two halves of the moon

Her night wings glimmered
like her eyes
and she said Me?
I prefer the dark side of the moon.

He asked Why?
and she knew.

She said See.
No he said seeing nothing.

You and I we're the same.
How so? he asked.
Answers we can see but
wonder we cannot she said looking up still.

She paused and he paused.

She asked him Now which side of the moon do you prefer?
And he answered The part that I can see of course.

She knew but she said Alright, and

If that is true go home tonight
And if you think only of your answer
And not of your question then stay away forever.
But if it is your question that nags you come back
by night tomorrow.

And he went.

The next night split cold stars sky-wide and he returned
to her and said I too must prefer the dark side of the moon.

What? she said and he was baffled.
Last night we spoke and you told me
your preference for the dark side of the moon
and for wonderment and questions over
light and answers
and I returned because I was as you said--
nagged by my question.

I don't know what you're saying or
Who you are or why you are telling me these things
She said and flew away for good.
A half-illuminated night.

He stood by wondering.

sorry kid

too bad kid we build you wonderless let you mistake your ideas for accidents let you wear test scores like brand apparel call it: Failure too sad we push the already written upon the almost written dying to be written you kid, a future that never arrives all that cosmic potential fizzles toward numb and never shame we can't widdle you out the shape you're in amidst tangled words and manufactured education your child-voice chimes: "why bother?" only because it might change your life kid

in between folds

"And when he said that I saw him transform in front of me, origami art of a thousand, now a thousand and one, beautiful folds of mystery. How life is in the folding and love, my, how love is in the unfolding."     

that subway girl

I ain't got a whole lot
sides a 97' chevy and a
mississippi dream bout some
riverboat city I seen
once
in a magazine

momma woulda said
God left it on that subway train
found me sleepin in a heap tell me
go west, get out of these streets
follow Me out of these streets

regret is just some runaway
teenage footsteps I can never retrace
last thing momma said to me
before I slammed the door in her face
I love you, come back home
when your heart gets too lonely
from being alone, baby girl you know
I'm with you wherever you go
i am with you -
where ever - you go

gone and seven years too late
I still listen for her in the rain
so come on momma runaway with me
our midnight 97's bout to leave
sure we ain't got a lot
just a mississippi magazine
bout some riverboat city I seen
once

missing the pinhole

I've been missing the
pinhole girl
where echoings rise
feet deep
one soft light puncture
pen-tip shadow through
cave tunnel and the allegory
bats closed an eyelet
revolving illusions meet, sunset
blink there it goes
away    long stretched
night returns as does
one fine golden strand   flickers
in waiting
follow the listening
for what comes
keeps still

to l.s.m.

The purpose of life is not to get you out of the moment you're in. It's not to unboulder that rock that has plunged from the sky and landed smack in the middle of your one lane highway out of this place. No, the task is to sweat beady drippings of salt water this very instant, gruesome tired and desperate for air as you are. The muscles in your face you have forgotten clench and ease. Clench. and ease. Your jaws of steel memories - let them be. You must let them go. They have little beauty in the raw wilderness of this your one wild and precious life because the beauty is in the living. You saved that little girl's life, not as storage for a future time but because you were meant to do it. She will never intersect your healing hands again.

This rock will never fall this way again.

You see the rock. Yes go to it. Lean upon its weight instead of fighting against its burden. Go, yes, and lean. Fully into it, your strength gone and its strength - unmovable. The task of the moment, this rock, is exactly what you feel: frustration, humiliation, confusion, suffering, loneliness. Its necessity is demanding everything from you - come back alive to the present, leave your wayward dreaming of phantoms so that you may know each of these parts of you so deeply that you call them by their name. They cut you open upon its rough face and you bleed out exactly what you must. It is flesh against rock. The rock has won and you surrender to it, the moment, like a wailing breath into the sky and it happens - the instant has passed and you feel the weight shift like a different hour of your life has come. Or gone. The confusion is in not really knowing.

The purpose of this moment is not to get you to the next. Chances are, it will, and that's why we take these moments for granted - we expect them to pass before they happen or desire for them to not happen and pass. Pass along moments, go away time. I want to live another way, inside another interval better than this one now. But life will not happen that way. It happens only the way it happens, and in that order. 

Lean upon the rock because it will hold you up long enough to let you rest, to close your eyes, to slow your breathing, to feel its gritty layers against your calm surface. The rock has a story to tell that will change your life forever if you will rest your heart upon it and listen.        

the beginning and the end

I wanted to write about love and wondered how to begin. Like the freshman philosophy major mulling over existence in a vintage coffee bar then asking Socrates so what do you think? There's those rare birds when SMACK, the answer actually is bigger than the question, so enormously big that the question can't hold it all in and is afraid, seriously afraid, to be asked at all. Here is the keen latitude where a question observes its own smallness, stripped down poetry like humility upon gravel beneath waters because the answer could build a stone empire up to the heavens upon its rickety back, or create an avalanche so mighty that all matter collides, every direction smashing circuits, one giant bursting golden cloud shimmering dust, covering space, mixing air, down and down into the dwelling hearts of earth. Yes Love is. Bigger than a simple rule though it is simply the greatest rule.

Once upon a time a person was given life and was born, a whole long life made up of days and days and days and days so endless that they felt like they would never end, and the great I Am asked the person to love Me and to love them and to love again and to love again and yes to love again and the person replied that's it? But on the last day of her first life in the last air of her last breath she exhaled and said oh, that's it.


That's it.