A piece of metal

This piece of metal
That I put on, and take off,
Every morning and every night

Would it mean as much to me
Had life not asked us this?
To be in love apart

A company
A presence
A symbol

A home for the soul
A hand on the shoulder
A back on a back

Faith—
When you first make your way towards it—
Feels fickle and weak
A precipice you possess the folly to step into

But faith—when it has built its nest in your heart—
Is solid ground
Is falling into the arms of earth, nurturing and abundant
Is rising anew, no matter that and how you fell

I share a life with you—Without sharing a space
You are my home—Even when you're not home
I am in love with you—I am in love with all that is

Building a monument

A late night
Under a starry sky
And a long boat ride later

Warmth and darkness welcomed us
Into the melting of bodies
And the melting away of words.

I may never forget you, wordless night
And the depths touched in me

— Through a slow, spiral dance,
Through conversation held in silence,
Through the shared, velvety darkness.

And may this depth form
Our testament to love;
Until we erect the next one,

Built yet again,
From a different darkness,
A different silence.

Yet again,
Ephemeral
And ever lasting.

Untempered

That you love so plentifully
So abundantly
That there is no hesitation in your loving
No rationing
That you dare—
To speak it
To act it
To show it—
Yourself, in front of me
In your overflowing love
Love is not to be tempered
Not moderated, diluted, or reined in
Love is, according to its own logic

A problem

How is it possible
That there is a state of being
—my current state of being—
Where I am occupied with
—and I really mean occupied with—
Missing you.

It’s hard for my mind to let go
Of the image of you
I don’t want to spend time with anyone else
I can’t think of a way to nourish myself
When all I’m graving for is you.

I’ve turned into an aimless, tortured soul
With no clear direction—
But the one that points to you

And it’s said that that’s a bad thing
A problem
Or so my mind says

And so I fight it
So I try hard doing reasonable things
But I’m a lost cause
Wandering aimlessly through this city
I am learning isn’t mine

The Brick-Walled Café

Tears come so easily
Abundantly
Thinking of you

Sitting in a brick-walled café
With cheap prices and mediocre coffee
Distracted by thought

Immobilised by low-level ache
Not so strong as to make me scream
Yet poignant enough for my heart to curl

By the pain of not knowing when,
Not knowing how,
Not knowing whether

We will get to be.
Don’t know what I want
Just know I want

Your touch to be real, not imagined
Our eyes to rest in meeting.

To hold your hand,
To rest your head,
To fuss your hair,
To paint your face,
To be caught by your glance,
To watch you play those strings

For space and time to be on our side.

Pick up your heart

How to hold thyself, you ask
In the face of adversity
How to hold thyself
When the world asks more
Than you believe yourself capable of

How to hold thyself, you ask
When the passions have you weak
When a part of you
—Banging on the doors of your inner rooms—
Screams that everything matters,
That everything counts

Then, my friend
You pick up your heart
And you put on your shoes
And you let them carry you
To the deepest part of the nearest forest
And you find the stillest tree that you can fathom

And you ask it for help
To share its stillness
To bless your heart
And you learn
To hold yourself
The way that trees do

Summer Guest

When I take a bite
From this juicy peach
On a stuffy summer’s day
Half of my brain
Begrudges the mess
Tries to maneuver my body
Out of the fall line
Of this dripping glory
While the other half
Quite thoroughly delighted
Declares the triumphant arrival
Of those timeless times
Which have come to stay
For a little while

The watchman

Your fire burns for the world
And it sometimes scorches your own skin

Your love refuses to be
But in abundance
And yet somehow it also knows
To bypass this very face of yours

Oh dear, dear child
You do find your reflection
Quite unbearable at times

To close one’s eyes
To forge ahead
To refuse to listen
When what you hear you cannot bear

No play remains
Once a heart is set on fire
By the watchmen of the north.

No play remains
When everything matters.

Small poem of self-compassion

 

I’m in love with this garden I have found myself in. With the boy who is sitting on the other side of this florid house. In love with the parts of me that say the wrong things at the wrong time. And that particular part, right now, that is too shy to sit with the others. In love with the me that gets carried away — like a leave! — by gusts of joy, and sadness, and melancholy in ways that is far beyond my control.

 
 

Opening

No difference to fathom
Between laughing and crying
Just different forms of prayer
Each prayers of my love

Laughing and crying
Best understood
As different ways of paying attention

To the beauty of the world
A beauty that’s already here,
Woven all across,

A mere opening away
A mere opening away
A mere opening away

A beauty that sometimes comes as ‘You’
And sometimes as ‘Me’
And sometimes as the way the sun hits the mountain side
Or the soft tilting of the eagle’s wings
Or the cautious steps of the deer walking through our garden
Or the very rustling of the tree tops causing me to lift my gaze just now

Beauty of sight
And of all the senses
All the outwards ones
And all the inward ones
And all the ones that reach beyond

Oblivion

I want you to hold me again
Now that I'm all gone, far away

To be placed in a cocoon
Of aerial, sentient touch

And when you’re with me
The scary ones become tame

Under your eyes,
I find myself more beautiful than before

You make me strong
When, really, I am not but a blade of grass

Just as you make me weak,
Never closer to dying than at the cusp of life

I know nothing
I know all I need to know

Wishes for R & M

I don’t think I know anything about love;

Except that love is beyond words to capture,
And that love, at once,
Wants everything, and nothing at all.

I don’t think there is anything I can give you;

Except my witness -
To behold you on your paths
And to meet you anew, each time again. 

I don’t think I know anything about commitment, nor freedom;

Except that they are living, breathing creatures,
And that anything I could say about them now
Would have ceased to be quite right tomorrow;
And might even turn into shackles to the imagination.

And I know that we form them, just as much as they form us
And that a lot of the art of living
Lies in the subtle ways in which we allow the world, others,
To sculpt our deepest being;

A marriage of autonomy and surrender.

Submerged

I want to tell you how I feel
I want to answer all your questions
I want to lay myself bare, in front of you
— Nothing you cannot see

But I am tangled, oh so tangled
There is no start, no end to what I feel
— I am submerged
No looking up, no time to breathe

And what I fear most
— In face of all precarity
Is that the waves will carry me away from you
Two hands reaching out through the night

— Never to touch
Nothing more cruel than the ocean
In its eternal abundance
And relentless dispersing of space

Nothing’s perfect

 

Nothing’s perfect,
Nothing is;

Everywhere you go
You find them,

Small grievances
Or big ones;

You will always find
Reason for despair.

Nothing is perfect,
Nothing is;

The world not for you,
You not for the world.

What it means?
I do not know.

We’re fucked?
We suck?

Both probably.
And also:

Beauty isn’t measured in perfection;
Nor is love.

The right response
To life,

The right response
To imperfection

Is despair;
But not just despair.

Also love
Also wonder

Also hope
Also laughter.

Nothing’s perfect,
Nothing is.

For M.

 

I want to live
With the flame of love in my center
And the light of truth in my eyes.

I want to walk
Forward, steady
Free from strife and free of doubt.

I want to take things into my hands,
Feel them, weigh them, taste them
My grip determined, my touch soft.

I want to stare at the dawn of day and rejoice
In the sweetness of the morning air
And the promise of the rising sun.

I want to be in integrity,
Unflinching before myself,
Steady before the world.

I want to take - every day again -
The actionless act of courage
In daring to be here; be really here.

Something important

But what
But what if
But what if you’ve come to twist my reasons around

What if your presence,
Your entrance,
Amounts to an exorcism
Of myself upon myself;

What if you turn me
Into someone, or something
I don’t recognize.

What if You
Crowds out Me;

My soul drifting offshore
Caught by a current
Too strong for her
To ever drift back to me.

Like distance,
In a cold universe,
Ever-expanding.

What if by letting you in
I’m letting in the world;
Come to spoil
Something important.