I no longer wish to write.
I don't want song, or word.
I have no need for art.
I am sounding out my request to any God that will listen.
Give me a foreign beach.
Give me a sunset.
Give me a hand to hold on to.
I wish my life to be poetry.
Every action a song.
I want my days to be the paper I spread my ink upon.
I want 'lost' to mean 'home'.
I want the salt water on my cheeks to be the sea.
Give me mountain tops.
Give me blistered feet.
Give me a mouth that knows my own, like voice.
Make me a villager.
Make me a vagabond.
I no longer wish to be a warrior.
I am sounding my request out to the universe, like a lighthouse.
Come to me.
Make me forget.
Make me forgotten.
Make me to be overlooked.
Make my days count.
Make my days count.
Let this life be poetry.
Give me someone to read it.
Give me someone to understand.
Give me someone to add a verse. ¶ 11:29 AM 1 comments
These shoes. I have always known I walk around at the expense of my sole. Wearing thin. But my feet feel so much better there.
I breathe in. I am told it is holiday nuts. Cinnamon. And air that is just a little to clean. But I like it just the same.
We let ourselves move the puzzle pieces into place, one by one, knowing what the picture was going to be already. We squeezed the last bit of it out with our hands until the juice ran down our arms and we held the pulp out like offerings to strange gods. We fought and fought to meet at the center and then promptly forgot why we were there.
And I am taken back to my nephews. The smiles. The reminder that blades of grass split our toes and somewhere in that is childhood. And I roll the ball to him and say, "Kick it." and he doesn't. And I say, "Not yet? Okay. I'll roll it slower." And he doesn't. And I smile and say "We'll wait". And he smiles and says, "It's okay. You'll figure it out." And I will.
Our strange adventure will be pushed into one point. Carried away like jasper. And the images of the Apache Dinae, the ears, the cloud we rode through, the ocean, and each of the little things will yellow and crack until it is nostalgic and sweet. Honey. Wine. Thyme and thyme again. Rolling down and creating a glow in the bottom of my stomach. Stoking my fire. Using my ennui as kindling.
Listen. Listen to each click. Listen to it saying, "It.. is.. never... too.. late."
My hands are sticky with possibility. The strange gods have begun to lap at my fingers. And I can see the look on the face of my nephew when he finally kicks the ball.
The clock on my wall is God. His hands are still. My hands are covered in hope. And I have begun to remember something I'd forgotten.
Big World
Our hands met in a mess of rust red. Pressing the clay into heart shapes as they reached into one and other for something to believe in. But our journey began before then, in fits and starts. In passing scenes of first act exposition. My wondering eyes and yours of gloss and experience on summer nights of velvet lines.
We would be forced together, it seems, by happenstance and wine, like a passing note on a harmonica that you hit just right for the first time. And we would become fluent in our own drunken language of
So many times, my lips began the journey to yours before we crippled them with “what for’s”. But still we’d share winter constellations and whispers and moments so perfect. Me on my knees, drawing your portrait on the path with handfuls of sand.
Even half a world away, my drink still seemed to rearrange itself into letters spelling your name. And then you asked me.
If the world seemed smaller.
And my mind was.
And my hands followed suit.
And then my frame began it’s descent.
But my arms stayed the same length. Just long enough to hold you.
I’d written the answer on the inside of my forearms, so I could press them to your body when I held you.
And my own joy of words, that only you would understand, I scrawled on my palms to serve as affirmations to myself when I covered my eyes to see no evil. Words like:
Majestic.
Precise.
Serendipitous.
And these words sent their letters to my mouth, asserting themselves in phrases like:
It’s a big beautiful world.
It is a big beautiful world.
And still we dance around our imaginary fire of ‘not good enough for you’ like a binary star. Beautiful but incomplete.
So, I loosened my tongue with women and foresight and raced the blood from my eyes to my core and pealed back my layers, until I could find the answers written in God on the insides of your forearms.
And now I know the answer to your question about the big, beautiful world.
And I don’t mind telling you.
I.
Don’t.
Mind.
Strong, stunning woman with hands covered in soil from the roots of the world she tugs on…
It is in your stride. Leaving wakes of timelessness behind you.
You seldom see, dear one, that you are the world. Not the child. And if I ever stoop to lift you, it is only due to the mountain you’ve erected beneath me, so that I can always see you. Across any distance.
You are reserved for made up words.
The story of your life is written on pages of gold.
I breathe honestly into the wind in hopes that it will touch your face somehow far away.
Tonight, I write by moonlight. My fifth glass of port wine is by my side, turning my blood to something sweet. I have no time for less.
I would whisk you away with me, but you are where you need to be and I haven’t found that yet.
But if you ever want to go, I would take you and show you the whole big world that I see now.
No, my heart.
The world looks bigger.
¶ 4:14 AM 1 comments
Let us go forward then, in full bloom.
Daring to be only what we are, at last.
For in our kiss, we felt the future.
But in our haste, we taste our past.
¶ 1:22 PM 0 comments
And if you are the sapphire sky, then I am the emerald field.
And we are the horizon and all of the possibility that rests upon it. ¶ 5:55 PM 0 comments
An Open Letter to the Love of My Life.
Dear…
I don’t even know what to call you. But, already, we are beyond such things, aren’t we? When you wander into my head from time to time and form to form I am left with out a course of action. Mostly because action seems… so… very…very… silly. But this time. I took said action. Here it is.
I am sounding this letter off of the sky as postage. I am licking my lips to seal the envelope and throwing my marbles into the sun. I am lifting you, without strings, with the last of my magic.
I am not sure how the universe will choose to eclipse or supernova our meeting. But I am patient. In the mean time, I will remain so.
But I thought you should know.
I promise you passion.
I promise you fire.
I promise you mood swings, and fights, and making up, and making love.
I promise you an insatiable hunger to touch you. Kiss you. Be with you. To a fault if you wish.
I promise you a less than perfect attention. I promise to get too caught up in my vision of you to notice you, from time to time. I promise to notice you, more often than not.
I promise laughing. Together and at each others expense. But laughing. And laughter. And cause for it.
I promise to be serious. And scowl. And furrow my brow and nod my head at just the right times.
I promise to picture you naked at the most inappropriate times. I promise to paint pictures of your smile on the back of my eyelids while I sleep. I promise to sleep next to you, feeling my body scorch as our temperatures press together in red patches of skin.
I promise you poetry. And wine. And both at once.
I promise you adventure. I promise you distant landscapes and matching our rhythm to the train we find ourselves in, watching the blue, gray, and green streak by our window like an exercise in futility and motion.
I promise you futility and motion.
I promise you faith. I promise you doubt. I promise you a clenched fist and an open hand. I promise you my shoulders to stand on and my frame to drink from. I promise you holding hands on
I promise you silly.
I promise you gifts and flowers for no reason. I promise you a constant reminder of my awareness of the gift of a woman that I have been blessed with.
I promise you breakfast in bed. I promise you all day in bed.
I promise you discipline. And craft. And becoming a master of loving you.
I promise you truth. And empty promise. I promise you the promise of more.
I promise to be artful. I promise to be delicate. I promise to be crass and a brute. I promise to regret what I have said, over and over. I promise you steadfastness through the changes as we learn to navigate the many tides of the sea we find ourselves drowning in together.
I promise to be your opposite and drive you mad. I promise to be your equal and touch you thusly.
And you. I promise to only allow you entry to my heart if you are what I know I want.
I am faithful. I am loyal. I will not fill your space with less than you.
And I’ll only ask that you be worthy of this.
And here is something shiny.
And red.
For you.
To wear.
As your own.
It is all I have.
My return address is on my palm, out stretched to you. I await the scent of perfume on the letter you will write in me.
Red and Shiny.
And worthy.
All My Love,
Sean
¶ 9:01 AM 2 comments
Push harder.
It’s the cork that keeps us from negotiating.
It is the hip lashes that are bound to the wall we are trying to move.
Like rippling beasts.
This will evolve.
Each revolution around a pixilated world are just metaphoric steps, aren’t they?
Because no one really moans like that unless they know someone is listening.
I was listening.
My body is foreign to me now. I am in a new birth.
I am fascinated with the way my stomach dips in on itself when I lay on my back.
Come. Let me show you how new my fingers have learned to see.
I am a pool. I am a spring. I am a bowl. I offer milk on my skin.
Come drink at me.
Then we can run hands on foreign bodies and make sense of the new curves and make new the old ones.
It would be new to see the tragic swash of red smeared high up your lip and on to your cheek. It would be new to see strange eyes and strange hair framed below my strange body in the half dark.
Strange pieces with rough to smooth edges making shapes with precise intention on a thousand count canvas. Milk. And Spice. And sweat.
The only thing that is the same would be the knowing. Maybe the desire. Maybe the sound. And the scents.
I was listening.
But was it real? Can you summon your talent at will?
This will evolve.
It will evolve.
