The world can be a sullen
river
and the worst parts
are
all the pieces we won’t admit
to ourselves
levees and their tidal waves
whirlpools
fissures

I lost my voice
one time
for years
and the silence held me locked
in my own damp dungeon
darkened

the whispers were like birds
flying
in circles

and the shadows were voices
that mocked me
coldly
with their tantalizing dreams
of light

I don’t remember what it was
that finally broke me
open

except that I remember
the taste
of long forgotten springtime wetness
and freedom

and a thing that never left my bones
started speaking to me
fiercely

its insolence tore apart
all those skillfully built boats
of excuses
for inertia
and the walls and dams of recluse
crumbed
under the weight of my desire

it only took one second
of admitting
for the river to break free
with finality
and a voice
that came back to me
over the long waters
started to sing
the most haunting and familiar song
-my voice
and it sang- I shall never more be silent

“like a tree planted by the waters, I shall not be moved”

motionless moving,

this life, its bizzar

brigade of star lights and time, this night

is fine with its last light lines, and

I am ready to be open, even

in the unknown and broken, lies,

are only the untold pains of our forefathers,

and mothers, and lovers,

and we are only here for each other, to breathe,

we only need one thing,

a space,

a freedom from judgement,

a need,

See

A plane fly overhead once
Its steely grin came through the dancing
Branches
To where I was laying
Underneath

And the tree winced.
I winced
As the knowledge of pollution
And world corruption
And war zones
Shot through by body
And I felt it in my roots-
The trees tears,
Its sorrows

At the earth’s demise.
We both lay watching.

Once
I felt the strength of my own heart
Standing open
Like a tall tree

Held up by the earth
Of another soul who saw
Me

[for alex]

remind me that I am

Love i adore

your story

your emphasises an Emptyness I hear

there calling

your perfect picture composure standing stillness

and

the groping energetic epiphanies a recognition and a wholeness

emerged

in the syncropic start of an assuring steadyness

a likeness

similarly engaged inside your face is

the perfect peaceful place i’d like

to rest

against your heart

is not broken like mine

alluring yet disengaged

restless

but this time there is a slight chance

exposed

I am still going

I am scarred landscape
The mile stretches of city
Strewn over forest and prairie
And I am rejuvination pushing
Up between the cracks
Of brokenness
And growing

And
If you could still see me
I am glowing

the Red-tailed Hawk
can catch squirrels from the sky
and stare into my soul.

It did.

And reminded me of my passion
which is the hawk’s passion
and the tree’s passion
and yours
perhaps

if you are alive.

What does any living being want                                                                                I think?
Simplicity,
and the ability to live
beautifully
their one priceless life
of their own simple accord.
And freedom

to Love,
and to be Loved.
Men lust

for power and money and vanity
but this whole game is void                                                                                             of that one truth
their hearts beat for:
Beauty-
and to Love and be Loved.

But the hawk knows                                                                                                                                                                                                            as it feeds its vulnerable                                                                                                    treasured young the                                                                                                                                                                                               substance
of its labor-
the reincarnation of death.

And so do I

as I watch                                                                                                                               the cycles of my life
turn

pain into beauty.

And crying
Is the only way I can release
Such deep theivery
Pay back such a big
Dept

The only way to be
unbreakable
Is to bend
Like any tree in a storm
Who wants to survive

And so this crying is not weakness
But wisdom
And a deepest strength

And all the old broken places
Will be healed
With water
Like springtime

The hidden river
In me
Will bring life to the valleys

And when they bloom
You will not forget the sight

You are that powerful
(the thing is so am I)

Once or twice I saw you
Rapid and glowing-
With your guitar in your hand
And your voice filling that big room,
Or once when you loved me
Like it couldn’t wait-
Like the brightest fire
Or the hottest force I had ever seen
And I was transfixed

As all the blue and red and orange flames licked me 
and that warmth still lingers
In the recesses of my own soul
in the little coves inside 
my body

But such power can’t help but change things
And my old self cringed
At all the dreaded potentials
And I thought of prairies

And how we could leap 
with courage 
Or longing
Into each other 
And dare to be fire

Like a prairie burn
We could bring all the old things
To the ground
And start over
New
Every season
With that red prairie grass glow of summer 
And such profound diversity!

And we just might make it
(I hope we make it)

But I told them
How can you be so sure?

You’ve never been in all the rooms
I’ve boarded up

Stuck
like clogged arteries
like rush hour in Chicago
like America
fumbling for the light switch in some dark
hotel room
after fucking some person it didn’t even know the name of

In that same daze
we watched it die
a crumbling escapade
All around us things were falling
dust and bricks
the sky
our hearts
and eyesight
failed
the blood ran
cold
in the night
and the tears ran hollow
those orbs of pale light
the only thing that we had understood
the only way we could tell we were
still alive
Oh, prodigious fright!
Why did you blind us so?

And now we all know
that humanity and we have
the same veins

are just as lost
in our own broken houses

where the paint is past peeling
and the air is still settling out
the vengeance and the dust

and the fumes that make the ache return again
heart pounding (waking up) ears ringing
turning

me into something new

I hope

Don’t you?

It falls off the back of the archer
Sagittarius in the sky
dropping star light.

Only after…

It skirts around the edges and the meanings of hills
in the driftless
where the color of connecting and dividing is born. It

waits momentarily,

transcendental in the deepest blue of the evening sky
lodge,
piercing as a lip ring,
on its way to raven black.

Caught

In the second
stealthy gentle eye grasp
laid on a shallow expanse of hill country
sky,
it follows
the search for meaning
of daylight passing
just out of sight.

Here

in the center of the galaxy
is held
an eye glow of realization
surpassing,
joining the understanding of the
cycles
the seasons:
beauty and pain, pain and beauty.