Tag Archives: Love

Palm Reading

When you work with clay
you learn to enjoy the dirt,
the silt feels like silk curtains
drawn on an autumn day.

You learn to listen to the skin,
hear all the whispers spoken,
and whisper back tender questions,
that teach of the two of you together.

When you work with clay,
you explore abstract places,
pursuing adventures of vulnerability,
to discover (not exactly create) truth.

You learn that truth, alone, is nothing,
without you to define and assess it.
You make yourselves a part of that truth,
and what you sculpt together is your truth reforged.

When you can no longer work the clay,
you instead knead the aches and pains,
worn, cracked hands rather than a bust or vase,
but a landscape of passion all the same;

where peaks and valleys boast of conquest,
scars and coloration sing of compassion;
nowhere is the silence of smooth skin.
With clay my hands have been broken in.

Love, Always

I would live forever
      if you would forever live too,
    seeking no end-
            only beginnings.

I would gladly see the world out,
  if when the lights dimmed,
        the quiet settled in,
  you too remained for me to settle into;
        find pale dreams between living.

I would suffer until it became white noise
    as long as our symphony remained
        rising above the audience of our years,
            humbled into silent admiration.

I would disappear-
        fade to nothing,
            if anything didn’t include you,
                    us,
                        this.

Ocean Breeze

Pulling from somewhere off the coast, where suns set,
the taste of salt, sand, and shadow;
a whispered heartbeat from the ocean floor
beckons me with ancient sounds.
The crest of a furled mystery that awakens
a need in me, aching for those depths.

To be but water made conscious, drowning
but no desire for the surface or sky.
Even before the shore my breath was stolen,
though I would gladly have given my last,
to be the current that moves through you,
yet a part of you in kind.

Exuberance!
Enough to carry me to the unknowing,
but the wanting to know,
to discover peace among the motions,
rise in celebration,
and fall again as rain laughing into the waves.

Laughing until out of breath,
sinking beneath your ocean to swim forever.

Reverie

I am content in the sunlight
a thousand blank pages waiting
but without any cause to fight,
for my attention. Not needing;
necessity is self-defeating;
but there- available all the same.
The time left us is only wanting,
this life having finally been tamed.

The day drifts away but it is still bright,
a lifetime of mournful shadows fading
behind a long legacy of delight;
decades of fruitful creating,
the love of those that are liberating,
curiosity like an open flame
from fire to fire, always leaping.
Never quiet is my soul’s refrain.

A Confrontation

I cross the threshold between two rooms,
to see you there, tall and bright;
happy again to let your words spill out,
carelessly like a flagon carried mid dance,
confident there is plenty more
and rags at hand to clean the floor.

I haven’t seen you like that in a generation,
who we were- long since old and dying,
making way for who we are now;
reduced to somber stones with names-
                                  only visited on occasion.

I feel those old ghosts resurrected,
bursting through coffins, through earth and the fog of years;
desperate for relevance again.
Crying out please, see me friend!
through laughter breathe life into these lungs!”

But how could you now see the ghost of me,
or anything between who you are
and who, in all this time, I have come to be?

Joy has propositioned you from this world,
while I, before, was naught but misery.

Let me retreat, satisfied as a memory.
Settle those spirits within and lay them to rest,
I beg the fates on our behalf,
please, don’t see me, lest
            in all these years,
                  neither of us be free.

Trinkets

Three coins strung together around my wrist;
the toll for love is always at hand,
as many paid as has been collected.

One coin gifted for the love that defines us;
the love that plays beyond the boundaries of time,
and inspires us to pursue it more.

Another owed for the love that has been taken;
always too soon, should one live to see it gone,
but owed the same, for the loss costs us no less.

A coin borrowed for the love that remains;
languishing there, just beyond our horizons,
yet no less worthy of what alms we offer.

Last, the bracelet itself, held for my daughter;
who may have forgotten that love is still here,
but still kept safe, for here love will always be.

To My Younger Self:

Enjoy the silences;
the waiting,
slow words.

Not having anything to do;
the leashed phone,
the unknown.

Bruises, cuts and wounds;
the bitter cold,
the searching soul.

The night without street lights;
uncivilized sights,
sunlit rooms.

Enjoy the world
as it was meant to be;
sober, subtle and unexplored,
because in the end
it will turn on you;
bind you in rope,
flood your eyes, your ears,
and leave you with no place
                        to call home.

Sam Talks Back

Where I was trying to find control,
                  you lost it.

            I was growing;
awkward, ungainly,
          and to shape me
          you cut me down.

Where I would seek love,
            you gave me conditions
      and where I loved you,
              you absorbed the impact,
                      in the thicker parts of yourself-
                softening the blow.

Where you are, I cannot be me,
                I cannot be.