Clarion

I saw my shadow
backlit
against the morning sky,
a giant stretching its hands for miles
and miles,
thousands and more,
as though to say, "behold, I am born."

Cloud decks beneath me
and engine noise,
I am made of distances
that must be crossed,
I am made of silences that must be voiced:
a trumped call,
a clarion voice.

Against those palisades
I am only a man,
only me,
and yet...

the sun behind me lends wing,
and I raise my arms out wide.

Infinite Vessels: Mysterious Skin

Songbird
drifting in the night,
out there where all the monsters sleep
down in the deeps,
down in the dark water where we can not see...
beneath that skin.

Don't go into the water,
don't go into the sea,
sinking like all those wooden ships
made of ribs and steel, skin
filled with the dreams of men much like me,
full of wanting and things like hope who set them afloat
like children on the shore...
I can not swim.

I send you things like songs,
like poetry and words
over phone lines to ease the pain
of all that missing, the empty places inside
no one ever quite sees
we have been taught to be so afraid of,
chasms of yawning doubt and fear that fill the places
where hope should be, your hand in mine...
I would sing to you.

We are infinite vessels my dear,
sweet friend:
worlds inside of us spun out wildly
so worth the seeing,
if only you knew of all the things we could be
numbered like all the stars and planets and comets in the sky,
constellations of beauty right here
beneath such mysterious skin
of heart and flesh and bone,
of the things inside of us worth all that living,
of the things I write about,
of the songs I make and the songs I sing
of the ways we glow,
of the ways we glow...
fiercely.



____________________________


There is something to the idea that, in saving someone else, you save yourself... parts of this were taken from a conversation had with a friend dealing with depression; they were thinking of putting an end to it. Finite answers to temporary problems... I didn't realize, though, at the time how deeply unhappy I was myself; how far I'd sunk into the same paradigm of of empty places I was feeling all too often. We were like a mobius strip of consolation: one talking the other out of a decision that they themselves were thinking of... it's a funny, odd thing. I don't pretend to understand it all, but some of these words were what was directly said to this other person... all of these words are what I have come to say to myself. All of these words are what I'm putting out there now in a supreme act of vulnerability...

In my act of defiance.


Much.

Alone

The windows are thrown open
and the light is coming in,
bright
sunshine
all glimmering glow
filtered down through clouds too high
in a stream,
in a rivers glow,

and the air is moving
slow,
so slow,
gentle
kind
as the birds
they're singing,
God
they're singing so loudly
in a caucophony
symphony,
tympanic crash of sound
of joy,
of love and symmetry
as they're fluttering...

And the windows,
they're thrown open wide
and the world

the whole world
is coming in
an suddenly...
I am not alone.