On Loving a Man with Trust Issues

Was it worth the ache?
Trying to tame a tiger
licking at his wounds?

Postscript// I decided to try writing out of my comfort zone; It's a haiku (5-7-5).

Fortress

The shade of her overlay turns to toasted almond

in the summertime too.

When we smile, our top front teeth jut out-

Off-white overbite stubborn in its statute.

Broody-eyed brown mud baths blink behind kink and coiled lashes-

Seeing my sights in a non-dimensional being.

My God, she even has my laugh.

Voice that sing like mine, but vacant.

Hands that hold like mine 

cannot chafe and burn abiding your burden.

Soul that shine like mine dims dull come morning.

Warning-

Do not run reckless into your own reverie-

No river of blood will surface through ruptured flesh.

No hope to quicksand your way into those brown mud baths.

She is blue velvet laughter rubbed clean and quiet at
the first sign of danger, lady stranger.

You have built an illustrious illusion and

put my name on its fortress,

But there is no woman there with a heart to call home.

ABOUT: have you ever talked to someone and realized they're more interested in the idea of you (this totally fictional character) than who you really are? It's pretty awful.

Slow Dance with Day

So you wanna know what it's like?

Imagine being suspended in thin air by 

The peach fuzz of Miles Davis' 

Blue Note recordings;

His trumpet, blaring its very bearings and bone

For the sake of my own pleasure.

Le soleil embrasse mes joues

Et le ciel me demande de danser.

And just like that:

The wind's got one palm in the small of my back,

('Neath the nook in my black).

I acquiesce,

My smile buried deep in the light of his chest;

Slow heaving breaths in rugged pine
or maple sap
perhaps hint of mahogany.

While the crystalline creek
counts our steady beat, unsteady feet-

I have never felt so loved.

Postscript// French to English translation:
Le soleil embrasse me joues, et le ciel me demande de danser.
The sun kisses my cheeks and the heavens ask me to dance.

ABOUT: I am so in love with this beautiful planet Earth.

Fencing with Night

In combat, the only barrier between the blade

and your throbbing jugular 

is the way you wield your weaponry.

Shield too quickly, your cover is blown:

Now, how will you atone for your lapse of judgement?

Strike delayed, with breath belated,

Your opponent's fate has been betrayed.

But shadows?

Shadows?

Who cower like cowards 

At the hands of what's right.

And how does one fight a mere trick of light?

Master such art as fencing with night?

Lasso the setting sun and beg him to stay.

Sway dusk with truth and reason.

My dark is tired; this body is treason.

My dark is tired, but won't let me mourn it.

To grasp this bull by both its horns,

I tell the Devil "No"

The Devil knows his death is sworn.

ABOUT: Luke 10:17, 18- "'Lord, even the demons are made subject to us by the use of your name." At that he said to them: "I see Satan already fallen like lightning from heaven."

White Sheep, White Wound

 

We stood some ways back from the bleating hordes of white cloud. 

Just distant enough to catch soft drift of their thick musk,

Too close for them to believe in our abandonment.

Most of them lay lazy fluff and warm,

Unashamed at the ease with which
their fat bodies hugged the supple earth.

So at ease, our own cheeks flush fevered with guilt;

We could not understand that freedom.

One girl, though, lingered
a few feet from the pack that stretched for miles.

You knelt nose-to-nose with her
urging with your fingertips
through the course of coarse fur
to tell you what went wrong.

She exhausted herself at your knees,

Pangs of black and white pain
jolting from her underside. 

Why aren't the others helping her?

"Well don't just stand there,"
that overease beckoned me to berate them.

Not one of us could see where a thorny branch
had torn clean through the fleece and
left her there to brave the blow alone.

ABOUT: I think maybe we've all been hurt in ways no one is aware of but God.

This is the Story of a Little Rock

Were he the chiseled child of say, the amethyst or jade,

perhaps the little rock would quit smoldering;

Shouldering so impossible a weight

As light as light.

It took near all of the swing the Pacific could bolster

to budge the brooding rock from his reticent state.

Slate swore sore against his silhouette,

Didn't know how to look at that stubborn glint across 

Jade's moony face without swooning.

Didn't know how to even maybe like
The barbed edge of his mother,

That God-awful ashtray gray of his father.

And what of sapphire's serenity?

Men mesmerized by the soul of her cut crystal.

He fantasized mountains and boulders,

Bolder in brawn and height than he.

Behemoths can do big things quickly, I bet.

Probably could stop oceans or
cop light or trick time if they so pleased,

Teased into torture by all that he was not.

Hot shot pearl out the belly of an oyster

Rolled beside our little friend, said

"But it wasn't a mountain David hurled 

To slay Goliath."

ABOUT: If Jehovah can use a small boy with a little stone to kill a giant, just imagine how He can use you.

1 Samuel 17:50- So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; he struck down the Philistine and put him to death, though there was no sword in David's hand.

Birth

Six minutes and forty-two seconds into the first

alternate ending, the soft silk slips from its security.

The bang of her body is heard in 6B,

Though mistaken for child's play.

Hypoxia has turned her nail beds blue

But not cold, 

not yet.

Much like the first, the second alternative 

Reveals a burden too great for the pink scarf to carry.

This time there is a loud CRRRT!

The tear mirrors a too familiar failing

Jagged edges of silk glare down at her, as if to ask

"Even now?"

On her way to double-joint the vile cloth, 

The third take glimpses the girl 

With one hand already gripping the closet doorknob.

Seven seconds into the clip,

The microphone picks ups her thudding heart.

(Doosh-doosh...)

A rare ray of light radiates against Genesis 22:10

Etched into the redwood bedpost.

(Doosh-doosh) 

Her beating heart, a bleating lamb.

In the bottom of the fourth, the thought of the noose

Is but a passing storm cloud:

A dark and distant dustpuff dissolving overhead.

The blush boa is still just a means
to keep the bangs out of her eyes.

There is no raging void 

No split silk 

nor knot with which to hang from.

Or not 

Hang from.

The fifth finale divulges 

A wolf cub born smack-dab

Between a rock and a hard place.

ABOUT: It's Mental Illness Awareness Month. This poem is a reminder that there is always another option than suicide.

Postscript: while I think wolves are beautiful creatures that humans can learn from, I do not believe in "spirit animals" in the Shamanistic sense; just thought I needed to clarify my use of symbols.