Sunday, January 28, 2007

Say Hello

I love the way you dream
Full & rich & thick
like the scent of fresh ground coffee beans
bold
grabbing me up in the unapologetic aromas
of your enthusiasm
carrying me along
daring me to feel it
as though if you just
think it intensely enough
I will get swept up
and dream it too
You may not be wrong.
There is a lot going on
in the world of my emotions
things that precurse your arrival
But I am very susceptible to marketing.

Doppelganger

And you.
I know you... or part of you
and you know me... or part of me
pieces of us recognize each other
like looking in a mirror
Doppelganger speaks
stubborn pride
fire
passion
fierce and silent pain
strength
knowledge of ages
something deep & timeless & knowing
that you just can't explain
knowing about people
and need
We both know how love
can just spring to life
unbidden
how wanting is endless
and reassurance aches
poignant
necessary
how most often loving is
just that millisecond off
over and over through centuries
and yet

we both believe just enough
in the one in thousands of times
that it's just that millisecond on
even while we wrap our logic
around probability
some stubborn tiny spark in our souls
whispers
possibility. magic. forever.
I don't love you
now
I ache with knowing how that feels
with knowing how hope hurts

even while expectation nods as though it knew
how wanting fills you like water
and more, with knowing how
knowing that one will survive through
disappointment hurts more
a lifetime more
I know how bleakness & empty
stretch most painfully forward
into an eternity of tomorrows
Yet all I can offer you right now
is logic
Any passion I felt.. I feel..
- Oh, yes, I felt it -
is banked
buried under heaps of ash so deep
I don't know if embers for you still burn
Or how deeply they are buried
I cannot gauge their fire
Desire... affection... need...
Vital things, needing things,
I can't give them to you.
now
even when I know how & why you need them

It is cold logic I have... cold comfort
about how simple being together is so easy
in the few moments we've had
more of those - with no expectations -
would be a lovely way to begin to stretch time
I could give you those small easy moments
if you were here... at least those
easy to talk.. and that's no small thing
easy to touch...
and you wanting me.. no small thing either
being brave enough to say so
and brave enough to hear no
we could be oh so prickly stubborn might not work
yet it could be such an interesting adventure
possibilities lie divergent: cold, stony
rich & full
I am certain, not ever uninteresting

But once simple passion & desire
go beyond.. to love... well,
the tentacles of love that I grow
grow deep. They are not plug & play
and the people I let in, I let in deep
so deep there is no bottom
fathoms upon fathoms of caring
they intertwine, all the different sorts of them
one kind of love twisting into the next
until separating them becomes impossible

that deep, & I never stop wanting them
never stop needing them there needing me back
Easier to never feel one or another kind of love
if it's going to go away,
and it hasn't been so long ago
that I hoped.. again... in something that would never go away
that it would grow a lifetime - blooms & thorns together
but green & growing & full of all the sorts of magic
we have been pouring into it
Funny how fear begats fear
How asking for something
stating what you need
so often gives you
exactly the opposite of what you ask
not funny-ha-ha, of course

Perhaps I fear for nothing,
and then sureness in what I've already invested

might return
providing you & I more fragrant paths
but time ticks
Pendulum heavy swings back... and forth..

scores of shallow slices weeping bits of self
and with each swish, I hear more loudly
the ever more desperate beat of my heart

in the darkness of this silence
which surrounds me ever more deeply
the voices I hear, beloved as they are
are not the one I need, nor asked for here

If I find
that which I am most afraid of
A gardener's nightmare, to trim one thorny
beautiful delicate branch of caring
away from the twisting mass...
I had a rose bush in my yard
which produced the most beautiful blooms
Old, many canes
all twisted together
I tried to save it, when witches broom
unexpected
blighted one thrusting attempt at the light
More than just my skin bore the tale
Of that desperate attempt to
tear out one bit that wasn't working
And all those scratches, sweat, pain
didn't save it. The virus is inexorable
in its destruction
Finally, I had to cut it down
Next, I will have to tear the roots out of the very ground
Let ground lie fallow
Before I can try again

If I find
that which I am most afraid of
I won't have anything to give you
to mirror this precious passion you throw at me
for I don't know how long. Perhaps long.

I could not trust again so soon
Could not let footsteps no matter how tender
well intentioned drop upon the raw nerve endings
of a once more freshly severed soul
It's not fair of me to say wait.. to say love me anyway
to say hope... to ask you to keep battering away
on only a spark of possibility
to take friendship on a hope & a dare

when you are as bold and clear as I
that friendship alone is not the thing
for which you roll your dice
I can't even promise it could grow
once the ground healed and became
something once again that can support life
I see the possibilities you see
I know
and in knowing, I know I cannot promise
falsely
And I know... I think... that if I were tossed
the same rotten plum
I'd have the same tone of finality
I heard in your voice, carefully controlled
tinged with the same seed of doubt
yet grimly holding onto the same stubborn kernel of what if
still glimmering somewhere in hope
I myself would most likely
begin to kill hope, put away possibility,
drown the possible future in nothing & stillnesss
until it quit its muffled screaming.
I have spent too much of my life choking the life
out of unreturned hopes & dreams
Thinking of it again... doing it again churns my stomach


But as much alike as we are
We are not the same
What will you do, since I want very much
to offer you something
and yet have so little

know nothing, am getting nowhere
and cannot begin to promise

the everything you hope for?

Silent

You learn
to cry in silence
so that the
things that hide in the dark
cannot find you

If you breathe
long deep breaths
the deep racking sobs
sink into your stomach
and are absorbed
your shoulders may shake
But who can see them
where there is no lightness?
It's ok for tears to course
hot & silent
down your cheeks
pooling in the corners of your mouth

absorbed into your hair
and splattering tiny rivulets

into the crease between your breasts
Tears are silent
It is only your soul that screams
And who can hear that?
Except, of course
For the things that hide in the dark
But if you're silent
If you make no sound
Or only the tiniest whimper escapes
They might only leer at you
Menacingly
But keep to their own shadows
Until you cry out loud
An evil truce of sorts
A game of pounce

Poe would be delighted

And as a bonus
Once you've learned
this skill...
As an adult,
You won't wake your children
or, if it so happens,
the person sleeping beside you.
or walking beside you -
a different sort of sleeping

Form Follows Function

Will you be there?
In the endless darkness
When the raw edges of my soul
creep from under their thin protection
From the veneer of strength
the determination that gets one through a day

Will you be there?
when, uncalled,
unable to keep it locked inside any longer
my soul reaches out into the space around me
for warmth, solidity
to both give and receive comfort
reassurance

Form follows function
It is an infinitely precious space
a priceless gift to share it
a kind of Trust
that can be garnered no other way
something... delicate
unique
unfurls in the endless hours of the night
when dreams creep and soar and stalk
when fears and fantasies
vie to play the stage

But will you be there?
In the hours of day
One can argue
that it should make no difference
that close.. and love.. and trust
should care not a whit
at what degree Sol sits

But I'm there,
in that endless darkness with myself
where honesty takes a different sort of tumble
where the adult
can acknowledge the child inside
the piece of self that never grows up
cradle it, nurture it
soothe its fears
There are things left in the dark
and there are corners deep enough to get lost in
Dark corners that hold things
Far less pleasant than warm lips
things that if they capture you alone
can suck your soul dry

I'm there,
and in the darkness around me
I know the difference
as those raw edges of self reach for warmth
the difference
between feeling it there
soul borrowing flesh and finding solidity
hand touching warmth
legs intertwining
shift of space, respoon
believe.
Embers of desire glowing in the ash
that could be fanned to flame and fire
that could burn away the dark
a little while longer
Argue in Sol's illumination what you will -
I know
the difference between those miracles
and finding in that dark only... nothing
confirmation
of an aching silence

Empty.
You know it too --
You know:
Function follows form.
With nothing there to keep it
No warm breath to whisper
in its inhale exhale rhythm
"safe"
Hope drains out into the night
like tears in a wilderness
unseen unknown unheard
Soon I will be as empty
as the space around me.
A target for the things that
wait in the dark
and We will be a dry wisp
a husk, a hull discarded
holding only fragile memory
no protection at all

in fact,
memory
holds its own sort of blade
can slice the heart that holds it
often it is memory itself
that hides in that endless darkness
with malicious intent

Function follows form
Form follows function
Circuitous pattern:
What to be
Who to be
and How
and there... there is an intimate path
to places in our souls
that can be reached no other way
Will you be there?
Or do I walk those particular
oh, so private paths
face the darkness
yet again, once more even more
Alone?

Hesitation

I hesitate to write
I hestiate to feel
To see, to blink, to breathe
and yet
I can stop none of these things
time marches inexorably,
incrementally onward
silent and blank
I try to keep all those things
still in nothingness
struggling for Zen
but walls & floodgates
barriers
fences
hold only so much
before they fail
give way
too much too many to hold me in
I don't know if I'm weaker than I used to be
or if these things are simply richer & more robust
more complex
more important
struggling themselves for life, for themselves

I hesitate
to write, to feel
to see, blink, breathe
to speak
to trust, to love... no, not that,
but to believe.
And so the pen spills first
inky river etching riverbanks
you never knew were there
drawing waters deep still
silent, cool & comforting
and shallow, rocky
troubled

I hesitate
to feel, to blink
to see... breathe... to write
And yet hold it as I may
with that inevitable breath
comes the 'must' to write
poor as they may be
a million words
capturing only the tiniest sliver
of torrid complexity
Missing huge chunks of important us
in the struggle to gleam
a single nuance
to express even a single tiny thing
that can reach in & touch inside
that can slay dragons
that can grow green & growing
glowing golden things

Do you not want to see?
Close your eyes then, love.
Life takes us quickly past
Blink but a moment or three
and the things you don't want to see
will be gone
... or at least gone past
and you can perhaps forget
things you almost never knew

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Only a Moment

I thought this deserved a spot of its own...

Only a Moment

I brushed back the hair from her brow, again and again,

and looked to her smile for a reason, and found only circumstance, and history, and coincidence.

and regardless, she looked back at me like the man I was certain I could be, and suddenly the world was a different place.

--Posted by LostJohnny1978 to ~~Arachne's Loom~~ at 1/03/2007 07:42:49 AM

Monday, January 01, 2007

An Eternity

You capture me
With a smile deep in your eyes
Sun and moon together shine
You transport me
Both yesterday and tomorrow
disappear in your warmth
You touch me
And from your touch
spring warm summer hillsides
studded with flowers
and perfumed by the winds
You hold me
And from your arms
comes the warmth
of a raging fire on
the safest hearth
Snug against the winter
winds of life

that threaten to carry me away
Your lips, so absent, beckon
sweetest water
under an arid sky
Words whisper between us
silent as moonlight
They flow, wordless
Yet full of meaning
I strain to hear them
in vain
with these woman's ears
and hear only a deafening
heartrending silence
Until you steal close
surround me again
and from both darkness and sorrow
I hear you once again
Wordless whispers
Only my soul can hear
When once you have persuaded her
to listen.