love is never almost

He was born in a rust shed small and cold yet
at night he was warmed beneath his mother's coat
damp with sweat and hope.

He formed love for her before he could form the word love
and she too loved him so. She told him.

They two together within the world and not against it
that is what she believed not because she was raised that way but because the grass grew every spring like morning rises from night and she could not explain it.

She explained little, not even why she loved him and he preferred it that way,
and inside those shed walls he wondered to himself one autumn afternoon when he was six -
Mama, is this home?
and she held him and rocked him and said Almost
and she caught him quiet and surprised because
Had he spoken his question out loud?
he would never know and it wouldn't matter.

He would learn as he grew into a man: answers come this way.

And when his feet touched down upon wooden floorboards inside bigger walls and bigger rooms he invited his mother in and took her coat and hung it in the foyer closet and welcomed her home and she smiled and cupped her small hands around a secret.
She sat upright because the chair contour asked it of her, her legs too short for her toes to touch the ground. But she sat proud and listening to the stories of his life and her eyes twinkled because she remembered the stories he couldn't and his eyes twinkled because, actually, he could.
His little eyes had watched her move inside many a shadows of that shed, her warm prayers pluming, rising, vanishing. Into the frigid air. She always thought he was sleeping but love works its way into the heart. In the quiet night. Almost means hope.

She had covered him warm each night in
I Love You. And as his tiny body exhaled beside hers,
he covered her over, too.

They both knew this love exactly.

Meaning

Every word or phrase strains to mean its own meaning. And the punctuation of the question mark: smudges clarity. Smirks like a fox. Shades of blue at night.

We, poor messengers, are strapped and riddled with the clothing of language. Nakedness gets us put in the 7th floor fanny wing so we tight-lipped speak...appropriately at the expense of: accuracy.

Yes typefont helps but ill enough. Bold and ALL CAPS distract. Apologies redact. But never all the residue of suspicion. So the uncircumscribable is the truth that: words are symbols and phrases - codes. To listen means merely: decode. And if you fail, no one knows. Circumscribe. Mix up some words to appear like you: get it.

The exception being

Love.
Love is itself.
I Love You is itself exactly.
Power unto itself complete.
Just as God says when He says:
I Am

Love -

A holy mystery mirroring
A common mystery.

Half

I sat up half awake and remembered suddenly - I was losing the stories of my life. I began again. To pen the other half.

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