The symphony of life

Galloping down cliffs
once we were trotting up fair peaks,
the music magnifies
the fleeing,
fleeting difference

Sponge

Luscious, mother's breast milk
the pleasure of food, sweetness and cream
the cloth you wore on boyhood time
the blanket you carried in man years,
adding dowries of booze and drugs and painmufflers
Like bells, they toll bellowing, your myriad holes
The sea flows in and out of them as much as it holds
the magical essence of you
fluid, uncharted
You were born a creature of the deep, of the changing and unchained
liquid, if only filling the specks of sand was a dream captured
if only your thirst was to be quenched with saline waters
If only I could cleanse, heal the wounds with your touch

Love, after all, is the ingredient that separates a sacrifice from ordinary, every day butchery

A New Journey

How I got here

The intention/prayer notes fell out of the ocean painting, bought  a few years back in one of those lonely trips to the antique mall, where I would schedule to bury my grief and loss, shifting through discarded dreams and abandoned life remnants of others. Even as a child, I always found comfort in the voyeur's perch, of old folks' company, auditing  past tragedies. The "jugga", reclamation engineer instict was a built-in of my character.

I had tucked them in, before I had hung the suspended "boat " of "Wits End", a makeshift dinghy constructed out of a shopping bag bottom with sturdy rope handles, to hold all my  pilgrim's prayers and devotions of my widowhood journey. Every time Natalia or the bleakness of my loneliness would bring me close to desperation abyss, to the edge of Thelma and Louise canyon, I would write one and add it to the boat's berth. The boat would sway and I would close the door of the empty closet that once housed Steve's stuff and I would go on to my busyness. It was a very nifty, therapeautic shortcut.

I had forgotten the time, the occasion, the particular hue of want of these notes declaring " I need LOVE, I need a human touch, I need an embrace" and the plaintive one, "I need strength to walk alone, protection from evil doing and serenity, my God".

And now I got what I wished for.

The graduation apex was the symbolic mountaintop, on the first day of a new summer, of the glorious sunrise of new love that was granted, answered from those notes.
I don't remember where the boat ended up or its contents.

I know that I am filled with gratitude and plentifulness and blooms in my garden of Eden.
And the resolve to pay it forward.

Two Flowers

Held close inside
the crook of my ring finger
-me and you-
are two blossoms
as last of the blooms
that were granted
a new spring,
a promise
for four seasons and
a life that will
grow unincumbered
of practiced fails
for miracles require faith
and hope and redemption
and finally giving
without reward

Circumferance

I opened the cardbox package she sent
a jack in the box after five years of severance
and the past
tumbled onto my pretty morning
 dubiousness spilled on the care-free
giddy-making
 my reconnaissance of memories
wished buried
held too strong to sweep off with
mindlessness and absolution grace

Was it an omen, an evil eye, a reminder or
an amulet to hold optioning the future
endeavors?

Labels, schedule and location
search's topography and the dam
held

Mile 23

Everything hurts
lungs can't inflate
with end in sight
air is thick
and legs are lead
I am spent-
the end of
another school year

Reclamation paean

Open the malachite box
where your past is buried
the lock is worn out
from dragging it everywhere
it is inside you so
dare to abandon it
Victory
is perishing
without
regret

Touch

Lying on top of you,
sideways,
next to you,
under you,
away from you,
every possible way
that touching
quivers this old
skin
endlessly rippling
well waters
that almost dried brakish
but for the coin wish
entering them
one
last
time

A charter

Black notebook, a memory bound
to past and poised for the future
quilting wishes, wants and fears
in to a cover for loving
domesticity
if nothing more but
a token,
for commitment
was already
sealed

Madly

From friction to flame
from ice to torrent
from want to satiety
from barren to seeding
from death to living

As if love is not but
divine madness
transforming
and you
were the bandit
of time spanning the arc
 arriving now

Abundance

It is on that pillow-ey gray,
 a cotton candy of our age

that old dreams are slumbering

only to sprout uncensored and intrepid

when I see your working boots

next to my galoshes,

your shiny big truck parked 

ahead of my coltish car in the driveway

your thick socks mixed with my lace underwear in the laundry,

and I wake up and I am not dreaming anymore

Seducing

I belong to the watermelon club
of certain seven year-olds
with jet black hair and grand designs
scratching that smell sticker is the password

I inhale the faint scent left on your pillow
soap and lavender and stolen tobacco drags
silky aristocratic skin disguised as laborer's roughness
the memory of your touch is my key to the house of magic

I smile on screens and mirrors too
a wide grin unfettered by dental tragedies
 flooding with light my eyes long resigned to
 darkness of happiness relinquished

I sleep without clothes and enveloping covers
for I relish the freedom of being
the magnet of such warmth without poles
to pull me under or against

I dance lightly along options and tasks and chores
and  all along  I imagine driving my fingers deep into your brain
ripping open your rib cage and  biting off your jugular vein
that braids that slender neck of yours

This fire is green and lustrous and sly
the seduction is madly disorienting
I am losing feathers off wings for homing
is no more the destination, soaring is the prize

A circle, closing

Came full-circle, a trek
so long
I thought I was lost
for good
Only I am beginning
 another one
around the moon
I spin,
my orbit
particled
of common
addiction threads,
deficits
equaling
positive
eternal

Sense is

Without seeing you
 I cannot see
Without touching you
I cannot feel

Chartreuse

The tenderest of greening
like this love,
cast unexpectedly a protagonist,
sprouting out against
the ashen gray of
decay and pain
on the canvas
of redemption past due
It is the transformation's hue
pulled from many a bundled
crawling before the run
It is the color of finding you

Amulet

In the darkest deep of grey water

I will search for the bluest stone

to hold exorcised 

the evil eye

for this love,

still an infant,

so precious

so fragile,

the bar code of our

assignment to each other

Kimono

Yes my master,
I am your Greek geisha
no tags left,
for you unwrapped the present
of my kintsukuroi heart

Submit

Under a sheltering banyan tree
was a man, sitting, open, unarmed with
conviction, offering
discernment with analog transparency
so that I had to submit
and follow,
as my guides gave up and left me
or maybe I banished them away,
to find what I longed
yet hadn't known it
to be you

Holding

A mere chance
of finding you
in a thousand moments
of keeping myself
hidden
and wanting to make now
all that it is
so that I find you
here
under the fingering
of that palm
you held open
for me
to perch on
gasping
for air
You are  holding
my heart alighted

Size

It can be a postage stamp
of a kingdom carved out
of disparate coasts

It can be a secret cave
of rock paintings
undiscovered

It can be the drop of sea water
in your eyes
in an ocean of grief

It can be the black collar
of a wedding's
burden

It can be the size of love

Let Me Own That

With deft and gentle hands,
guide me through
the truth of you

With trust and faith,
plant the seeds
of tomorrow

With commitment and love
grow us
into together

Two pillars apart,
raise the roof
of the temple

Sheltering
new, old
forever

A dam, breached


 You touched my hands and shoulders
and small of my back
with tenderness and possession too
I can feel the close circuit sparking
even now, between us
passing
to an end,
yet shrouded

Stillness of now is
a trial to attend,
debating
the sandbagging of the dam
I carefully planned to
destroy,
a saboteur,
with triumph and regret

The Dream

I was mere five years old,
sipping tea with
my raggedy dolls

Was it a tremolo hand
or a tight corset
that lifted the flat horizon

The peaks rose
like fountains
singing exaltation

It returned a few times
once as an elder lion,
another like you alone

A music, unaffected
by practice or pattern
a joy without living future

Decades later I think
must have been a memory
of an abandoned paradise

A dream, to accompany
this slumber,
on our way back to it

N2

Do you want me yours
or to go away
do you feel the net
or long for endless escape
Do you exhaust quest
to hide your pain
or single out victims
to round out your Dorian
portrait
You were my golden
acorn
buried underground,
a scroll for forensics
of love,
the crucible of
leaving myself

A 

Moored, broken sails
a hull full of trespasses
tinder splinters your wood
all that carbon
spent
to make you
and now
a
quantum
transfiguration
beginning,
 a new moon
waxing
your ebony
undersides
seaworthy ready
for a new
Odyssey
Sail on

K

Willow, bending grace
for sacrifice
an undulating motion
down playing
your
icy stealth

T

I inhale the clematis,
a tangle of sensual bliss
flowering with abandon
against the desolate grey
of fence, of sky, of  life chapter
 I am a vine, tendrils
erasing out doubt,
even reason
a herald of change,
a thigh of an aroused nymph
soft and luminescent
at once
and the magic
of spring
returns
me, a new Persephone,
to earth

W

Raining ruin the hail
broke your tender buds

If love left you in life
it won't be it is found in death

Swelling with blind ire
  marbled beats your heart

Your innocent trust in tatters
no longer your eyes' shine

At least spent and empty,
 a nest for vices and scorn

Your present now is survival,
your future the torture of bonsai

N1

Savior or executioner
you trampled ancient temples
built of fantasy cotton candy
A sun  never shone
on your lunar planes,
a star
alone fixed on my barren horizon
A desert full of
hidden life,
an aquifer
of origin

Standing Collar


Three little buttons
opened a chest full of joy
like a jumble of teeth inside
 jaws of horror- unexpected

Black carried on the night
to the ever yawn of quest

A moat of obligations,
like a collar standing
protector to a finest of necks
could have been a fitting choker

G

Slightly soiled, crumpled
white cotton good
starched with commitment's
sheen
goes with everyone's wishes
an ensemble
for the ages
belying
depth unplumbed
or merit appraised

Unworthy of you

Agnes Obel - Fuel To Fire (Official Video)

B

The two lost bunnies
chomping on lush greens
without care
growing soft fur and liquid eyes
left
the gate was open
for Easter was but a promise
not met

an old one with new eyes:

Lust

Soft roundness of your backside
down low sweet halves
a surprise to feel
undressing
your hardened shoulders
holding on to
your knees hurt
by so many genuflections
to absent masters
I appraised flesh and soul
like a stolen goods merchant
ravenous for the prize
of bondage

L

Learning to go back
and sink into that mud
determined
to meet with open heart
future losses,
brought me to loving you,
ceasing the pain
of forced oblivion
Healing, sometimes means
a new wound bleeding
out



https://youtu.be/1B_BRNsTBAk

J

 Billowing curtains in the night breeze,
lifting our devastating heat
 resisting touch was fuel
 to the despair of skin
The whole house was a galleon in
uncharted seas,
that wild thing lust churning white-foamed
waves
Thrashing amid dewy sheets, still clothed,
bodies in unison beat
craved  prolonging the denial
of coupling
Galloping down a blinding pleasure's path
the night was hurrying up a bright dawn-
the ruination of us all-
for we were knowingly tresspassing borders
in the name of belonging

M


languid, dusty pink
velvet cream puff dream
a valley between peaks
your lips
remain
guarding the forest of petrified ivory
grown of words unspoken
like soldiers, defending a kingdom
and buried last in the tomb with the emperor

   

   Wear a ( white ) mask and no one fears you
    but behind masks and the erasure of one's perceived self
   lies the seed of subjugation and self-denial

C

The back of your neck,
un-creased, tanned, solid
holding your head with grace
above the wasteland of casualness


Cupping your jugular notch,
lips aflame
I am the squirrel in heat
gyrating on your trunk

Matches

He talked about unity,
and relationship is life
One, about a parallel universe of
spying connections and radioactive salmon fast
His wife left at once as he was finally ready
to mend the rends
The winner was the whales willing themselves
to walk from land to the depths of the ocean
Or the very simple If you can only see yourself'
with my eyes burning

Striking light matches,
a cold corner wedged in
the hunger dreams
til breath became air

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom

Anais Nin

Advise to you #2

Courage or comfort
Accountability AND autonomy

If you drive nails with a saw
you end up with cut fingers

To bore a hole and shine a light to the seat of your emotions requires discipline and persistence. You are full of the latter and need more practice on the first. If you do, it will be facing down the pain that is driving your virulence and disarm its potency.

Limitations and corrections are the yang of creativity and growth: to force and forge change takes adaptability, which I believe is the pinnacle of the blessings you came to this world with. The restriction of painful failure and rejection will be the fuel for discovering transformation. Controlling others is futile and it becomes apparent once you realize they were not your "prize", or means by which you heal and grow, after all.

If you don't adapt, you perish.

My dear girl, my prayers are useless in the altar of your free will.

Advise tο you #1

Clothing your pain
with loathing's wool
bares your soul
defenseless

Swaddling your holes
with found scraps
weaves a trapdoor
for trespassing

Better to open up early
 frost in your toes
than rot from the inside
 mid-harvest

Love is strongest in pursuit, friendship in possession
R. W. Emerson

Your embrace

The memory was never better,
pink and warm
your skin sweating next to mine
 baptizing the longing
in a sacred font
the golden hue of your arm
a mere speckle
on my erased joy's icon

Z

Apostasy

Eons back, it was probably on a day like this
 my egg left and met a random other
 rolling inside a geode womb
scraping a spark to cling
 to a makeshift constituency

I was someone who left too,
particled and determined
a rock out of a mountain
heaved from a flood's muddy bowels
sitting there for uncountable years

 Lines and  circles surrounding me
 I heeded sermons of love's scraps
 cut on the bias, meant for redemption
I arrived late to the feast at last,
deciphering the hallucination of purpose

Only, linking the chain does not
alone protect or enslave or capture
the search for your deity,
your thirst for truth or
the sizing of time

The bought and the gifted,
the random and the planned
the multitude and the sole
derive from one
leaving

Valentine's torch

I can't stand the fiction of living

Mercy destroys all consequences, for a time

Clients

The gaggle of wives and moms
who gather for coffee and control
rationing out belonging
like a PTA match card
The more you buy the more
 the ante is raised
of inner circle harboring

The plain, small, only parent
averting eyes when you speak
hides a vast canyon of kindness
and dutifulness greater
than a congregation of priests
Lavishing her sapling like son with
the love she denies for herself

The sweets are just that-
oozing pink affection
for each other, others and their daughter
who possesses a steely perseverance
despite the hothouse flower demeanor-
and she is only six!
A majestic magnolia she will become

The one demanding most service
 and special treatment,
 which she truly relishes,
reigns like a lioness
 grooming her cubs to greatness
 with Buddhas's serenity and conviction
She is a rock on shaky ground

The dashing athlete, renowned professional
passionate artist, devoted family man
who gives freely of his time, his tenderness
his multitude of gifts,
perhaps because he is so golden
The tarnish of spending himself to ruin,
affirms his specimen's rarity

The woman who blazes in and sieves
sunlight in dark corners,
 gathers a firestorm of reaction,
shares her wounds without compunction
simultaneously offering touching affection
to your thirsty soul
Will have a tragic end- remain forever young

All of them I have happened to, decades at my work,
tending a garden of accidental plotting
 willing to coax fruit on grafted trees
 cursed with blight
and a spring that came so late
that harvest skipped the gathering,
fleshed out instead the stark glory of winter

Only I was the client, spreading
on their therapist's couch
year after year, healing
my inner child and mother alike
and all the gifts changed
hands, twice blessed,
in the destiny of connection

If you carry the flint stone in your gas pocket, you can light up your mind's fire anytime

Θωμας Κοροβινης

Fade

He looked worn, perhaps from fighting
weariness, illness or his demons

Benevolent light from grey overhead
did little to brighten the shadows

Only the ashen outline, bleeding
foggy memories, remains

Of what once was fueling
my heart's sunshine

Love's layers swept clean,
the scent of burn lingers

Last bastion of vintage
passion

Dimming

Normal

Divided view,
from your prison window
squared
replicated

Chain reaction,
the pallid resignation
of time registering
captive

Dull taste,
memory washing out
the neighboring sense
of pleasure

Only the pitch gets
sharper, grating
sparking
the rose of fire

Pain, inflicted

It can be an ax, precise and merciful
its instant delivery

Or the sanding down
of affection, turning to polished hatred

It can be the stalagmite
of resentment swells petrifying

Or the covert erosion
of supporting columns

It is the cold hearth of
extinguished love turned to bitter ash

I can tear you up
all the same, with my love misused

A ship in port is safe but that's not what ships are built for

Hidden

Concealing and feigning,
 leveled discipline
for the forbidden joy

Scaled justice, merely
protecting the balance
of innocent players versus villains

She never bit the fruit or crossed
the trust line
only toiled at keeping a secret

The burden of the interior
truth had to be jettisoned
just as the sin finally became

but a perception

Υοur Hands


Slender, ample, gentle in touch
moving with certainty to form
connection

Soundless language of kindness
and care, perchance desire
 is their touch

You are holding in your palm
that distant sense of exile
along with the strings

to my heart

A memory, memorial

Cold air on the span bridge,
 metal attracting back and forth

Every season, hues change
seeking each other

Love grows round, brimming
then blisters and spills, wetting paper sails

To shreds, the raft is listing,
it capsizes

Being too shallow to hold
afloat stretching wings

Frozen June smiles, still glow
up-lighting the memory

of Camelot

Love is so short, forgetting is so long

Pablo Neruda

" And so we know and rely on the love God has for us: God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them"

John 4:16

 A stream

After the flood, assigned to random hems
held only by moving on

On a journey most spectacular
to join the endless sea

Icy pride melt into a rivulet
serene, clear, invulnerable

What a casting call
nota bene, the humble brook-

is a beautiful solace to earth

What you don't know

Peering in vitrines,
coveting shiny displays

That all look magical,
perfect, untouchable

Seem to magnify your want
twee zing envy's curled worm

Vowing to forge a shared life
you set to find your heart's missing half

Oh, to be a speck of dust
to travel the underside of icons

To light the pain windows shield
 to taste the breaking brittle hate

To dress with sorrow's cloak
that knots nuptials' straitjacket arms

Then perhaps you'll find
your fantasy was blessed

Wanting what you cannot have
a present

To offer your compassion
your just reward

To love is
 to give up what you want to hold the most