Direction
Some night far away I stare at the sky
Think around…
I cannot decide about destiny
If it is certain or if it is found.
How can you know where to turn on the path
When you never can see very far ahead
And your sight is clouded from behind.
I go a path in a darkness with flickering light
Just enough
To see things I can never be sure of
And even when I ‘m sure I never can see
How to get there
How can I know how to get there?
When I just keep forgetting where it is,
Forgetting where I saw it in the flickering light,
How can I know how to get there?
Epilouge
At times, at times
when the bread’s gone dry,
and you’re too old and time to die,
when life tastes less than out chewed gum
the beats all out of you kettle drum
the battles had it we’ll all go home
the dying are dead and the wounded roam
the sizzle in your soda’s fizzled out and the record’s done
there’s no more drugs and the empty jugs have poured out all the fun
the glitter is litter and free debris
the sudden sun burst in a flash – bang – weeeee!
the ooh ah’s over no more to see.
the battle’s had it
they’ve all gone home
to microwave dinners and thinkThe World I Know
Flight of Fantasy
Some place else it longs to go;
This path, I know, is mine.
It knows me well and leads me there;
It waits for what I find.
My feet are faster than my heart is faint;
My fear gets left behind.
The wind an icy whisper in my ears is singing rain.
Sun shards pierce my eyes like little drops of faith
And soak my soul with wonder where --
I wish for flight of time.
Singing like the faithful I flee fast for the divine.
Rushing with elation, sightless now for fall of night,
I trust the moon and mothlike hurl myself for unseen light.
(The creatures all around me stop in reverence to my flight.)
Piercing the air with arrow’s speed this spark now springs to flame
So hot the world is turned to ash
And glows like snow –
Is white.
And I am weightless now, and I am drifting.
Perfectly still I am floating frozen in the silence
Listening
For my own soft foot steps falling patiently
Like water dripping
From trees after the rain. The World I Know
I could say that we pass each other in the streets in silence;
that we see each other without speaking.
But that would be too romantic-
here we do not see each other,
only each other’s cars and houses
that all look alike
There is no landscape
There is no sign of human life
It is a city of buildings and cars
It is always predictable
The people are happy because there are large shopping malls and new roads leading
to them
We fill our homes with all the same things and hide inside of them,
hiding ourselves from each other
No one looks out the window
to see who is going by.
A man knocks on the door
and I find it strange and frightening;
I cannot imagine why someone would knock
at someone’s else’s door.
In the city there are sidewalks but no one walks on them
except the homeless,
and me.
People find it strange that I walk on the street.
(Men whistle at me from their cars
and make me feel
ashamed.)
And so I hide inside my house and try to make a place where I belong;
try to fill the space with things
to make a world I know. In The Moment
I am but a visitor here
A traveler passing through
Collecting souvenirs
Doing things that tourists do
I wonder at the beauty
And curse the passing time
Such a fleeting fantasy
This time of yours that’s mine. The First Day
of Spring
Aah Joy and Terror uncontrollable
attraction and passion
my mind filled with thoughts of
you
your skin
your heart racing
the happy agony of being near you
and not touching you
of touching you and I cannot
consume you completely
No longer able to separate fantasy from reality
I live halfway in a dreamworld of your mouth
upon my neck.
The frenzied kissinggrabbingbreathing
exists as flashes in my mind
dizzy memories
…the scene dissolves and I wake up next to you
Having dreamt of you a I cannot separate the intertwined realities
of sleeping
and of waking.
I roll over and kiss your shoulder
to know that you are real
You open your eyes and smile ate me
I sigh and am again consumed
by my
desire. How hardly believable was that day,
that time had had its way,
and the day we knew was coming came
calling us to duty, forcing distance,
demanding reason’s ransom on our being.
And after all that had transpired,
all that had come to us like flood water
rushing under the unsuspecting bridge that spanned
between our oh so separate lives;
After a whole epic departure of legendary tale,
that caused our hair to stand on end in awesome wonder,
swearing ourselves transformed, reborn by fire and overwhelmed
by love and light,
We found at last that we must leave it all at that –
that we had come at last to our adventure’s end,
and that in the end it all led up
to standing there in the street,
leaving each other again quite at a loss
for what to say to ourselves or to each other
or to any other who might ask of us the tale.
And dumb struck we must wander back to the world we know too well
and struggle with the numbness that we’ll learn to live again.
And as we move like robots in the world that makes no sense to us
we grapple in our hearts and minds for what the meaning might have been,
and how, oh Jesus, how, we can hang on to
it, and to each other.
As fresh memories fade the dust of time falls layer upon layer
to obscure what we so know was there
but that it seems we’ll never prove to anyone existed
if we cannot keep returning to the place
it first appeared
to sweep it clean again –
if we cannot keep returning to each other.
But maybe it is all in vain.
Sitting alone outside my house in the middle of the night
I smoke and wonder
if it is meant to be pursued –
if such things are meant to be preserved or left to crumble.
This question haunts my thoughts till I am driven to consider
what the weight is of these things.
There is no way to reconcile pragmatism and romance,
and I cannot solve the puzzle of whether love exists at all
or if it is only an illusion.
What is the difference, anyway,
between passion and obsession?
Are we all deluding ourselves, afterall?
If only I could make it back to where it all began and there
I could look deeper to decide if it is real,
if it was worth so much as it all seemed like then –
Some miracle of destiny, some message, come divine –
or merely human fallacy, tragically imagined,
making dreamers tragic victims of their hope.
No –
Let’s not chalk it up to grand invention
even if that’s all it is, let’s not.
I’d rather be a believer basking stupidly in hope,
and letting romance lead me happily where practicality won’t go
than trudge this ashen world with reason ruling passion
and never knowing full elation of senses surely lost,
the prickling of my hair standing on it’s end,
eyes wide, knees trembling,
balanced barely on the precipice
in terror of abandon. Love and Breakfast
Sitting at the breakfast table
trying to hid behind the orange juice
or crawl under the eggs –
What is more important:
Love?
Or breakfast?
Is it the hangover causing this nausea?
Tequila has a terrible effect
and the the next day is mortification,
self loathing, and dread.
Sitting across the breakfast table
with someone you shouldn’t have slept with is
one kind of horror.
Having told someone you love them
and knowing that it’s true
is far
more awkward.
The question of
“Was is only because we were drunk?”
Sits with its arms folded in the middle of the table
glaring
at us both.
The other time it was settled quickly,
cooked in with the eggs and toast,
giving you something to nod at as you ate.
Now that “I love you” has been squared away
there is no where else to go.
We’re done for and we know it.
We finish breakfast,
question and all,
but there is no where else to go. Night Sea
In a sea full of night I head for a light
And a shore of uncertain landing
And the fog if it lifted would only reveal a cliff my view cannot scale.
I stare our of wonder and gaze out of fear –
Half crazy and half out of longing
I leap and the water of night claims my soul
I make love to the night and it swallows me whole.