To Have Without Holding

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.


It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.


It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.


I can’t do it, you say, it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
you float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

Numb

She has no memory,
How she came to be here.
But as she writes,
it starts to become clear

Through the enigmas,
and strangest of things,
in this abstract place,
no feeling it brings.

Her fingers type the words,
that she knows within her soul.
her mind feeds her the thoughts,
but the body has grown so cold.

Ecstasy, euphoria,
pain and joy.
all emotions she once felt.
but now theres not any left.

Her heart is beating,
alive and true.
but inside her soul,
she is so numb,
about everything.

Indifference engulfs her,
to the point of no return,
she puts her hand into the fire,
and yet it does not burn.
She cuts her hand,
no blood she finds.
“That can’t be possible,”
her conscience reminds.

She sees the mirror,
upon the wall.
the one that looks so familiar,
and so does the hall.

She walks up to it,
it starts to fall.
she realizes this is her only way back,
back to it all.

Quickly jumping into it,
before it shatters into pieces of glass.
she tried to go back home,
and thankfully she made it quite fast.

to again feel love and pain,
no longer to pass,
through the labrynth of illusions,
inside the looking glass.

Asleep

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other’s wings,
They lay down their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem
Like two flakes of new-fall’n snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipped with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars gazed in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forbore to fly,
Not a bat flapped to and fro
Round their nest
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one nest.

It takes some moments

Sometimes in a brief of flashes or flames,
I see, hear, something gives chill on the spine
and punch straight to the heart.

It reveals, unveils, enlights to my consciousness
intellectually, emotionally, spiritually
like a gentle slap in the face,
or sharp knive stab me not to kill
only to remove the bullet in my chest

In silent of tonight
i shiver, shaken, but somehow understand.
Sometimes it takes hurts to be made understand,
that understanding is bloody priceless.

Be...

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.

Into my own

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

The Thing Is...

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

When someone deeply listens to you

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your barefeet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

— John Fox

It's not a word

It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.

May wind

I said, "I have shut my heart
As one shuts an open door,
That Love may starve therein
And trouble me no more."

But over the roofs there came
The wet new wind of May,
And a tune blew up from the curb
Where the street-pianos play.

My room was white with the sun
And Love cried out in me,
"I am strong, I will break your heart
Unless you set me free."