BEING WITHOUT YOU

sorrounded
by strident voices,
I step sideways into the void,
subtracting my soul from the congregation,
folding self into origamic proportions.
I sit, stand, pose,
on my own head, afterwards,
a bird poised to fly, a leaf settling
on the warmest ground,
groping for the stillness
of self.
I found you instead,
a tear away from happy,
open to the storm,
taking all of my lassitude away;
taking me home, taking me home,
taking me home.

- from The Moth
17 Oct '08



Thank you for this wonderful poem. I hope you don't mind that I posted it.

A plant must have felt the same way, after days of not getting any water, parched and scorched, to finally feel the glorious stream coat its leaves, its stem, its roots... to lose itself in delicious abandon, to glisten shiny and rejuvinated.

How could an encounter so plain and uncomplicated, almost timid even, make everything that is spot on in my days perfect, like the dash of salt and pepper that a salad needed to make it just right? I will be honest. I do have my preoccupations. My life is not unencumbered with worries and responsibilities. Like you, there are others that I put before me... other troubles, other fates that I feebly try to turn around. Like you, I am burdened too. I struggle just so my sunsets would leave a trail of hues for the next sunrise to pick up on.

But as I go through the motions, you would often be in the crux of my thoughts...

I find myself wondering what the hour is in your part of the continent, and with it the activities you engage in. Are you on your way to work, or on your way home as you wrap up your day? Are you still asleep or getting ready for another day in the grind? Are you having a relaxing day with those near and dear or are you yet again torn away from them as duty calls?

I wonder at such things as the scent you wear, if you ever do or the crease in your pants. Your favorite tie? Your favorite color? How do you take your coffee, or do you even? Do you like spaghetti, for instance? Do you twirl the noodles properly around your fork, or do you playfully slurp it and lick your tongue at the sauce that coats your lips? How do you sign your name? I wonder at these things. There is so much to know and all I know is that I have to be content in not knowing.

But I think sometimes not knowing is good too. It leaves room for wonder. And then I have this 'you' in my mind, one that will always be with me. One that will always be near.

It will never let me run thirsty.

LIAR

You didn't tell me you'll be here for always.

What you said was you'll be here, if not always, while you live. Remember?

I kinda' like that better.

:D

IN VARYING DEGREES, WE HAVE LOVED

people through finding something beautiful
think something else unbeautiful
through finding one man fit judge another unfit
life and death, though stemming from each other
seem to conflict as stages of change...
difficult and easy as phases of achievement,
long and short as measures of contract,
high and low as degree of relation
but since the varying of tones gives music to a voice
and what is is the was of what shall be
the sanest man sets up no deed,
lays down no law,
takes everything that happens as it comes.

-Lao-tzu, Chinese mystic 500 B.C.


We're all just ships that pass in the night. All we can do is cross each other's horizons. We will never have enough time, enough resources, enough sense, and enough love to light up each other's harbors.

I have enjoyed your coming, and I have smiled when you waved hello.

But I know that the sea holds no bounds, and other harbor lights beckon.

Still you have allowed me to know you and in your wake, you have touched my being. So I will keep a light on... should you find yourself passing this way again... and wave, in remembrance.

VIRGINIA SAID IT FOR ME

'I want to love you without clutching,

appreciate you without judging,

join you without invading,

invite you without demanding,

leave you without guilt,

criticize you without blaming,

and help you without insulting.

If I can have the same from you

then we can truly meet and enrich each other.'

- Virginia Satir

WORDS

You said that maybe I should stay close because when I am, it makes you want to write...

Don't you know that I cannot have you any nearer than when I hold you in my thoughts... that I cannot hold you any closer than when I keep you in my heart?

When you write... when I read what you write... there's a settling that happens in me that tastes so much like peace. And if there is certainty in contentment, if it wasn't the ethereal notion that it is, or if it didn't elude our discernment with such furtiveness, there would be that, too. Your words touch me like nothing ever has before. I can lose myself in them and just as you would not want to breathe out again, I am hoping never to be found.

You said that I am your muse...

That is flattering, but not necessarily a happy thought. Muses come and go and when they go, they are gone a long time.

I don't want to be.

I'd like to be here... for you.

Keep Me In Your Heart

Keep me in your heart,
she asked,
while I go bury
a part of me
but recently, unspeakably,
gone.
They were just here,
those memories he gave me,
while learning laughter at his feet.
They were not mine at all, they were
his,
but they colored the blandness
of my dreams
and gave them wings
to fly on their own.

So keep me in your heart,
she asked,
while I go to carve a headstone
for a life I wanted lived
a hundred more years worth
of loving,
but now lost, now lost,
to words I'd always meant
to say,
to smiles no one else can now see
except through
my tears.

So keep me in your heart,
she asked,
while I grieve, and grieving,
celebrate a heart
that now must beat
through my own defeats,
through my own victories.
I have loved, I have been
loved,
But keep me in your heart still,
while I go close one door,
before opening
another.

Moth2UrFlame
081908

SAD MOVIES WILL ONLY MAKE YOU CRY

I was watching 'The End of the Affair' the other day, the '99 flick with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore.

Tell me... why do all of these affairs seem to end so tragically, so fatally?Why is it that when you find someone who is so right, so right that he somehow rocks your world, and mount it all against the backdrop of everything else in your life... somehow it becomes wrong? And the world will not conspire to bring you to such happiness.

Or do they only do that in movies?

This brings me to another thought... one that wonders how it would be if we saw that film together.

Aahh... or as you would say, 'Bah!' To hell with sad movies.

HOW 'BOUT US?

Thank you for coming.

I would have waited for you to find me here. But I'm too impatient and you are too settled. At least, to me, that's how you seem. Your world will spin and it has its own axis, its own momentum, its own direction... untouched, untouchable. Not that I am privy to that, still you might have mentioned, once or twice, there is not much you are still looking for...

It is so liberating to talk about this...

Right there... I was so tempted to say 'about us,' but that might be an exercise in presumption and I might be over-reaching. Maybe someday I will be so bold. This place does not recognize scruples, after all. It is a free place, where I can speak, and be. Where you could be the dream you are. I smile at that, because I know whatever I say or do, you delight in it, soak it up like a sponge and hold it in... so I don't know exactly what it is that you love, when you say you love.

Still, it is liberating to talk about you. What was it you said - to articulate the confusion into manageable semantics. I never forgot that. I've been wanting to do that, searched for the words and spun them all together and though I have revived my old place, filled it up with things in my everyday life, things that people find nice and 'touching,' there was a part of me that found it hollow. I wanted there to be a balance between what people saw and what was screaming from my heart. I can't, of course. Not in that place, at least.

I cannot write the poetry that you do. I hope once in a while you'd find the generosity to grace my place with your genius... a couple of lines, it doesn't take much to make me smile.

Have I told you, I got 3 zits on my face... around my nose, along my lip?

I never get pimples.

IT ALL STARTS WITH ONE HELLO

I created this for you.

Because I envy you. You have a place where you can sometimes talk about me, assuming that you do write about me. Assuming especially that that last one was about me, unless somebody else sent you an American poem. You have that place, where people know you, but half the time they do not know what you are talking about. Or so you said.

But I do. I know. I know when you're being playful, or when you're writing with a smile on your face, or when you're being contemplative, or sad, or tired. Most of all, I know when you're writing about me. I know when I've made you smile. I know when I've made you pleased. I know when you miss me.

I want to write about stuff like that too. I want to write about how I feel, for you. I want to write about how I feel about the things you make me feel. I would go on top of my roof, if I had a roof, and shout all about feelings... if I ever felt.

I want to talk about love, too. I have done that, of course, in my past, in my present. I will probably have love to talk about all the time and hopefully, barring fate and her sometimes mean pranks, well into the future. For the one I love... the one I have always and always will... before you.

But it's nothing like this. Never will be, I think. Nothing like the love I need to talk about here. Nothing like what I feel for you.

Maybe there will be some who will find my words and in the whole amalgam of human experience, will bob their heads every once in a while and feel them too. Maybe... I don't really care.

All I care to find here is you.

And the me that found enough courage to create this for you.

Once I said, '... I'm thinking, dangerous.' And you told me, '... and I am thinking, there be but one life, and there be joys merely meant for the giving...'

This is my joy. Something I hope somehow you'd take... in this one life.