four horsemen,
a chiming clock:
portents to the apocalypse,
or is it the divine?
everything is anxiety,
everything is crawling up
the cavities of the spine and nerves:
tea leaves,
strange things.
milk that spoils in the fridge,
shapes in clouds.
everything is anxiety.
take a chance,
since all things seek bliss:
follow the path
to freedom.

at some point,
the brain becomes tired of problem-solving.
the patience for solution-making
runs its course,
and the yearning for simplicity
is overwhelming.
i am realizing that the anger
isn't for abandoning or disrespecting me,
isn't about the way you treated me
or what you said:
the anger is a reaction to the stress
of solving a million problems all at once,
and all with the same root cause.
my heart has no patience
for you any more.

i'd forgotten, this old game
are you worth
are you worth
are you worth it?
all phrases with meaning,
but most times empty--
are you worth
this, or anything?
an old game, and tiring.
i do not even want you,
i do not want to find you,
i want peace--
but also love.
so i'll play,
are you worth
are you worth,
are you worth it?

this burgeoning emotionality,
a yearning that can't come unstuck
from just inside your ribs--
freedom, freedom, you can be free
and learn to be yourself, alone!
the wonder, the pain, the wreck
you will make of yourself,
when first you gain freedom.
freedom means no paths,
means finding your own way home
when you've exhausted your soul.
the weight of it!
around your neck, a yoke
of wanting, needing, desiring it,
freedom as a woman,
freedom that wanes into the future
lascivious and tinted pink,
waiting for you to come,
beckoning for you to follow.
the weight of that desire
could yank your heart right out
from its grip on your lungs,
the grind of that need
could murder you outright.

you are, we were
something less than diamonds,
still whole on its own,
a tantalizing glimmer
almost worthless in its commonality.

and after pressure,
after heat and fire and months
of telling you that
i deserve better than this--
after that volcanic period
of breaking apart,
i can glitter on my own now.

my value is greater even
than the darkest cave could belie.

i said, someday you will want to fix this.
someday this will end, all right.
someday your heart will matter more
and you'll learn to stop the fight.

i said, the risks are so much greater now
than when our souls were young.
we keep love locked up tighter now,
we leave our songs unsung.

i said, the difference is when you get old
the details wash away
and all that matters is what was said
during the light of day.

i said, someday you'll want to hear it
when he learns to apologize.
someday you'll find it easier and
you'll face him with dry eyes.

what it takes
to become hard-hearted,
to steel yourself against
the coldness that
other people have adapted to:
wind the spring up,
pull back the lever,
leave it tucked under
and build a wall
of granite, quartz,
surrender to the structure
you must become.
this way,
if a wall is demolished,
there is still your anger
waiting inside
to be sprung loose.

men, boys. abandonment.
punctuation that cannot
come undone.

finding what is left when you're gone:
memories, ticket stubs, old bills,
and a yearning.
you left me with plenty of guilt,
and an imagination that replays the afternoons
over and over, a slideshow
of smiles that are long gone.
i am digging through the piles,
i am finding
all the things i brushed over
when you were here,
all the irritations glossed over
for the sake of loving you.
in my heart you will be a slideshow
all your own, the images
of experience and wisdom gained
and self-respect lost.
i can see our hands, intertwined,
and always seeking:
writing messages in the fog on the mirror.
what is left when you are gone?
just me, just me.

who to put faith in?
if you have any assets at all,
you must put them away
to try to find an honest face.
keep quiet your tuneful voice,
and still the troubled hands
that ask only for trust.
if faith is what you must find,
leave love sequestered in the heart
and seek instead simplicity:
where ease is, there trust.

multifaceted,
and always turning so that the right face
is showing for the right occasion--
multitudinous, multitalented.
varied, repeating,
each duplication a revision on the last,
i will show you nothing and everything
whenever i show you anything.
multifaceted,
like a jewel slowly spinning for the light:
like a snowflake wheeling down,
like a chord with a million overtones.
i am only what you see,
i am more than can be seen.
something greater,
every time,
than what you have learned to expect:
like a lamb for the slaughter,
like an ego for the lion.
i am an analogy that cannot apply itself
for lack of pure content.
multifaceted,
like a jewel that spins for your eyes.

what will you do, what will you do
when it all comes home?
it's easy, at night, to say what you think
you should, to give me empty words
and silky promises--
in the daylight, promise again.
let me see your face under the sun,
prove you can be real
and not just moonlit.
what will you do when it all shows up
on your doorstep, midday?
don't disappear,
don't disappoint.

maybe, as much as you want something,
it's still only going to be some r&b dream,
some sweet soft scene of a fantasy
and never reality.
maybe he's out there, someone who dreams
the same way you do and seeks
the same sweet silence--
maybe he was written by someone
who has never had real love in their life.
either way the seeking must be sane,
the trek a realistic one.
maybe, as much as you want something,
it can't just land in your lap.

what should i even tell you about myself
(brushing aside this feeling that
i shouldn't even have to,
there is something innate here to know,
something you should have
caught on to years, millenia, ago)
what do i even say once i have your attention?
but attention is no sure thing,
some soft willingness
or blunt capability of receiving my heart.
because the first thing to know about me
is that i am composed of words,
all phrases, all sounds
composing my soul and my body--
if i utter even one sentence,
a fragment of my existence drifts out of me
and into open air.
(and the feeling that it shouldn't need to,
that i should be something safer,
corporeal matter or
carbon atoms all mixed together.)
what is there to be said
when all words are a commensurate loss,
each taking its home with it
to wherever i have sent it in the world?
you cannot even hear me,
you have the will, but will not.
i will keep all the words with me,
they are too young to leave,
i will keep all the words with me till they are stronger
and apply them judiciously
over morning coffee.

everything is clean now,
all textures a strange sensation,
all emotions born fresh in a new heart.
a new skin, even:
one safe in its own sexuality,
too pure for the marks you might have left.
i am aware now, away from you,
how much you stripped from me--
but also, how much i am capable of reclaiming.
i can be my own again, body and soul,
a complete human who is completely human.
the world contains clarity
and i'm seeing now with new eyes.

life is much more simple than it ought to be.
i am, you are, we were.
time to go.

hope is a curious thing.
it bubbles, it builds, it bursts.
perhaps at one point
i hoped all the best for you--
for the spiritual peace that is
a good job, all the bills paid,
and something that looks like love in your life.
i never felt hope die,
i didn't notice when it left.

yesterday i wished ill for you,
a hard life and hard circumstances,
a general malaise for your soul.
yesterday i'd have had words for you,
words for this last time i'll see you.
yesterday would have spoken clearly
of all the hurt you have caused me.

today i woke up calm,
do you know what it is to wake up calm
after weeks of hurricanes and sandstorms?
today i woke up soft and sweet
and even looking something like myself.
today i opened my heart,
that secret chest of drawers,
and found all the compartments empty.
today i woke up calm and realized
that there is nothing left in my soul.

but this is not depression,
this is not being tossed up on the rocks,
some sob story for you to read years later.
this is what it is to be calm:
the recognition that love is built,
and when ripped away,
love transfers from our hearts to our memories.
all my hopes for you, they still exist
in the past, are locked up now, unreachable.
my hopes and my pride and my hurts
and all the emotion i ever granted you
is locked up in a higher safe now,
impregnable, and icy to the touch.

self-fulfilling prophecy:
you have learned to look me in the eyes again.
you even had a whole word for me this time,
and i
have nothing left to give you in return.

for a heart so used to love,
and then so filled with hate--
i am surprised it remembers how to beat
with no emotion to turn the wheels.

a million words wasted,
still no unification of soul.
express, express, lack of satisfaction,
there's no place like a home that doesn't exist.
how many more times do i have to say it,
home is where you are,
home is where you are.

and it's a winding path these days,
one that seeks out vantage points
but offers no view of the future,
one that crawls through dirt and heat
and finds relief in loneliness.
is there even a path here, i feel like
there are no footsteps left to follow.

a million words, i wasted them on you.
let you dictate sentences, entire ideas,
let you consume my blood and feed on my skin.
a million words just to wind up
flicking off another parasite on another forest path.

shouldn't there be a sunrise,
shouldn't there be singing birds?
there should be stars peeking through the foliage,
there should be flowers among the ferns.
i am seeking, i am seeking, i am blind
with fear and frozen
with this terrible sexual longing
for your body.
home is where you are,
home is not at the end of this path.

you do it on your own,
do you hear me?
you do all the work with your own two hands,
you bring up your own calluses
and you be proud of them.
you do it on your own and you earn it,
you find your own sense of pride.
are you listening to me,
i said you do it on your own.
you let the world
be what the world is gonna be,
and you do you, no matter what, you do you.
whatever it takes, you pay your bills,
you keep your job and don't let anyone around you
tell you that you deserve any less.
you do it on your own,
you earn your own ego first
and maybe later you can learn some decency.
you do it on your own,
and maybe you'll find a better way
than anyone who went before you.

i am a promise and you are a force,
i am all words and you are all action.

i am a promise of complications, of heat,
of finding something different in the morning
than what you lay down to at night.

you are a beacon, a light striding across the sky
needing nowhere to land but what is open and empty.

i am a warm bed, an offering of skin,
a seeking sexuality which lights here and there
along the narrative of your days.

you are a rock of granite, lime, and age
which has never needed any explanation.

i am a promise and you are a force,
i am a seeker and you are the prize.

there is so much promise in a relationship:
to have, to hold, to keep, to maintain.
a broken relationship sunders all these words
and leaves only the promise-maker,
who must seek something new to swear on.

the darkest feeling
is shouting into a wide world,
and hearing no response.
the deepest silence
is the one you create yourself.

the natural world holds sound
on its own pedestal,
a grunting roaring purring pillar
that captures cyclical life.

raindrops have their own loves,
separate from the rivers they compose.
a waterfall rushes towards caprice
and shrieks the whole way down.
fog silences the lesser needs,
allowing only gentleness to bleed through,
and the rush of a geyser pours out
a waterbound ritual of praise.

the natural world finds its own peace,
a symphony of self-response.
a human is not lucky enough
to see himself in so many means,
not capable of so much transformation.
he has only one voice,
and uses it to create all the noise he can,
or else be left alone.

a need for new hope,
open eyes to see the sun again:
love being born again in my heart
is a painful experience.

the heart is too small, pathetic,
for such an experience as this.
too small to hold the hate, it bursts,
and putting it together again
it winds up even smaller
when all the pieces won't return.

i am stretching for a new love,
reaching for something new to praise.
in expansion is a fresh new hurt
and one i must learn to be grateful for.

there is something greater inside me
than i am capable of holding on my own.

loneliness is soft.
footfalls outside the door
are only phantoms.

oh it is so easy to hate,
hatred comes so easily after love.
it is easy to loathe your words, your face,
and all the slippery ways you commanded my heart.
it is easy to hate.

i have loved you, hugely, anciently,
i have loved your voice and your body and your family
and all the components of your life.
i have loved you better than the sunshine loves the earth.
i have rotated around you, evolved for you,
orbited around your changing needs.
i have loved you in all your seasons.

and it is easy to hate you now,
easy to assume that i know who you are.
easy to assign blame to someone who is absent.
it is easy to hate your logic and your fake reasoning,
easier still to hate the calm you present now.
it is easy to hate, such a kindred emotion to love
in strength and passion--
it is easy to hate you, and for weeks i will.

a canyon has words, too,
much more than echo, echo.
a canyon has steep walls
and an empty stomach,
a canyon has willpower.

i am a red red clay.
i am composed of historical elements.
i create fossils within my walls.
i allow time to wear me away.

piece by piece i am made into something different,
season by season i become another shape.

there is something priceless in
an inability to maintain the original image.
something magnanimous in my walls
corroding, eroding, grating down to bare essentials
and showing you a slideshow of your life.
you began here, in this darkest layer,
and you grew up during the sunshine of these particles.
you grew old here, in the greyer years;
you broke my heart here, in these red lines.
red like mississippi clay, red like oxygenated blood.

piece by piece i become another shape,
season by season i am made into something new.

too much time has been spent
acclimating, adjusting, averting self-interest--
there is nothing left internally now
but all the changes made to suit you.

too much time has been left to you,
too many dreams devoted to you
and too many futures written with your name
etched in calligraphy next to mine.

it isn't time now to wonder whether
those futures were viable, advisable--
it has always been about your name
and your skin and your eyes and your words.

somewhere in my alternate future
there is a tiny brown baby squalling in my arms,
a tiny piece of love created by two people
who were willing to work harder than us.

i am nothing now but granite, limestone,
a sandstone shell grown empty except one pearl.
i am a canyon, you were my river.
too much time has been spent on you.

too much of my voice speaks your words
and my narrative preaches you, you, you--
i am an empty shell rolling down a hillside
protecting a simple pearl within my walls.