Thornberries

The poor animal had blood
Dripping from its lips,
For no one had forewarned it
That thornberry branches had thorns.
Blood tasted of sensational stillness.
Thornberries tasted of pain and bitterness.
Blood stained the animal's lips
As it walked away, aching,
When all it ever wanted to taste
Was sweetness.

Like Rope Against Rope

You've stuck around for quite too long for a first love.
You still coil around the arteries of my heart, entangling
Every delicate faculty of it like rope against rope,
Intertwining passionately, moving carefully about
The corners and the spaces, shaking the unit from within;
When the body does not break, the heart receives
What it echoes on mounts and vales, on rocks and plains,
On seas and shores. The dream awakens,
And a vast wide sky reopens. Everything about that sky
Moves in flocks: birds, dandelions, butterflies. Love:
The air has it. It multiplies inside the unit like bees
Inside a balloon, swarming furiously and fighting profoundly
To get out to meet the sky. Once it does, it empowers the unit
To relieve itself from all kinds of desolation. It becomes powerful
Enough to conquer what love cannot when love fails.
Love won't steal a kiss but the unit would, when it is able.

At the Center Where Ends Could Not Meet

I.

You know I'm not ready to face you.

You're reckless, unbelievable, of a good sort.

II.

You know I'm not ready to face you, and you know
How terribly I pretend. You might be too tired

Or too busy. I might clock in at a wrong time, and I'm afraid
You won't welcome me (do not believe this). You know I’m afraid.

Whatever today welcomed in its dawning,

I force to leave immediately.  It has to leave, right away.
It infects me to long for you. You know
I won't see you (do not believe this either). Currents: they confuse
A steady weather. Maybe the air today was too cold or the sun

Too high up that my inner landscape beheld currents, and I dislike

A part of it for being too excited. “Not yet!” says Side A, the cautious.
The other side knows how it should not believe in a velvet lie.
Two sides of the matter, poker-facing each other...

III.

You know yesterday can't repeat itself,
Yet I dare not believe it. Believe this: I cannot have another lie,

Another fight, another heartbreak, another day

To start to love to end in hate, or another night

To dream of forever to end in waiting for nothing. I do not want

A repetition of yesterday; yesterday is days

Or months or years ago. I may have hated you years ago,

Fought with you months ago, or tried to forget about you

Days ago, but each day tells of a different story—a better story perhaps
Than yesterday's: Yesterday, I may have loved you years ago,

Hugged you months ago, and remembered you, dreamed about you

Days ago, and you know why I'm not ready to face you.

We are doomed to forget and remember, hate and love…

IV.

Break it at the center, now, to end it with me. Do not break ends

To let ends meet again, or if you must, do not do it too fast.

Either end it now, or straighten it up and tighten it up to last…
You know I'm not (yet) ready to face you. Do not do it too fast.
You know that deep inside, you, too, would want to make this last...

V.

There was a time you knew the things

I wanted to do or say and I did not have to speak

When speaking was hard, mentally and emotionally.
The brain and the heart are two ends that do not meet.
Let me try something. It's your turn to speak.
Stand with me at the center (of loving and hating,

Of remembering and forgetting), and choose

Which way you want to go. Go on… Which side of the line?

VI.

Stand with me at the center and I know that you know

That between all our thinking and feeling,

We found a way to mend the gap by a touch

Of a finger… You know how that goes.

Months ago, I fought with you, maybe physically. Months ago, I hugged you.

Somewhere along the line where ends could not meet,

We found a way to forge a linkage, temporarily,

Although not even quite. At the center was where hate

Definitely turned into love, and we turned days ago of forgetting

To days ago of remembering. Could you

Stand at the center with me again and stay (please)

Where ends could not meet, again and again?
And then we could learn to live and love again,
And then we could try to make this love last
At the center...

VII.

You know I'm not ready to face you
Until I can be sure that you and I could last.
Until then, the currents will always confuse,
And the pretenses, continue to build.

VIII.

Yet must we stay at the center if love

Needs not be forgotten, and if love could be true,

Peaceful, and healing (instead of it being another lie,

Another fight, and another heartbreak)? Walk with me, today,

To a love, to the side,

That has no end.

Color X

Nothing sat there except a lamp. It glowed.

The seat was not as empty as should be.

Living ideas are of that color, and thoughts.
They are not wasted on paper. Some thoughts
know a color. It is a battle of freedom in the mind.
No one ever sleeps with a dark space in the mind,
Or a white, because a color like that exists in the mind
On living idea. The sun sets. The sun still has it.
A color shines like the sun. It looks like the sun.
It might be the sun.

Despair for Paper...

I literally would not have survived that day without paper. I was in the library, itching to write, but paper was nowhere (this poem is the result). Just as people need oxygen to live, writers depend on their musings for growth, and it's not hard saying "you can always write on the computer" as doing it. I never understood why, but papers give us (me) so much more. Written on June 5, 2013, Wednesday.

I'm desperate and longing
For a pad my pen can ink on...
A sheet of white where I can write...
A ready notebook full of grace
And space to capture
My topsy-turvy, wordy
Heart in place.

I need something to write on.
I need it really fast
For time can never satiate
Half the burden that might last.
I really need to put this down,
On the table if I may,
For all this writing will behold
A fateful story for someday.