twin souls

i did not realize how wide the wound was
until it spread through my past
huddled in the footsteps
of love
walking death row
to a secret hide away
named abandonment

them always leaving before coming
me always loving before trusting...

I did not realize how wide the wound was
until it showed up at the door of my lips
smiling sweetly

until it reached over through my hands
and touched her
my sister, my best friend

she is love; i am peace

together we slay armies of enemies
with the Word wound tightly
between us
our souls knit together
tow breaths into one cool evening rustle
the most meticulous hustle --- life
by a calling of the most high

and i realized God placed me in her life
to be her eyes
you are my first friend, my first love
she says...her eyes darkened with the stain
of the fists and ravaging effects
of those who took the pearl of her small womb

and strung them coldly with other hurts
in a tightly packed collection her beauty shines
only matched by the innocence

that remained untouched by the plundering
princes of light takers

She sharpens my own fearful sentences against me
saying she has a word
"it is about your mom.."
I freeze, stuck in my own heartbreak.

She holds my hand with such a grip
that my soul stills,
but my mind pealsaway from her
raw with requisition

I feel as if I am a starving man shown his last me
alI tell her my fears, couched and cowering.

Her eyes grow wide and raw
"Please, her hands say, the grip tightening
don't.
Don't take away my home..."

I didn't realize how wide the wound was
until it touched hers
twin souls, we sit

waiting for the small greatness of God's grace
to heal the warriors who will
heal the world

the late watch

Sometimes our hands are all we have

The clenched face
The bent limbs
Battered by a thousand hurricanes
Of bullets

A single broken blade of green

"…broken femur…transport…black male…seven years old..."

snapped by a sedan rounding a corner
a crossroads well traveled

their blackened boots and brazen stares
accessories
the hardened giants walk
silently into a tiny house on a holy night

it might as well be
made of straw and sticks

a cop lifts the boy up in his arms
holds him to blue skin
and brass
caresses the lithe arm
as the EMT's strip him bare

uniformly human

the tinsel tossed lonely limb hangs loose and limp
Wet with silverish sheets of blood


the fish have no air
they flit like faith
tendrils of red
floating falsetto
high above the greenery
in the darkened
fish tank

impressions of tiny fingers paint
the officer's forearm radioflyer red

Today, the breath of God is thick
and foggy with weight of the cross
adorned with the jingle of cuffs and change


a snowy chill capping
a mountain of a man
as he holds
small clinched fingers
like the last star waiting for Christmas
white and wanting
as sparkles and snow

The Clean Break

Break
Day:

you were in my ear
holding the whisper of my thoughts
shifting through the mountains of my mind
in quiet caverns

Break
Dance:

explosions of sizzling heat dressed in dazzling beams of yellow brick road dreams
but they look better on you than I thought


Break
Off:

tumbling through dusty dreads
that I must cut
because the words I love you are no longer a consent form
for me to carry you over this bridge of my back


Break
Pump Yours:

The adrenaline of 144,000 words in a love letter
flowing from the heart of God
poised and ready for battle
with the truth their only defense

Break
Heart:
the adrenaline of one word
pierces it.

Break
Leg:

the break is a clean one, or so they say.
little bits of it
matriculating in my mind
hard and pointy
reabsorbing mal memories

amazing analogies
break is to day
break is to dance
break is to off
break is to pump
break is to heart
break is to leg

Break
Through:

I am reforming
bone on bone
clean and positioned

maybe even on the mend.

a final test, from God with love:

break is to through
as me is to you

the calling

at night I thirst for you in
my dreams

will you step or swim

step across the gulf
between languid hopes
and stallward desparation

are you a mire of a man or a myth
that my mind has cut and chopped
and minced into a balm
a salve for a heart bruised from battle

or are you my air?
my imagination, my destiny bequeathed to me from
a time where I can no longer
look my fate in the face
and say
I dare you

the silence between our breaths
at times seems to span seas
with continental breath

it is this knowingness
between the myth and the dream

that seems to make the journey
through a weary land worth it.

and I cannot wait to dive in
soul first

Please Do Not Remain Silent (2000)

One of my published pieces.

After going through a myriad of personal difficulties and losing three black women who were mentors/sisters/guides to me, I began to doubt my faith. I thought myself to be doing everything as best as I could, and nothing seemed to be going well.

I never doubted the existence of God; perhaps even worse I doubted that my pleas would be heard. I started crying and thought to myself, "If there are no answers, and God chooses to remain silent when we beg for understanding, what a cruel and pointless thing life is." I prayed," If you hear me God, please do not remain silent."

It was raining outside. I went out in my clothes with nothing to cover me and sat on my porch as the rain soaked through my clothes. I noticed that next to me there was a plant that I had given my mother after a difficult period in her life.

The plant had been dying slowly for weeks. It was a beautiful brilliant mini-rosebush when I brought it home. The leaves and the blossoms had fallen off and it had been browning for weeks. But now after the first storm of the season, the browning plant was growing green again and tiny rosebuds were blooming.

I realized, like the rose, faith needs nourishment. If God did not forget the dying rose, surely I wouldn't be forgotten. At that moment a burst of rain came from the clouds and the streets filled with pouring rain. Then a small still voice said," I am never silent." --- Copyright © 2000 Michelle Milam

japan

****
In Japan, everything was small, except her. Descript and stingy streets leading to small posh but cramped living quarters. She wondered how anyone here could make love in a bed that barely allowed her to sprawl her legs over the edge.

She marveled at the lives of people spending their lives spent staring at sparse eggshell white ceilings.

She spent the first two days deciphering how to unpack all of her things and rearrange them so they fit in her tiny flat.

But Barcelona welcomed her Barcelona, which had the benefit of a beautiful Spanish style balcony,

Even the isles in the store Missing Bootsy’s banana pudding, she left the small streets and stores in search of an open air market.

There is only one way to tell if the if it ripe, he said.

Perhaps it was the way that he cocked his head. Or that his blacked palms reminded her of the overripe banana. Maybe it was his wide grin, open despite the missing teeth. Whatever it was it moved her. The marketplace glossed over with tears.

An awkwardly comforting wrinkled hand took hers, and patted it.


Suddenly, she knew.


****

two poems to get me writing again...

i.

in the valley i found no water
except the lake of my own
unlived moments
will these dry bones
live?

ii.

she's no good for him;

he says, like lyrics with no music

she plays a song with her eyes

by sight

but never by heart

the pen

this pen is a bittersweet
thing
it loves like it writes
baking excuses
semi sweet
squares

The Beauty of Beauty

for my many sisters who have experienced abuse
and for me

This one came to me in a dream.....


Song:

You’re standing here
And you’re in so much pain
Wondering if He’s near
You’re calling out His name
The ones who were 'sposed to protect you
Used and rejected you
They didn’t believe the truth was true
But I know God was keeping you

Chorus:
Because it's alright
Don't be ashamed
Beauty ain’t ashamed to know her name
Know you’re not to blame
Because it’s alright
Don't be ashamed
He will take away/all your pain
Know you’re not to blame

soloist/choir

It’s alright
It’s alright
It’s alright
It’s alright

verse ii.
And now you’re on your knees
Wondering what to do
Your hands are outstretched to Him
Praying that He’ll hear you
The ones who were 'sposed to protect you
Used and rejected you
They didn’t believe the truth was true
But I know God was keeping you

Because Its al--right
Don't be ashamed
Beauty ain’t ashamed to know her name
Know you’re not to blame
Because it’s al--right
Don't be ashamed
He will take away/all your pain
Know you’re not to blame

soloist/choir

It’s alright
It’s alright
It’s alright
It’s alright

poem

Come gently lost passenger,
Because this is your stop
You wandered around the baggage area
Looking for a departure but struggling to find your way
With a one way ticket in hand to a epic struggle that
You didn’t ask for, and didn’t own

But there is a flight that will take you home

Time to take your name back,
Reclaim the freedom in the spring of your fall
If its peace you seek then don’t retreat
fall before his mercy seat
Kiss the soles of his holy feet

A deliverer of beauty lost
A heavy cost
Of innocence stolen
From her mother land
So many nights you were a nomad in your own soul
Know the savior heals and holds
He alone provides the aching spirit with
The comfort it seeks

Be released.

The beauty of beauty
Is that no matter what they did
You can live without shame
Standing on the savior’s name

This is your stop, lost passenger
There is a land where the wars inside your mind
Are subjected to treaties
And the battlefields of your body cease to rage
And in the desolate desert soul, He brings a spring of peace
Talitha cumi!
Come child, it’s alright
Come child, it’s alright
Hush child, it’s alright

The only way through darkness, is light.

chorus

Because Its al--right
Not to be ashamed
Beauty ain’t ashamed to know her name
Know you’re not to blame
Because it’s al--right
Not tuh be ashamed
He will take away/all your pain
Know you’re not to blame

soloist

It’s alright
It’s alright
It’s alright
It’s alright

first line of the chorus
AC FFE ADCAB EFEFE FDCC DDD EF

the power of shoes......

(part of a four part play)


(Narrator)

They were red. Candy apple red. Fire red.Cussing and fighting face beat red. Blood red. Red Sea red. Savior died and bled read. Red eyed red, red boned red. The kind of red that makes you think of a sunset you never saw, and ruby you never owned.

(picks up the shoes and admires them.)

They matched. In the window of the store there was a model, and she was wearing her red dress and her red shoes. She looked powerful, like nothing could hold her. I wanted to be like that.

Powerful. Unheld. Ready.

Ready for what? Sometimes I think that it is better not to tell your story to people, because you end up missing them. You end up floating around with little pieces of you that travel the world with your story in hand after you have given up the secret of who you are. Scrambling like a little bird trying to make a nest you flit around trying to find all the pieces of yourself you gave away to people who were careless with it.

And then sometimes I believe that we are not meant to hold onto our story, because it really isn't ours to begin with in the first place. It is His. My bondage, my hope. My fear, at its full height. My faith at its full depth.

Tangled twins, one skin, like Jacob and Esau. Who can win?

(throws the shoes on the table.)

I bought the shoes even though I could not afford them. You know how that is, when they beckon. I wasn't even thinking about the cost, I only saw the beauty of those red stems caressing my feet, petal soft.

Why?

Why do people ask why? If someone has a limp, people ask them why they are limping? If someone asks for change, people ask them why are you out here hungry and begging? If someone asks for hope, people ask why do you need it? And if they actually feel generous enough to actually give it to you, well, then, you owe them for their borrowed hope, because after all hope isn't free, now is it?

Uhuhh. Everything has a price. Even you.

I've come to the conclusion that people really don't want to know the answer to why. That's they they sit around angry at God, mad and waiting.

Why do children die in pointless wars, falling into the great gap-- landmines of generational sins? Why do fathers leave their children, countries neglect their poor?: Why did it take so long to recognize me as more than 3/5ths of a human being? Why did he rape me? Why were we poor? Why did you take the pearls that grandma strung for me and hide them? ? Why do we care more about being right than believing right? Why is Africa bleeding? Why was I homeless? Lord why can't I walk? Why is it that I can ask you for your body easier than I can ask you for yourself? Why are most people unhappy except for the people who have the least to be happy about? Why? Why didn't you save me? Why didn't they protect me? Why wasn't I loved? Why me Lord, Why me?

There comes a point when you have to say to yourself, Why not you? Who are you to live in the glass bubble of snowy spinning world and not get wet? Who are you to never know fear, or peril, or nakedness or the sword? Who are you not to be somebody's mentor, somebody's mama, somebody's reason to keep hoping when the world is charging at a premium? Who are you not to walk the walk that your grandmother, your great grandmother, and your great great grandmother all walked so that you could walk? Who are you that you are just so good in your life that you would never feel pain so that someone else may be able to look at you in all your brilliance and beauty and say if she can smile, so can I? Who are you to take away God's crowning glory, a woman after his own heart who survived to defiantly live? Who are you not to know the love of God, the peace of God that passes all understanding. Who are you this creature created in the image of the Almighty god not to be powerful, and unheld and ready for whatever comes your way?!

Who are you?

Sometimes I think to myself, If only you walked a mile in these bad boys, you would know. But you know what? If you could walk my road then you couldn't walk yours. For so long I walked. I walked over, under around and through all the things that tired to keep me mired in my own muck. But today is different. You see God gave me this word: In me, You have the power to walk away. Walk away from all the things that tried to break you. You can walk away because even when you could not afford you, somebody paid the bill. And when you walk away in He that holds your soul, you're different.

Because you don't just walk away, and through, you're walking to, because now you know the truth of who you are! The cost of why you breathe. You are worthy.


Everyone has a color. Everything has a price. Even you.

(she picks up the shoes, exits the stage...)

For me, it was red.

fire. works.

slick sweet
bubble yum kisses
cooled by sweet lemonade
concessions
with a twist of awe

calico cat
shoes clicking down streets that know them well
full with fuchsia mea culpas
we hardly mention anymore

the endless spinning
of abandoned records
the wide hipped full lung
speech of July
hot, humid, and heavy with
words we shouldn't say
but always do
during this season
when breath become brilliant sparkling
displays of will

i will remember those julys
when the love sizzled
when it
it was poppin' and crackin'

now it is cracking and popping
as I give to
the weight of the same old argument
we keep having
with new furies
until the arthritis
sets in

christdreams....

a canopy of stars
an awning of
brightly fallen
hope strung snowflakes
over a mississippi lightning moment
bright and gleaming;

battered but smoothly poured hope into dark chunky soil
giving rise to billowy blooms
the brazen rose of sharon red
sunset set to the key of rustic

the magic hour when all seems lost
and that is the beauty of it.

unwelcomed.

yesterday the wind blew
and in that moment I knew

I am unwelcome in my own dream.

my laughter spills onto a page
for which there is no room
my blinded eyes see stars
or is it shadows?

I am unwelcome in my own dream

they look and stare, look and stare
how dare
she?
who she be?

Offered nothing to eat nor drink,
just as simple meal of mixed motives.

I see what I have never known, dream of what I
cannot own
try to grab for that elusive
silver chord
only to find I have to reach
to hold on to my own soul.

I am unwelcome in my own dream

the rainbow formed by the mist of my own wishes
has split
six ways to Sunday
leaving me with my threaded needle of gold
and ash instead of a pot.

I am unwelcome in my own dream.

I've cried tear oceans
scaled molehill mountains
dug virtue valleys
with visions of sugarplums dancing in my songs
simply wanting; but complexly willing to take
a cold floor in heaven
over a warm bed in hell

Is it that the fight in my face has fallen?
Is it that the only way to be loved
is to be
the last one
left?


the awning of the line
it is
knowing vs. believing
smiling vs. laughter

doggedly beating on the door
begging to be let in
on the loneliest night of my life

I am unwelcome in my own dream
after I poured my soul into rock
and pulled my peace into the wood
Even the splinters I caressed lovingly

I am unwelcome in the dream I molded
carved, built, restored
but somehow do not fit.
because builders seldom inhabit
their houses

and then a still small voice says
but what is the dream
without the dreamer?
what is sleeping without dreams?

The Sole of the Matter

Tied to the left
Ans strappy
Two toned
And slim boned
Makes the brothers long for home
Makes them shout for joy
these tiny delicacies
massage the earth in circled
“c’s”
Step front step back
Side to side
They whisper warrior
In the click clack
Of the swayed back
Go , sister, go
See sister run
See sister command
Look out, here they come
Wayward ribbons
A perfect witness
Ask the question
Who are you?
And the story better be good.
Cauze I got no time for
Malevolent melodrama
Don’t you see my back zipper
Packing in my power tight?
Don’t you see
The patent on my leather induced adrenaline flight?
Don’t you see the way I hit the arch at its height
Letting em know whatever I come with
I’m promoting
a doggone tough fight?

I’ve walked over run away lovers
And hate filled horrors
And dissipated dreams
And broken hearted blame
To crush the heal
Of my own pain

I can be long stemmed
Or thin rimmed
Wedged or silhouetted
Archetype erudite
But when my hops sashay
Mama don’t play

I step out in my
baby blues
mile high magenta margaritas
black and bullish
Aquamarine artsy

I wrap myself around your weary (soled) dream
To adorn almond delight toes
With hues of mango
I am the dancer you can never catch
But always follow
As I give you too tough blues


Cauze no matter where her feet carry her
Everywoman has a pair
Of fighting shoes.

Who Am I, Lord?

You're my messenger
You're my leader.
You are the person I send into the battle when the road is tough, and the resources are few.
You're my healer. My water bearer.
My fire starter.
You kindle in others what I have kindled in you.
You are my nurturer.
You are the one that I have set aside for the special day of atonement.
You are my deliverer.
I send you into the dark caverns to be my light.
You are my scribe.

My lover of justice.
My creative spirit.
My voiceless voice.
My pure and adultrated mercy.

You are my child.

I created you to be my passion.
I formed you to be my kindness.
I made you in my image.
I marveled at your beauty, a reflecting pool of my own self.

I own your soul alone.
I bring you peace alone.
I share your world alone.

I made you to be perfected in my image.

You are my child.

My precious child.
You were born to give the world my joy.

If you ever should doubt who you are,
you need only look to me.

For who is like Elohim?

You were made to love me.
I exist to love you.

This is the sole purpose for your being.

Monday’s Oranges

Monday’s oranges were not so good
Sunday there were lively lemons
That danced with like beads of water
On a hot pan
Saturday the mangoes rocked
Back and forth on on the roof of m mouth
Playing a mélange melody
But Monday’s oranges were not so good.
Friday there were cherries so tight and black
That I could clearly see myself.
Thursday there were sepia pears
That tickled the tongue, each bite
A delicious question, each question
A delicious bite.
But Monday’s oranges pallid and round, were not so good.
Wednesday there was a yellow slick of
A banana, a smooth mat to my waterslide hopes
Careening into the marsh of Tuesday’s peach dreams
But Monday’s oranges were not so good.
The dingy blue calico of the creeping suspicion
Smothered my breath
Monday’s oranges were bruised and scarred
And full of dents
And holes where a worm or two had found a home
Yes, these were bad oranges indeed.

Caught in the mire of Monday
I forgot the splendor of Tuesday, the wonder of Wednesday
The Tenacity of Thursday, The Freedom of Friday, The Scent of Saturday and the Salvation of Sunday
I only saw Monday.

Then suddenly I looked for my basket
Filled with the fruit that I longed for
And found that in my
Momentary
Search for Monday’s oranges
I had forgotten
The bounty
Of the week

Purposefully positioned

Purposefully positioned

I stop and listen
For the sound of my name
flowing
From your heart
Like a stringed thing
A wondrous winged thing
I know every step is perfect in your hand

Song
My soul calls to you
Even when my heart declines to answer
Mended my broken limbs
You made me a dancer
When I had no eyes to see
You showed me colors that dazzled the mind
When I had no mouth to speak
Your word stood and shined
My soul calls to you
What a precious gift to find

Poem
Whatever my heart seeks
It is in your delight
Only you can make the darkness
Set to light
Like a butterfly on a branch
I am positioned in your hand
Your spirit has moved the unmovable mountain
The unmalleable face of my deepest fear
I am tender in the aching places
But the touch of you heals

Song

And my soul cries out
and my soul calls out
and my mind yearns for you
how good it is to be loved
how good it is to be loved
how good my God loves
God loves.....

admission

you never said a word

Your outwardly jutting ears
your chubby cheeks
converge in familiar
grooves--

a fault in
smack in the center of the
carefully positioned
puzzled frown
that spreads dangles
as clearly as a participle
or a lock of curls


your pouty lips
sweet and powdery
and full of memory
invade the corners of my eyes
unparelled an unrivaled soverignty
of the mighty river
that flows

your nose curled up in a mischevious
unmitigatedly willfil scowl
as soft as baby hair
on a rounded apple head

I am reminded of all the times you said
You know you've got to watch your face

the same face that you make when you're lying
is the face you make when you're loving
this is the irony of your seasons

the pause is discernable
as I see your guilty eyes
staring
back
at me
in the shadows of the photograph

tellin' all your business
in black and white

Seven Seconds

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of the road
with the high horizon of unclipped days ahead of you
and the billowing brilliant blindness of your past behind you
with a 16 drumbeat on either side of each eardrum

pressing?

The militant green of a warrior's call
in the wilderness
sounds more like the soft cry of
woman on the brink

quick, heart, think, think....

it has got to be somewhere
the directions that I had so neatly tucked away in my back pocket
that fell from grace into a forlorn
mecca somewhere on the road to redemption?

It has to be somewhere
this promised land
that makes my eyes misty and my heart
write contrite poetry
when it breaks
that makes me protest
and proclaim
and provide
my most intimate courage
that I desperately need as I stand in the middle of the road
between the pro and the land
I must have missed something.


How many times did I say yes to them
and no to me
How many times did I hold onto you
and lose me
or worse
How many times did I get up from praying to Him
to answer yet again, another ringing call
that in the middle of the night gives me no comfort
or blessed assurance

I have been unfaithful to myself
by drinking my desires to please others
and the expense of my own
starvation

You see in the middle of the road
stretched too thin
too far from safety and not close enough to sanity

you put yourself in quite a position

alone with your rendition of
do you know the way to San Jose
and a desire for ordered steps
all the while time is racing down a lonely highway at a hellish pace

But are you ready to chose the plan God has for you?
To chose or have it chosen for you
this day
whom will you serve?

The only way off a highway
out of the middle of the road
is to pick a side
take His hand
and walk

The me, interrupted, recalled.

Today I remembered something I'd long forgotten
like a conversation or keys
or those blasted gold sandals which must be
somewhere in the back of my mama's closet

I was looking for my past and I found her
riding in the backseat of the
maroon Javelin
circa 1975
bright radiant
wishes
tickling the corners of her
lips
a passerby
waves back
with grin
that seems to cross continents
chromosomes, creeds, colors

I look at her
pigtailed
skin smooth brown cake
echoing eyes
that shine

and I remember
how it felt
to be me
back then

I smiled to myself
in spite of myself
in spite of the miles and miles of
mud that I have walked through
hitchhiking on other people's images of who they
think I am

Next time I see her,
I'll be riding, too
and I'll wave back
knowing...

daring acts of repentance reached by name

your eyes
petal soft
they always come into me like this
brown like leaves

where do they go?

a tormented soul
a struggling dialect
a windy kiss you leave
branches and grass and leaves uprooted
in your path


the calm in you spills into me
like an inlet
filling the rocks and hardened paths
that no man had crossed

i am engulfed in your potential
halos of yellow and red
floral meccas melt into my feet
crushed only by the sheer weight of my desire
of my mahalia moment

and in this moment, I love you like I never loved before, because I know you.

I gave into you once
yielded to your deceptive beauty
your warm rivers and lakes
so sweet in my malleable mouth

this is the curse of competency
you are the empty ache
no amount of human love will quench

I rounded your rocky shoulders
heaving and brooding with the
thickness of what you lost

I have been habored by your hope
floated in your delicious delicate parts
bathed by the unearthly beauty
that never seems to settle, but unnerve

I have been caught in your
red song of rage
that beautiful quiet rush of roses
swept into the torrents of your
baited breath
as you sigh, so unsatisfied

We could have been great
but could is an auxiliary verb
it does not invert

like the wind
It comes bringing things it collects
and it leaves

my eyes meet yours
and I know you
your lakes and rivers
your firestorms
your tender branches
your cold caverns

and I thank God
for freedom to love you
and let you go

the last kiss
is mine
it is red roses
it is yellow flowers
it is bright bridges
over the troubled lands of you
it is gentle wishes
and an endearing love
that endures your changing seasons
it falls upon the moon cast in my eyes
first
then yours
then lips
touching the very center of you
loving the very heart of
what could be

and parting
with the ease
of calm waters

swim

woke up this morning
drowning in a life
that I didn't ask for
searching out my own survival
waiting on my rescue

a deep breath, and I go under
the minutes that I wasted
wondering, worrying, waiting
for something to breakfree

My mind is mired in the
thickness of any and every
perceived injustice
I ever knew
wet with the words
of all those who
took from me
my own breath
to save themselves
in a cold and lonely ocean


woke up this morning
drowning in a life that I didn't ask for
but must live
While holding my breath
I let go of a living life

But the waters are deep
I know I could die here
stuck in my sorrow

But the past is past.

The weight of my why's
can no longer anchor me
I must let go
with a buoyant hope
a thrashing joy
a swimming mind

I must keep my eye on your hand
and listen to the quiet swoon
of water parting
....
and reach
reach--
reach---
reach--
reach---
reach--

Isreal's Advice

He blew into my ear
hot kisses
of needy words

Keep waiting on God
We seek God
But God is not lost
We are

I thought of the ones who left
before they came
and dared myself to believe

When it is time, he advised knowingly, gently
like God
One will be sent
to love you
He, will find you.

dropped stitches

The earth is a red line
hot and seamless
it tears the sternum
in the center
of my soul
ripping
past
with furious force
leaving behind
unravelled memories of myself
my unself
my selfishness
that haunts me
like my holes

within the quiet meditation of Your presence
I am revealed
the scared sad girl that I am
the bold strong woman that I am
The two of themt
wins in one soul
fighting a battle
neither started
nor finished
but one must win

It isn't personal, but it is an intimate battle.

To love him
any him
I must loveYou
all of you
I must forgive me,
each of me
and pray
that in the process
I am able to stand.

In the end I am the great house divided
a grand garment unmade
angelic ashes in the heavenly hand
of a potter who has the eyes to see with faith
what my
vision cannot comprehend

U missed it

There was a word for what we were
But you missed it
A song, caught fermented, poured but spilled
A table set for a guest who never arrived
A band too big for their own britches
Lost in acres of stolen sounds that were given
But never returned to their listeners

Somehow being you always meant
That the meaning of me, on the tip of the tongue
Must’ve slipped my mind


There was a beauty in who I was
But you missed it
Too busy looking at the motivations of
All those other people who wondered
What it was, and who I was
That you could no longer see
Me


There was a sweetness for what we had
But you missed it
The honey mouthed
tingling fizzy pink lemonade kiss of naked
Naturalness
The decadent deliciousness of our richness that
Somehow had become bitter rote
When my footsteps fell in perfect alignment with yours
As we walked silently across the parking lot
You got in your car, and left
With a sour look
Mad ‘cause you weren’t the cook


Yesterday at
sunrise over the Mojave of the mind
As I sipped on mojito muse
And wrote a poem

I am sure you would have loved
Had you learned
What you were missing

Beautiful Bones

You may have broken my heart
But like a mended bone
It has grown
One side latched to the next
the wound, the crack, the flesh
has closed
memory is made in place of fracture
like a woman awakened from a deep sleep
I am
Strong and strident
Singing with a renewed pulse

Ready to run again

The Last Reminder (In memory of Jeannie Guzman)

Use me
Use me until I am all used
Until there is nothing left to squeeze
To empty
To hold
Use my laughter to water your garden
In the winter
And my tears to wet
The curved faces and arms of a churlish summer
Lace every memory of me you ever found
Until it gleams like hope
And wear it on dates
Until one day white and wedded with hope
You walk
Use me
Until my sweat becomes
The levy that leaves
The dry land dancing
With wet
Use me
Until my name no longer
Sounds like me
It sounds like thee
Until my love no longer
Lingers
But lays down
Before you
Lighting a pathway to
Peace
If you really love me, remember me
And use me
until another uses you
until the rhythmic interlock
of time and space
becomes as it always should have been
full of music lessons

Yes, use me
My love
Until I am all gone
Then I will
never really
be far away

Electricity (you)

Lead me into the valley
That has no secrets
Bewitch me with your brilliance
Whisper words of loud love
Provoking the eardrum of time
To explode with fuchsia rays
conducted on a sovereign stream
of bright blended hope
Run your words into and through
stiff fields of fire
brazenly with unassuming gall
Travel ten thousand roads less traveled
Until your compass returns you here
Give in to me
And I will yield to you
Until there is nothing left

Your respite

Be still



When the roving bands of

Want roam the valley of your soul’s earth



When heaven and earth

Eclipse at the meeting of your mouth



When the sound of your own sorrow

Fills the lungs with soulless wind



As time touches your cheeks

In tepid tears



Be still

All creation kneels in eight perfect

Octaves of applause

Shifting the light to display billions born to sing

His operatic praises



Take heart,

Knowing it is yours

God hears

riot

a schizophrenic summer
of ungentle dreaming

the maiming of the mind
bleeding hot laughter
their rage destroys
simple screams

hangover

pleased percipitiously
dropped her shiny and new attitude
as punch entered
drunk as usual

"pangea unearthed"

stillness
bends towards nature's
rustling weight

chilling stars branch
with poised possibility

delicious dusts
each desire
free as a thousand boughs fallen