WATCH YOUR HEAD

I think of you in colors
I mix them on the palette of my mind:
Blue-green
Like the ocean held in jade
A purple so deep
I tumble into its embrace
Chestnut brown
Rich and sweeping
The scent of your hair
The warmth of your skin
For twenty years I have painted you this way
Hung them on the central pillar of my world
Now I see the folly of art
The guile of painters
I don’t blame you for burning my portraits
Idealized caricatures to fight
The loneliness that stalks me
I must face the depths of my faults
How foolish I’ve been
To think of you in color

~r

Casts safety to starve 
Ripped from comfort’s
Shriveled breasts
A tiny suicide
Exposing our soft parts
To the blades of strangers
Slashing through confidence
Like sculptors removing
Blocks of rigid being
Revealing ancient souls
Yearning to be re-formed

~r

Poetry
Flows in isolation
Thoughts of others
Wax brilliant as the moon
Against a darkened sky

Ordering the world to our thoughts
Fears and desires held captive
At the tip of a pen

Artistry
Is a public celebration
Living poetry in the company of others
Entwining stories like dancing leaves
In the bright blue light of day

Engaged and present
Enjoying the poetry of life un captured
Hearts open, minds quiet
We become Artists
Living the Poetry of Earth

~r

Young women
Blooming flowers
Taught shame
Roots forgotten

Young men
Mother born
Taught ownership
Over beauty

Old women
Bodies used
Teaching sacrifice 
Spirits hidden

Old men
Power failing
Preaching Truth
Over Nature

Mother Earth
Endlessly loving
Weaving stories
From our ashes

Hearts pounding
Bodies blending
Their histories like paint

In a palate of sheets
Reds and greens and purples
Spilling out in new forms

Massaged from containers
No longer capped by shame

Forbidden dreams of
Soft flushed bodies
Naked and vibrant atop canvas
Possessed by creative spirits

Tracing secret curves
Teasing desires from darkness
Sculpting pleasures that erupt
Giving life back to stone

Lovers as artists
Each encounter the raw surface
On which to spill their souls
Revealing in this dusty life

The fullest forms of the spirit

A bird of paradise 
in a wooden cage
Made from branches
We both collected

They have kept me safe
From this creature who
With selfish pleasure
Could devour my very soul

Broken open now:
hearts and minds
This cage was never
Woven from the Earth
The branches are the trees 

Above the blue, wings stretched
My soul glistening in every feather 
Joining the souls of all those brave enough to see it
Without laying claim to its beauty

~r

A foolish man
on a far away coast
Holds up a mirror
To the ocean

I am a sailor
He lies
I can help you discover
Your true depths

The moon pulls
The tide to his feet
When it recedes
The wreckage of his life
Is shown to him

His dreams of sailing die
His tears add to the messy surf
The ocean grows
As his promise is fulfilled 

~r

fractions of the self 
tug at the edges of awareness,
like those frayed glimpses caught 
in the shadows of clouds,
or the voices sometimes 
heard in the wind;  

all of which beg 
an answer to the obvious:

is this me?
is this me?
is this me?

am i this?
am i this?
am i this?

I think we would all be less lonely
if we could hear shooting stars
as they streaked across our skies.

Both day and night, 
we would all hear the roar 
of the thousands of objects
irradiating in our presence.

Rather than just providing
a fleeting spectacle
for the lucky few
who remember to walk
away from their homes at night, 
and sit transfixed 
under skies so dark and cold
that their knuckles ache
with the knowledge
that our lives are minuscule
blips in the ether.

Instead, 
we’d all hear the chorus
of the infinite voices
singing out
that life is in constant collision
with other celestial beings.    

I know I would 
feel less lonely, 
at least.  

A bead of blood
pools in my knuckle 
like a tiny ruby 
forged from the flesh;
a wound that never heals
[torn open once again
through my own neglect]
cuts deeper each day,
a constant reminder 
that some things never change — 
I know this pain
like the back of my hand. 

The heartwood compresses to form a solid mass, 
densely packed layers become the core of being.
Technically
the heartwood is dead, 
but does not atrophy or decay 
[unless the outer layers
become jeopardized],
the core provides
balance, stability, and security,
self-insulating,  
simultaneously 
protected
and expanding,
as sacrificial outer layers,
supply life and growth,
surrounded by an exterior
of dead, hardened flesh;
the reality
of one’s constant exposure
to an unforgiving world.

A core of sustained non-life, 
an exterior of protective death,
and somewhere in-between,
a balance of 
life, expansion, 
sacrifice, sustenance.