ode two no one, too, no won, to know one

held in silence beside you.
still. having heard everthing;
my heart, my skin, have far eclipsed my ears.
i listen to you once and then
harmony, once and then dissonance, once and then again
the occupied silence familiar to lover's and composers.

dug out of a shared dream - excavated - lifted
to this world - still wet - sunlight melting
rich across my full tongue - somewhere,
our dream continues still without me
- now your face against my back,
my light still dripping from your fingertips -
my whisper shaping your arms all night -
a night - last - at last still healing gaps between us
'til ragged scars become our atonement.

a reconciled union
now again whole.
what have you done to time?
what, in me singing?
each note learning the air.
your gravity's lips press me to earth,
blow me to words; i take to the breeze like a vow.

wake to gather sound around me;
singular and new building just beneath my skin.
an olive leaf storing the sun so relentlessly and
dense-hued from green to purple to black.
all a shine of ceramic absences and tethered crows.
my eyelids bruised somewhere across sleep's lengths
or waking's crowded flash.

with a fine-grained indifference i've watched
myself slip through my own fingers.
if there's a word or a dream or
a premonition ....just by chance,
by why - unasked,
by where - unventured
or when - unmeasured, there is
you; a victor returning
and welcomed before arrival -
a telepath, a memory,
a voiceless candidate waiting to
brush away the sheen of smoke that
never held well to frozen-over fire,
where forest phantoms skate to split the flames.

a luster to solitude, a space
within emptiness - so captively comforted,
languid and just shy of peace ....

ease into me; walk with me awhile today.
it's eternity already.
so much more than might have been;
that nearly missed, and if tomorrow, lost in mist,
we can no longer match our gaits,
walk with me just now and let tomorrow wait.

radiohead - pyramid song - Der Himmel uber Berlin

unhallowed saint; no less
for recognition's slack.
his doubled reflection
held in the gliding sky, he
sees himself absurdly human.
human and golden just like
the thief he dreamt himself to be in
secrecy, the tramp, just like that,
half woken from half sleep by
the smell of his own night sweats or his
belly's roar seeking something beyond even hunger.
his shoulder-angel turns her head - surely understands
and yields in wistful dissonance - a blessing.

too then, might i yield within circumstance, respond
to tireless requests with the ease of rhapsody, the
listening, the tolerance, the ache flesh exerts as a
fact against my Soul and how
the angels must envy our pain; its harmony's withheld;
doled out silk apologies and the colors of words.
what lie is white? one told in not telling - one to
hold my pulse within its curves like ringing ears
or a burned thumb. one delivering simple monotones
for comfort. simplicity in all its luster
is a noble idea as remote as perfection
and i am steeled in convoluted silence.
an amendment still cannot change the first word.
breath is not taken aback, only continued.
and i am made sore by the details.

Habitual Nocturnal

Sun through the window burned
an angle across my shoulder while
I slept over bright, flat hours while
I slept toward another wide night.
There, pacing its fibers like a thread
through burlap; the seam splitting
behind me as I sew, so shall I sleep
in the obvious absences; in
the margins discarded as space to offset
what's important. If you want to be heard,
whisper. If you want to breathe deeply, first
hold your breath. If you want to be free, do
not want. I sleep in the imprint of
consciousness, left by a willful lapse.
So grateful for any slumber, it keeps my
dreams to a thin stream punctured by your
incautious thoughts pacing miles from here.

Placebo - Running up that hill

I kneel down to lift you up
you who now
holds me. I ask
nothing, though I offer
my collateral need.

Need wanting the line thinning, thinning
line between the two: wish or prayer.
The stars can't bear the wait.
They fall through sore places worn
across the night. Unresponsive,
bruised and riddled with reckless light
cast back from the origin of dreams.
The first of these kept
vaulted in lead low mystery and
from its offspring; yours.

Countless moored sails and
waiting and questions I'd not dare to
ask you to ask no I don't want
to want. Don't.
There is no lost illusion just
a trade made across the horizon,
encircling where you will pass again.
A dark and hallowed circumference following
the shape's of hunger; one for
every mouth. How similar are ours or
miles apart? Deceptive.

I've never felt
your gaze yet still I wear its sheen
- a humid gloss across my humanity.
The snake-caressed soil reaches back
but nothing's shed so much as lost
to repetition - lover-body-anguish
pull apart to thrust just harder yet;
a moth against the light -
that ache. A wind against a sail-
that beat. Applause amongst the leaves
beneath my feet -
that prevalent voice of reverent thanks.

shadow tamer

i'd not want his power; his hands full of broken things -
yet still the king has among his treasures, something of me -
of his body taken to mine and made new - his flesh
transmuted; his shape in subtle shift so easy, tho'
my inheritance of his masculinity is brief.
a scent and taste so different than my own.
tomorrow he will look at me and catch
not even a visual innuendo that part of him is
mine now. transformed. i have softened
his angles thru my form and when i try,
i can almost still taste him
drunken on my memories of wine.

- somewhere between greed and reverence,
between love and terror, between
lust and child-like rapture, i taste the predator.
a musk sweet wash across my gentle;
its hunger passing over my tongue.

the lion tamer with his head set deep
past teeth and pressing down
the back of my throat. i am scavenged
by questions - who's dominant when dominance is granted and
infused by submission?

my form my intent my desire; untitled.
a first tremble; too young to understand
- the taste of a coin under my tongue - forbidden -
biting back where i might bite -
the infinite flavor of anonymous touch and
barter and acquisition - power again and again,
power is rarely thoughtful.
peace for a moment's assistance; i felt
the wide wants of language rising from
my slick belly, spinning up the staircase of
my backbone to tangle through
my throat and leave me
silent.

my form cast by my shadow. inverted.
i have licked the color blue
and know it now as a flavor -
the taste of my own skin, my fingers
ever returning to my lips to earn or
to endeavor; to claim the
distinctive hallmarks of being a woman
that i, at any given moment might otherwise deny.

So much of what I post here; what I find myself typing across the screen - it comes from notebooks I wrote in ten, even twenty plus years ago. Today, reading through an old journal, what struck me was how little I've changed - in some crucial or pivotal way. My 'voice' maybe, but also the content it surrounds. That surprises me - the ruminations and visions of my twenty year old self share my breath in this moment and still speak to me. I'd want to add, that juxtaposed to this, in paradox and tension, I've also grown and healed and changed in many ways. I'd want to add this ... and sometimes I believe it to be so, but then again ... then again, while reading these words from decades ago, I'm not sure. Most of the posts here are 'old' poems - resurfacing and surging in quiet, gentle violence - intensity when I read them and they feel - still - like me now - at least during the time I spend with them here. They touch me and they touch upon places in me. Sometimes its a place I thought I'd lost - but nothing is lost - the heart is self contained - if things fall away inside me they are still inside. Pieces move or get stuck behind other pieces but they are all still here. Not sure what conclusion to draw from this. "Drawing conclusions" isn't so important to me - too often they lend a false comfort through tidying things up that are just fine - and more authentic somehow - left 'messy.' They can sound good but they do little more than that. If I was worried about 'sounding good,' much of what makes up this blog wouldn't be here at all. There is something deeper - or perhaps higher - baser and loftier and vague and obstruse and incisive and specific -all at once ... all at once and then some - and it pulls and pushes and calls and informs me. It's says something about passion and hope but also honors the intensity of anguish and despair. Not all emotions or feelings as found in verse sound 'healthy.' Perhaps their unrest and dis-ease are part of their beauty - if only because they're real and stripped bare and brave enough to speak out - through whatever venue. So more than anything it may be my love affair with language. That is what it is. That is what persists.