dandelion clock

noah asked me today, after hearing the story, if this means we're back to the old kate.

she never shared her heart; she was a stone.

laughing, we threw back our beers to familiar bitterness.

but, no. not the old kate. it's more like a dandelion clock, that was blown by a child. something was asked to grow and then it died.

the gust scattered seeds of hope all across this tried terrain. they burrow now, but its still only autumn.

there will be another Spring.

Name

I've developed a fear of you. Or, rather, when I read your name my heart seizes in my chest. Its a wonder how something so comforting,

a name that identified

a man

who brought laughter, love, peace, can so quickly about-face.

It lies in the power, I suppose, of humanity.

For good,

For evil.

And because I believe in man, peace, love, laughter, names, I will also trust time.

I believe it will heal me.

Though I may never know you again, though I may never trust your eyes earnest appeal, I believe time will bring back the sweet tone out of which I used to recite your name:

the first lines in a poem I began to memorize.

In my own poem, there will be a stanza about you:

"He inspired out of her her own self.

He came when she was fading and led her into light,

He brought her back to life.

He asked her to love again."

She succeeded, and love abounded in the summer of the same name.

The autumn after brought fire and fury.

But, love abounded.

Its not been put to death yet.

hester prynne.

tomorrow, i go back.

theoretically, it should all be the same.

i am the same, theoretically.

it is the decrescendo of my hallelujah.

hallelujah, hallelujah,

it is the coming down from sweet summer heaven.

i am not the same, i touched something of heaven,

love, sweet sweet love.

there is nothing else worth fighting for.

i am so tired, so beat down from restless nights feeling your phantom arms wrapped around me and did you know what that would do? did you know that would make it harder after you left, so gently, and went home to her? did you know that my fingers perform the secret handshake we made walking down the street? they are lonely for their partner.

did you tell her? did you tell her?

touching back to earth makes me remember grit and gravel, and i will not beg, but i will wonder who can touch so tender and claim nothing but a sudden, faithful other love.

i know no one with a heart not divided.

tomorrow, i go back.

there are hurricanes in me, thunder roars and lightning rages and so so many tears.

nothing is the same.

i walk a quiet, condemned, reserved hester prynne.

there's no need to fight the injustice of my heart, just to shed my skin.

soon, i will forget you. heaven's glory love will fade.

the second loss will be a relief.

it would be a relief to have duller nerves.

tomorrow, i go back.

i crave the walking down the street, anonymous and hidden.

you will always know my face,

but i am not the same.

what? glimpses of freedom?

the clouds break and the storm lifts and the night does not despair the day.

hope?

hope.

some roots still linger in new england.

Yesterday, sitting on the steps in Union Square, I think I began to forgive New York.

If nothing else, I could acknowlege its beauty - always a first step toward love for me.

And, now, as I drive north, further into New England, I reflect more on beauty, history, the past. It's rich, it's a part of me.

Increasingly I hope for simple things: obedience, purity, forgiveness. I hope to learn to forgive, move on, move forward.

I anticipate honesty and honest wrestling. I anticipate victory within my soul; to live so free, I am not even bound to freedom.

These hopes come out of a quiet written prayer, YWHY, I am willing to take you seriously.

Angry, fist clenched, I beg him (yeshua) to please give me something to hold on to.
Wanting, naturally, to replace pain with some sort of stoic religious resolve.

Instead of a promise that I can hold up and compare the old to the new he, so consistent with his grace and mercy, says, "its okay to hurt. Let yourself hurt. You're allowed to hurt."

Fists released, heart soften.

sleeeeeeeep.

it seems that lately, the only way to sleep is to get the words out,

they're still churning and living is like wading in waters that want to rip

tide and pull me under.

they are just words, no matter.

it's just, it's just,

i desire to be finished with such delicate ways of speaking in whispers. so often, there is more silence than truth in my speech. rather, allow me to be forthright.

i stay away at night, angry, hurting.

yes, i am angry and i am hurting.

(irreconcilable differences craving reconciliation, craving to give a cracksmack in the face)

(ohhhh, it's been hard on me, it's only feeling, but.)

these are just rambles from a child in a certain broken state of being.

goodnight.

Wendell Berry - The Country of Marriage

I've been reading, and rereading this...

1.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams

of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs,

of birds opening around you as you walk.

You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

2.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said

that bound me to you, some mere promise

or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?

A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood

still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,

like the earth’s empowering brew rising

in root and branch, the words of a dream of you

I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer

who feels the solace of his native land

under his feet again and moving in his blood.

I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped

my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss

that lay before me, but only the level ground.

3.

Sometimes our life reminds me

of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing

and in that opening a house,

an orchard and garden,

comfortable shades, and flowers

red and yellow in the sun, a pattern

made in the light for the light to return to.

The forest is mostly dark, its ways

to be made anew day after day, the dark

richer than the light and more blessed,

provided we stay brave

enough to keep on going in.

4.

How many times have I come to you out of my head

with joy, if ever a man was,

for to approach you I have given up the light

and all directions. I come to you

lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes

into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend

slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace

in you, when I arrive at last.

5.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange

of my love and work for yours, so much for so much

of an expendable fund. We don’t know what its limits are—

that puts it in the dark. We are more together

than we know, how else could we keep on discovering

we are more together than we thought?

You are the known way leading always to the unknown,

and you are the known place to which the unknown is always

leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,

I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing

not belittled by my saying that I possess it.

Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing

a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only

accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light

enough to live, and then accepts the dark,

passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I

have fallen time and again from the great strength

of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

6.

What I am learning to give you is my death

to set you free of me, and me from myself

into the dark and the new light. Like the water

of a deep stream, love is always too much. We

did not make it. Though we drink till we burst

we cannot have it all, or want it all.

In its abundance it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore

to drink our fill, and sleep, while it

flows through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us, except we keep returning

to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,

willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

7.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,

containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.

I give you the life I have let live for love of you:

a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,

the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life

that we have planted in this ground, as I

have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all

beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself

again and again, and satisfy—and this poem,

no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.

one thousands threads

so much longing.

as if there are one thousand tiny threads attached to my heart.

pulling, pulling, pulling me.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, hurts.

cutting ties

I feel a lot like a teenager-
Silly, melodramatic, and full of lofty dreams that were never real.

I feel resentful of reality -brought down to a level I prefered never to acknowledge.

There was so much destined to fail, I guess. And, so much I hoped would survive.

To properly pay respect to reality, I am cutting ties with dreams. Acknowledging truth, and walking on alone, lonely, facing the burden of life.

tumbleweed

i'm a tumbleweed,

a tumbleweed lonely for roots.

home

Sometimes I feel the world of sorrow

encroaching on my heart.

A steady beat

(drums, drums)

on bruises set long ago.

Taking away, slowly,

Life, life abundant.

I'll recover, I think

I should like to recover.

Strange, how home is always

at its most beautiful,

no matter when.

Stone walls and wood

and brick

and trees!

There are oak trees here

to sit under and

an ocean full of algae.

Strange, how home will

always be most beautiful.

Yet, it is fading away

and I may never again feel

at home,

at this home.

I'm left wondering

where home is.

Ready to belong

to my own.

Instead of belonging,

I'm letting go of so many

things that once were

Mine.

no more me!

get out.

everything in me wants to say get out, get out, get out.

empty me to a dull grey drudge, no more recollection of laughter, or feeling perfection, nor the forgetting of myself.

(forgetting myself for days was the most beautiful way to fill my mind.)

i am full, now, of thoughts of myself. aware, of bruises at every move and word and thought and phantom memory of ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you near.

ohh, get it out.

i have silly goals like having long hair and being graceful and, oh yeah, love eternal.

no more fear, no more fear, no more fear.

now, blood

ohhhhh, it hurts more at night.

like ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, zap! just after lights turn out,

churning, churning,

angry fighting cries - not this way!

:lonely.

it's like, it's like, a piece of me was carved out and in it's hollow hole were stuffed stones and pebbles, and, oh! the only thing to do with a heart of stone is to cut through it.

now, blood.

missing

I miss you from deep inside of my veins.
I miss you, as if, your absence is my own absence.
I knew it was love when you introduced me to more of myself, just in your wonderful self.
I only knew I missed you when, for the first time in a long time, I felt not myself (unbalanced, off-kilter); yourself made it easier to be myself.

A buttress, of flesh and blood.

tear down, rebuild, repair.

harlem.

this morning,
this afternoon rather,
i sip on coffee the same way that i always sip on coffee.
this morning, though,
i sit perched in harlem overlooking broadway and 137th
and there's a baby here.

last night, i drove into manhattan from queens,
looking at the skyline,
it was shining and greeting me.
millions of people, greeting me.

and in my bed that night, on the sixth floor in harlem,
lying next to my best friend.
and i wept loud,
drawn out,
bitter tears -
lonelier that i'd been in a long time.