Flashback

How tenderly fragile -
Like a snowflake,
On a warm windshield.
I wish I could hold it,
Save it, word it, preserve it...

The fleeting glimpse
Of a passionately guarded emotion,
Tied intricately, inseparably -
to one garish message tone.

Feb 17th, 2010.

Bon Voyage

From a traveler, to a traveler.

[Somewhere on that long wrong road,
Away from home,
I’ve gone astray,
Have lost my way.

In my dream it rained…
Rain that carried the snow away,
Piece-meal into crannies –
The white white snow,
Losing its religion,
Merging into water.
The fair cocksure landscape,
Coloring into rivers of confusion.]


Some stretches on that road,
[That long wrong road,
Winding away from home]
Will be gray, others green;
And some will reflect,
The bright summer sun;
Mischievious mirages –
Full of furniture of home.

If you ever reach them, touch them,
Between your fingers feel them;
Call my name –
The smoky shadows in this strange land
Might then,
Be imbued with palpable substance.
I might then begin to trust,
The warm breath of a silhouette,
Forever following my feet.


Feb 13th, 2010.

What I Want My Words to Do To You... *

What I want my words to do to you,
Is to make you shudder and stop,
Each time you decide,
To decide my decisions for me.

I shall let tomorrow’s verses come to me,
Tomorrow,
And today, today’s.
Also, those of all lost yesterdays.
Feel with me, sing with me,
Of days gone by,
Days wished, willed but never had,
Days to come…

What I want my words to do to you,
Is to make you shudder and stop,
Each time you choose to tell me,
It matters less, that I be happy,
And more, that I obey.

Did you know that there are –
Big battles I can brave,
Wild wars I can wage,
Yet some small skirmishes I cannot.

Bend for me, please,
I cannot fight you...
In your love you, like an impermeable wall,
Separate,
My joys – half here, half there.
We both know what I will choose,
But can you save me –
From bitterness?
From loss; the knowledge of my loss?
Can you unwind the unwilled twists and turns,
Of my half-lived half-loved heart?

What I want my words to do to you,
Is melt your loving stubborn heart…
Through verses, to have conversations,
That age gaps and rusty communication,
Have never let us have.

What I want my words to do to you,
Is love me your way, but also my way,
To love the willful voice in me,
For it is me more than all else.

What I want my words to do to you,
Is love me enough…
…to let me go –
Liberated yet loved,
For all that I am.

Feb 12th, 2010.


* [The phrase 'What I Want My Words to Do To You' is borrowed from the title of a film by the same name by playwright Eve Ensler]

Love Song

Tumultuous heart,
Fanatic heart,
O do not thee thus wail!

Clocks rewind,
Winds sojourn,
Rosy cheeks turn pale!

At spring’s start,
If lovers part,
Sip hemlock from this grail!

Feb 7th 2010.

Without a Country

[Have you ever really thought through
The damage done by accepting
“It’s all in the mind” philosophy? –
How crippling is the freedom it affords.

All appropriate, seemingly true,
Indiscrete, abominable… suddenly disbanding.
All rights and wrongs merging meaninglessly
Into this immense void of personal preference.]


We are designed to survive,
We cling to what we need,
The rest like gills, evolve themselves out
Through the sieve of societal propriety.

Never wantonly aiming to contrive,
He has discarded too much furniture
In these long hours of functioning without –
Jettisoned cargo isn’t easy to retrieve.

So where does he truly belong?
Someone without any tangible definitions…
Someone free… – Neither here, nor there,
Such is a man without a country!

Feb 1st and 2nd, 2010.