Umbra

City

gone quiet all around me,

dim, shut-eyed windows all sleeping

with couples in their beds with

arms with legs

tangled hair all in a knot,

two people wrapped around cores of shining stars,

an entire universe of lovers on this quiet street...

Flicker

and glowing like lights through my

fingertips (touching fingertips),

the corona, chromosphere

expanding outwards from them in a halo of love,

like beacons

signal fires calling out to all those

like me

who are lost on city streets,

wondering why the best parts of themselves

are not enough to be loved

Their fires call

and I am not immune to the sound,

to all that glowing light

that casts me in the umbra of its impossible glow,

me,

this ghost,

wandering these city streets at night.

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.

And Then Say the Ravens,

The night sky
is hungry
swallowing the light from the stars,
and the wind is barely moving
across the face of the moon
snow white
and glowing,
the earth all laid quietly to rest
as the pregnant sky gives birth
to the empty spaces inside of me...

So like silence
and so like doubt,
vast spaces
like blackness
like pits,
the distance between
the sun, the earth, the moon,
your heart
and mine too great...

Because I am too like night-time creatures,
too like my father
afraid to be,
ready to run
as this chest
my cage
traps the thundering inside of me
of that fight,
the flight in an explosion of wings
a cry,
a scream in the dark as another animal breathes its last
and lays
in wait
for the ravens to come like they always do
in my night-time dreaming...

They float down on pitch wings
and stare with glassy eyes from tree branches
watching,
waiting for the chase that is ever inside of me,
watching
as I hide in fear
while the hungry night consumes...

And then say the ravens,
in soft voices always just the same
with staring eye,
"You are beneath my wing,
and I will see you safely home, son...",
before taking flight again,
their laughter mocking into the night
until I gather all that fear and throw it out before me
like rose petals
like benediction,
and disappear into the night.


_________________________

an homage to Poe... the one I owe my first introduction to love of poetry to.

The Art of Leaving Quietly

Uncovered
by the rising sun
I am naked
while its pouring through the windows,
making itself comfortable amongst the sheets...

Baptized
in the light,
in the name of my own flesh,
I am born again... I am new
in the ascended sun,
daylight like absolution
over this pale skin,
I could not wash it away down the shower drain like your smell

Lingering
in the pillows while I rise,
gather my things on slow feet,
and slip quietly out the door.