Should've asked first...

We were connected
to each others gaze
and more
deeply, once
we wished would last for-
ever.

Remember
with me
conversations, deeply
endless opportunity
being
together only-
beginnings.

I know
that was then,
but I do not know
when this
is-
more endings.

True, I only speak
most
honestly in poetry.
Saying more
than I could other-
wise.

I only ask
now, how we changed
focus-frequently
away...

Don't answer,
I won't repeat.

The blue-lit face,
red cheeks, empty windows
and presence-
elsewhere, I try to focus
on something
as intangible and
deeply infinite,
as sky only to resist
the falling atmosphere.

It is my fault.
I should've asked
you if you think
we get what we deserve
always?



Painting by Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898), 'Her eyes are with her heart' c. 1881, in Pubic Domain. 

tepidity

I said my feet were frozen,
he did not care
but took notice of my canvas shoes
atop the icy mud.

The fire he made,
started by Him,
should have been
enough-

but the wood was wet
atop the dirt that was sand,
the grass still green despite the dew
the smoke swirled
inside the pit.

His forehead and eyes settled into the comfortable scowl,
his red cheeks took upon themselves an orange glow
and I knew he felt
contentment.

I smiled at him over the inferno.
He often mocked
the speed at which I walked
on December nights near the open sea.

After explaining over my shoulder,
like salt,
why the air felt so distinctly different
between us

he said no more about what he could not feel.

Together,
we find our way
a-part
of accepting
differences by degrees.



Artwork by Felix Nussbaum [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

a disenchantment of nearsightedness

We searched
each other.
Diving in
with our whole soul,
unafraid of the brackish waters,
darkness, mirth or depth
of each other's eyes

Seeking what we had
lost, once had, where did
we put it, over there, outside,
ourselves, and with the things
that keep us
apart,

Spinning wheels in alternating
rotations, going nowhere fast,
or beating our chests like hearts
and pinching nerves to make a
sound come out...

Oh No.
There were so many ways to say,
I see where you are going,
you are getting smaller
as you travel
away.


Painting by Lionel Constable c. between 1849-55, Yale Center for British Art [Public domain].

Rapid eye movement

It was important to him that he remembered his dream 
so he could tell me-
He remembered his ‘idols’ there, men he looked up to 
from down in the trenches of the real world, 
They were all there,  welcoming, 
they treated him as one of the ‘boys’.

And one of the boys 
gave him a box, a puzzle box which he shook
And some pieces fell out, he felt terrible about it, 
He may have been apologizing to me.

He told me 
how frantically he scoured the floor
So he could solve the puzzle completely 
and please them greatly.

And he did but the pieces came out again and again and I was 
Certain the picture was starting to develop- 
he was dreaming of us.

His father and step-mother while visiting us once, told me about his 
childhood propensity to steal two jigsaw puzzle peices so 
at the end of the day, he could be the One
who finishes.

In the next scene, he was sitting in a room with a low table, 
on a shaggy rug, the puzzle in the box sat atop,
but  he was certain there were still pieces missing 

so he was hesitant to try to put it together
knowing it couldn't be completed.

I asked him if he wasn’t curious to know what the puzzle pictured,
He said it was just a silly dream,

And the missing pieces weren’t the thing about the dream,
it was the idols, he said.

I found it puzzling and pinched myself.  

Image credit By Mennonite Church USA Archives [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

He kneaded Her

She may be being beaten

As we read this

Together,

Hold on, it sounds morbid, but there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

One learns to accept the role of  I-witness, until one cannot bear to watch-

And then instead of gashes and broken bones, he could be pushing

Her buttons, shoving

Thing in corners

And covering them up with

Sickness. 

He certainly demands

ATTENTION! Obedience and privacy,

Of course, isolation and abuse are like marriages,

Ownership issues and subtle clues, like Grand Canyon colors,

Naturally, it was about the little words, the little monies,

The precious little time, the violent vices, the weak needs

And the only daughter they despise.

She is cowering, her nose red, her eyes black, her thoughts run away with the

Memories, tapes we tried to unstick, etchings I attempted to erase by

Geography and sandy paper,

Moments that seemed frozen

Then

And then

And then

And then...

Painting by John Reinhard Weguelin, Woman in the reeds c. 1895 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

balancing books

The Undo is the indecide, I choose 
never to go there.

I make, instead,

no excuses.

Shortcuts were his favorite for efficiency 

                                           and displaying his mastery.

I liked the long drawn hand kind 

                                           subject to blur and bruise.

(only delete

favorite button, hot or not
spaceback neverwas 

I may erase even you
neverwhere) -white out-

This is the Upside.

Black blends in.

The downside-

no middle ground

                              or bridge

connecting view between the two

of i to I.

Look (t)here, 

describe what you (would like to) see

outside of inside, it comes 

mismatched but attached-

I pick up the left-overs 

this phenomenon called an ex-

ample of symbiosis.

We refill empty with each other

to persist we insist 

on forget.

As the zero is to one,

nothing (t)here without

love
in redshift.

Painting by Jacob Jordaens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Engine trouble

The man was not just skinny but scraggly.

His mother kept telling him to get a job. He still listened to his mother.

He worked. He worked in an auto-shop learning lubes and fine-tuning-

Until they stopped making them

like they used to.

His father used to 

drink alcohol like a liquor store sprinter. Naturally, he got thirsty too, and drank

and stank the same as his father, his mother would say every day.

Grease or oil, bitter battery acid or brake fluid and gin, 

and all over again, the evolved monkey man

with the sooty stained hands that exclude him from white paper work, shows silver

linings along his brow.

Every now and then he picks up a brush, a ladder, a little girl and moves just a stroke away

from happiness in his days. His mother said she prays for him.

He should have picked up a shovel or an ice pick, manners or a real lady,

but is too weak to make them work

for him.

He falls into a five year hole. 

He comes out in smooth pieces, 

none fit tight and his well-being wont hold water, slipping on surfaces,

He is sees light

And knows he is being saved for another life, another 

day to die, his mother said ladies first when he listened.

The old lady in a broken down car, pulled over on the roadside waves for help, 

it is all white and frozen, steam surrounds her.

The mechanic stops

himself for a moment 

before moving on, 

simply too skinny to spare anything-

a white canvas, waiting for him to return 

the favor.



Painting by Jacob Jordaens, The Satyr and the peasants (1620) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Convice-a-versa

There was too much to say 
and no single string
to unwind the entanglement
they had become bound by.

There was no effort to try an utterance,
no thoughtless pennies lying around;
that whet glimmer gone out-thirst quenched
that kindled glow to dull grit, brackish.

Nowadays, 
they say so little about much to Be
done differently, they insist
resistance is futile, 
the pinned up smile, better
(n)ever?

And so, the silence stood for resilience,
for this speechless return, old friends 
in darkness, happenstance
this ends loneliness for this time.

Gentler thoughts could do-(no)
Better. 

Painting by By Felix Nussbaum, 1943 (https://www.tumblr.com/search/Felix+Nussbaum) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Anchors I weigh

When I showed up

I learned from living on top of time

I was not welcome anywhere,

but hospitality persists

itself like religion

everywhere

there’s room.

My timing not convenient.

A detour is never the fastest path,

unless the destinations are the same.

It is safer submerged, underwater

where whims wont push you around

I found

After holding my breath so long.

She could have killed me.

I know she tried, more than once,

placing her baby bundle on the bow

rock-a-bye, like they do,

rolling for the wake to take me back

Her bare hands would be too brutal

and accidents are blameless

What doesn't kill you

lets you live exhausted

torch smothered.

Insisting on myself

I remain

S.O.S.

tethered to the life raft

that was never attached

to Her. 

Composed 10/24/15.

Image by By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Thorn Tree

I see the lack of resemblance
like you
I am nothing like my parents
despite always wearing my favorite genes
that fit like a glove
I still love
them
like kin.

Inherited place cards
occupy our dwelling
in life
and death,
where assigned
I never did mind...
until the differences
became clearer
than the need to be near
the trunk of the family tree.

Oil and vinegar
I live separate and away
in my own impermeable cell.
Peaceful and joyous, limitless,
I stored no blame
that my aim was just further
than their eyes could go
Alone, I continue to grow.

Mom made her bed
I said in my head
noticing her envious stare
his following her with a glare.
Stepdad's always mad,
but I'm glad for what I had-
pushing me far away,
finding my freedom today,
to say
it couldn't be any other way.

It is said I will turn into you
by the age of forty-two,
but my posture is still perpendicular,
my vernacular is particular
to my own family, future forward
I step into the newest version
of heredity conversion
with relational aversion.

The carving of a new generation
an artistically starved creation
the recipe for degeneration
juxtaposed by gestation
inherently bound by cessation
the state of our familial relation,
recessive by genetic translation.


 Image credit: By Luca Galuzzi (Lucag) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons, Thorn Tree, Namib Desert, Namibia.

Happily Never After

Image By GlenAFord at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

One of the hardest things to see
is when to accept that it may never be.
Both of our hearts bleed,
not able to give what each other may need.
Romance I think we have honestly tried-
and your effort cannot be denied...
But when you move to touch me anymore
my skin stings and my body feels bruised and sore.
I said I felt abandoned and neglected
And you say you always feel rejected.
How can we see eye to eye
when it feels like we are living in the safety of a lie?
Waiting for the good parts to come
meanwhile our hearts grow cold and numb.
The problem isn't whose to blame
No matter what we try it stays the same...
I am a thorn in your side,
making you feel obligated and tied
Safe and secure, tried and true
always a work in progress, relationships take two
Ten years is a long time to wait
only to find you've lost your soul mate.
When two people are in love
whatever appears difficult they're able to rise above
stronger together
unlike stormy weather
Circles of speech, a vortex of energy
even simple conversations have lost the synergy
Focused on whose right and whose wrong
I haven't been wanted, cherished, devoured in so long...
I keep waiting, searching for a sign
that you want to be just mine
"Its not important to me" was your excuse,
telling you how I feel is of no use.
Moving on, getting over it, forgive and forget, it's all okay
since nothing really matters that I say,
'I'm sorry's' galore, 'I didn't think of you'
is any of this your fault too?
Can this ever be fixed
without broken promises- left hanging or nixed?
Perhaps my heart is just to scarred
I don't think it should be this hard...
Even now when there's nothing to lose-
but after this long it's plain to see
that it's not me
you choose.