily
upon your lap
she fidgets and cries
while in my embrace
but you, professor of calm

displace youth's sadness
and in so singing
make me whole
yet knowledgeable is this
siren of gall
that no man ever
create's woman's power
so much as invigorates
love's house of mirrors

the way the asthmatic
appreciates breathing so I'm
ameliorated by your next thought
thank G-d we are both ones
of those who count parting
as night's great elixir

bittersweet as bones

"Butterflies" - 11/11/03

questioning...how to fill in the space that comprises my moodiness, my empty soul-shell waging war with my too-full heart head...so beautiful talking with and listening tonight one shaking hand types and knows no words can match the awkward magic silence still she tries knowing recklessness is a small price for a net that catches butterflies so sweetly as you.
---
there are are things about me that I already muse would off-put and confuse unless/until we first met on middle ground and for at least 48 hours just shared with no window through which shallow insecurity could creep. eccentricity's painfully short for bittersweet and I know I made light of my pseudo-sleeptalking but truly...I am by no means cured and self-understanding/acceptance still's new...
---
would you, could you still meet me somewhere between fear and calm, knowing you have reached a shore I've only written poetry for and sung as young actress-girls feign easily being whores? to say you barely know me might feel like a slap in the face, when all I want to do is press your forehead and hold you like waves holding clarity and arms are only half the whole sentence, the other phrase eyes, endless, empathetic ice-blue.

please know that if I was reluctant to invite you in it is because I am ashamed not of where I live but who am I, how I can live with myself and swing so red and so yellow and so green back to white before hitting vice, semi-annually it seems, where secrecy wedges walls between myself and those...who claim to understand but ego-bruised...criticize.

I love who I am when I'm being the bard, but loathe am I to share what's still winter-hard though thawing slowly into understanding of malaises I'm not even so sure I always believe in, but which paralyzes me, nonetheless, within laugher's screaming. And of course, I have to laugh...and leave...and live this life...
---
So whenever I meet someone who makes me feel temporarily free within illusion's steel I am hopefully hopeless, remorsefully happy, gratefully shattered as pieces of glass

all I ask...
all I ask...

is that you try to comprehend
that even the strongest of people (one of whom, in certain ways I surely am)
are not always the most insightful as to how

the mind can flounder
while the heart, brazen,
flies.

in your voice
stands my soul...

h y p n o t i z e d

"Blessings Over Cheap Wine" - 11/2/03

I gave myself seven minutes to decide
to drink you in or let you fall like autumn
leaves me more quickly than lovers breathe
sometimes the years are seconds sometimes
the hours rip like wind

eyes of china if
saucers were turquoise I swear
I would never leave without butterfly
kissing since circling in figures there's
no way I could have perfected alone

perfectionist cursed, affection blissed
the stories that live in my skin are wick-less
but burning still like lava beneath
what clouds cannot stain red with
broken heart-staring

shall I confess?
I was one minute shy of saying
je t'adores in languages too swift
to type or tapdance but hopeful are We
you will whisper the rest to yourself

(might I sing again for you, so blessed)