Billet-doux

For days on end I give my heart to the roaring cadence of your influence. I want to restrain myself but it makes me feel settled.  I do speak your language. When you’re here I walk out of myself.  The person inside of me finally comes around and I always look forward to seeing you. Missing you feels like raw emotion running barefoot. 

Back and forth, back and forth I used to struggle. You are a holiday for my soul.

Such beautiful powers of apprehension we have.

I made a promise to myself once.  I made a determination to always be myself.  To love what I love, to do what I love, to live, eat, speak, breathe, dream and know what I love as if the love of it itself was who I am, as though my spirit were hazed with rainbow colors including gold.  To not care who I impressed or who was listening, to avoid the drama and be my most logical self.

You know what I love about you?  I mean besides your comfortable voice and your attractive face and your awfully unblocked but sometimes burdened way of living, I love your fracturedness.  I love how you’ve made friends with life again.

I spent many years learning to sleep and doing it so well.  I had so much time to admire you.  If I woke and wanted to drive somewhere to see you; how simple it was to grow wings.  My heart was smitten enough to create anything.  I love being reckless.  I love colliding with your dreams and wishing my body would break, hoping my mind would bend, wanting the pluck of your bite and your movements under me and all its brilliant stars.  How easy it is to pursue my dreams.  I especially love how the evenings open up; they are revolving and windy with immense and persistent wait for you to visit and then once I see you, my astonishment once again.  Nothing has changed.  Everything has changed. 

I do not need any fancy words to make you fancy.  Just as a sunrise needs no expression of beauty if the sunrise is already beautiful.

I love you absolutely.

For Sale.

Pack your boxes. Only you can sort away the posthumous reputation of all those memories. As you pack your boxes, you’re left to sort through the pieces left over; fragments and remnants, odds and ends.  There are those who say you are mistakenly calling this the end.  They amply declare that it may actually be a great beginning.  What is the point of a beginning or end?  Isn’t life one contiguous series of cycles and changes and developments?   There are no arbitrary starting and ending points but rather recurrent stages of variation and those memories most precious will remain illuminated in shapes and forms; never to be forgotten.  You have just consummated that period of your life.  Smile when you look back at it because it shapes your tomorrow and know that you aren’t really left without it just because you can’t reach out and touch it right now.

My sunflower.

Dear friend, you have been so good at getting me up the hill.  You are a sunflower waiting for me at the top.  In the depths of our hearts are lights that lead us to what is important to us. We change, all people change, and we forget to tell each other. I am not so lost from you yet that I don’t think I occasionally land on your mind. Nor do I think I have faded away from your present life so much that I would be never known to you again.  Seems we learn so little and forget so much; maybe we forget because we must and not because we will. I wish, perhaps, that we might be less vulnerable to our current lives, and that bonds might be more permanent.  Don’t fade far away. You are among a friend you’ve never known.

 Let’s trim the hedges that separate our yards.  We were singled out and set apart from others for a special purpose.

 If we take away the simplest ingredient or change the combination of our mixture, we may completely remove ourselves from the party.

 I regard your individual existence. I respect and rejoice your unity but am saddened by the spacious separation from the nave and aisles by a lofty carved wooden screen door from which I can see your modern monuments but only from afar.

 I won’t dwell on this because bees are sometimes drowned in the honey which they collect.  If we are not careful, something that had once been, something delicate, wild and far away can be shut out behind the doors of yesterday, lost beyond the hill I climb when I try to see my sunflower.

Cutting vegetables.

I can’t always tell if you’re with me in the moment my friend. Are you still who you are? You are a spontaneous flame, born from some fiery luminary, dancing around so not to be snuffed out. You are a survivor. You have a thick existence so I don’t expect your words will be spoon-fed to you by halo wearing angels. I will paint you a picture.  At first you might think it just hangs there in silence but it will eventually scream loudly for you to not wear out your heart.  Start dreaming and don’t regret it because if you stare at that painting long enough it will lose all it’s familiarity.  That has happened with all my paintings so I can not say much of anything more.

 I saw the expression on your face.  Not completely mean but not altogether nice either. I know about hammering my answers into my thick skull.  Sometimes I only see the tiniest bud of hope but at least I know why it’s called hope.  You’re the only one I’ve shared this with and afterwards I’ll swallow my words.  And, although I don’t have the understanding of all mysteries, nor can I remove mountains pressing heavily on your lungs making you struggle to breathe, I do have faith that you will surround yourself with people who never flap their vain wings and have already put away their childish toys.

 The answers may come to you in the silence of the night, speaking to you in a dream, but may vanish from memory as sunlight forms your new day.  It is important to remember that fear kills and hope will feed you.  Don’t think you have to lose yourself before you can find yourself.  Don’t get pulled by the conveniences of time when it comes to the essentials needed for a happy life.  Ride the highways on your motorcycle and have your girl drizzle a bit of sunlight into your recipe.  I’ll make sure I paint a cool breeze in your spirit and maybe you will fakie fakie some much needed moonlight for me.

Act I Intermission

We are pieces of a complicated puzzle. The double impulse within ourselves to put the pieces together and become one and yet also to fulfill ourselves outside of the puzzle. Just because we are pieces does not mean we are broken. Any careful practice we undertake to put two pieces together, we proceed with such detail to see what happens before we join any of the other little pieces.  When putting the pieces together gets too difficult, we paint our faces.

Following the intermission, Act II will start.  This is no routine performance. A lot is on the line and we will make a full conscious choice. I knew I could not suspend the first act forever but I also know I could become a much better person because of Act II. 

Just as I have done before, I will reach for your hand and wait for you to put an end to my vacillation.  However, if you could look into your own eyes, you would see that our clear trodden path is lost. From your misty eyes, I see the greatest secrets await us in a place where there are no paths leading to it and no paths leading away from it.  We will find it, our pathless place in life.  It may not be what you expect.

You must have observed that whenever there is some turbulence in life, a person’s whole belief system weakens.  

I have to remind myself to live the life I am living and my once calm region, full of peace, may be tossed around a bit.  But who’s to say all that commotion, especially from your most prudent princess, my unmatched opponent of wit and judgment, who also turns the cartoons end from end, isn’t the best thing for me?

I don’t want to be a bystander in my own life and these transcendent moments of awe could change forever how I experience my life.

Wish me luck, it hurts like hell.

Just when I thought it was safe to hold that conversation with you, you slap me with a cheap poker hand. Trust is a two way street. You put your cards on the table, including the one up your sleeve and now I see all your intentions and your masterful scheme. Was that your wild card or couldn’t you break old habits?

I am sick of you.  I am sick of your lyricism and the cautious stopping in midstream while I try to determine the meaning of your words.  Get in line; you’re almost dead to me. Go ahead and adorn those ornaments of hatred you have projected for so long. Some day you’ll see your errors and I won’t be here. I throw into the heavens everything that could possibly happen. Do whatever you choose to do whenever you choose to do it. I’ll not wait and I’ll not lay wake.  You are a naked child fighting against a hungry wolf and I have no confidence in you to see anything but your own ability to do wrong but blame me. You are quite good at it. You loved by constriction. You hated only when I couldn’t survive your death grip.

I stood on your burning deck and decided to jump then I was blamed because I fled. I went back for you when I thought I could.  You opened the door and let me in, but you are plastic and you resumed your original form when things got warm.  You have a great ability to call up the past. I wanted to be in the present but you refuse. Go ahead and leave me alone. Eventually my cruel scars will heal. Your cunning ploy to fool would-be outsiders does you no good.

I laugh while I pass through your thunder and your wielding flail of lashing blame. I’ll survive. No matter how ugly the end is, it will be a beginning for me.

The secret sits in the middle and knows.

A sweet girl who wanted the new bridge to look a bit more like the old bridge.   Sweet and trying to be obedient while sitting in the middle of the road.  You are halfway between two people who love you yet also equally distant from them both.  Tell everyone it costs relatively little and could save you all a lot. The test has very little to do with strength. Be free to determine your path. Be encouraged to walk it. Be strong enough to say the little things that are infinitely the most important.

Thank you.

There is this parallel universe that I don’t visit much.  The most distant memories are small irregular blue clouds, which lie close to the edge of the universe that I can see.  Even though everything that happened ripped a hole in my world, I still don’t pay much attention to the details that helped create such a fictional world for me. It is that other version of my self that I mean to abandon.

Perhaps you sent a signal and perhaps my hunger helped me hear. I threw away my mind rehearsed and jumped in with both feet into the torrents of my myriad universe. Nothing is accidental.

In the totality of things and in the spirit of choice, you answered my request, you came, we spoke, and I can breathe again. A sense of the past pervades all and permeates into our conversation but we are relieved that it is the good past that haunts us and not so much the bad. We fought against the dragon and the dragon fought against us and neither of us prevailed but maybe through salvation we finally found our place again.

Such a simple thing.

Some day you will become lost to me forever; never to be found. Never to be held in my possession and departed from me like a person lost in a crowd. You are no longer seen, heard or known. I attend with defeat your having wandered from the way; uncertain as to your location.  If I lose all my illusions, what a terrible reflection I will be left to stare. There was something that had been, something delicate, and far away but is now shut out behind the doors of mistakes we made yesterday. Lost beyond the mountains.  But, no matter how far away you are, you are always present.

In losing yourself from me, you discovered yourself. You finally found what was lost again and again. I wished while searching for you, I would find myself but I would settle for just an understanding. Maybe even make a right out of a wrong.

Often your name comes up during a normal day. You are at that moment standing right beside me. In the style of you, who pioneered that most perfect perception, I fondly speak of you as if it is still February. Then later in the hours of weariness, sensations still fresh, I will try to account for the degree of emotion. That element of tragedy is wrought in the very fact of its frequency.

Pick up the phone and save my life. Refrain from the strong temptation to continue inflicting harm with your punishment. You could find fairness and kindness when excessive hatred might be preferable. Your laws are harsh and severe. I learned that when you insulted me before you killed me. You should have just punished me with a fine and not death.

Blind Words

I understand that it only takes a few letters to form a word and a few words to form a sentence and a few sentences to form a paragraph.  What I don’t understand is how to protect myself within the folds of these pages.

You used to read my mind better than me. You could tell me the colors of each word before they were even spoken; their forms and their meanings. One thousand thoughts and one thousand times I could have said something. So, I put the thoughts in your head and I put the words in your mouth.  

How do I help myself? Shine a blue light on me because seeking courage is not all it’s cracked up to be.  What would be the full intent of such an increase in the value of life?  Ubiquitous and blind, it’s all a crushing waste and it cheapens our lives to think such a small careless moment of misunderstanding could uproot the strongest friendship. Now it decays with each passing day.  Turn your head away cowardly as I do and become sightless as I am.  True freedom is eclipsed by all that has not been said.

A hysterical fury of creation rises but my feet remain bound with this mortal strain.  Dawn breaks and with blinking eyes the entrance of hell appears.  I’ve been blotted out of your brilliant pure and frightened mind but once the darkness is gone, you’ll see that I am still here. Turn your face to the light and regain your sight and admit we are eternally anchored.

You may shudder in horror at how my life rides on a broken wing, always crossing the threshold of distraction too. You must think I always have troubled thoughts but from the bottom stirs an awakening. One step and no more than one will take us to a false rationalization. I shrink sometimes from my secret dread and I am still startled by all the destruction.

If you wanted me to pay for everything that went horribly wrong then I think you owe me change.  Another breath of pain is wasted on your sole delight. You could make this less hard to bear by lightening your hatred for me and unburdening your soul. The third reason is a little more difficult to understand. If you rediscover the past, it will come back to you. This hatred is a great enemy and it will destroy whatever we had.  There are 33 judges spending the rest of their lives secretly wishing for this to be over but who also have the difficult task of selecting the winner.