All Your Life

#allyourlife

All your life

you have this feeling

that you are supposed to be 

be something bigger than what

and who you already are

Something major

something tangibly bright and beautiful

with enough of the right kind of rust

and ancient around your edges

to classify you as credible and timeless

by those that matter

When art moves through you

it is relentless;

you make such little sense

to the outside world

I’ve been wanting to paint lately

and I couldn’t tell you why

or recall

when the desire

came over me

but for once

I don’t care

for calculations

or re-numerations -

I do not have

nostalgic anticipation

for the humming bird workings

of my detached cerebral mass -

tootoo much

of what I’ve relied on

rests upon my neurological circuitry

I am

disconnected from the moon  

left in motion

I replay and re-preach

in ancestral disbelief

liquid seeds pocketed

underneath my sacral chakra

I am

re-awakening 

I wish it were this easy

to walk

upon creative waters

to stop

and say nothing else really matters

but my desire

and this moment

and this fire

inside my heart

that has been wanting to

keep me warm

for so long

for so long

 for too long.

In My Own Lagoon

#inmyownlagoon

              I.

I let you convince me 

that I was undefined

Day after day

I contorted my shoulders 

breathing too shallow

and growing too harsh

cultivating thorns with

razor sharp edges

unknowingly 

shielding myself

the windows in my heart

were tense and imploding 

from your intellectual surrealism
that did nothing 
but make me feel 
low 

I accepted this strange foggy love

in milligrams, in harmless 

diminutive doses -

quantities that rendered only

slightly noticeable bruises

it was a slow, drawn-out demolition

room by room, just some small excavations

anthropological examinations

of my inner-soul-spaces

Day by day 

I rounded in my spine

to fit into the neat,

unsmudged and

up-up-up on the shelf

idealized boxes 

you virtuously

constructed 

on my behalf.

  II. 

One ordinary Sunday

my whole body woke up

I clicked out of this crisp,

unstained and foreign place

 I studied the quality of the brightness

behind my very own eyes

I’d lost my bustling,

playful and roaring light 

Infatuated with your refinement

I built you a state of the art,

post-modern style pedestal in my heart

(only the absolute best for you, darling).

I’d think:

I could never be that high class

I could never walk with that kind of awareness 

And I was right

I could never be

the kinds of things

you hierarchicalised as refined

because I could never be you 

I am asymmetrical  

the lines within my mind are

naturally off-center, bold and abstract

they bend where logic says they shouldn't

and the same complexity 

you tried so hard to simplify

is what gave me that off-beat glow 

you said you loved

III. 

Time passed 

and I bore a sadness so deep,

a sadness that self-punishingly

longed for your critique

It was the ambitious side of me

intermingled with a hazardous 
brand of nostalgia that I'd inherited from 
my father and my great uncle

(they were poets, too.)

I became tangled  

believing and feeling

that love was by nature

an endless pursuit of seeking

to please a lover

who could never be pleased

a distorted love

that kept me tired

on my tippy toes

a distorted love

I’d grown to know 

IV.

I am 

my old self again

determined to chart my growth

though satisfied

with the colors, textures and shapes

with which I was encoded

since before you

since before here

since before I met me  

I am 

occupying my own space

passing time underneath

sweet mantras mouthed

from self-affirming lips,

ever-shaded by 

cinnamon coconut trees

dipping in and out

of my moonlit lagoon 

I am

safe and forever invited

into the rooms 

of my own starry mind

Wave After Wave

wave after wave

so much to channel out

my mind -- 

she's billowing  

with impatience

i wear the weight of these messages

on the sand-papery tips of my fingers

like weighted keys on a piano,
the precursor to a symphonic masterpiece
is energy falling all over itself --
demanding expression

before finesse
there is time, ether and space
and blade after blade of nervousness

electrons bounce

resounding a middle-of-the-earth percussion

this process of smoothing out

of moving three steps back

to see all of what could be

is an algorithm that entrances us into isolation  

these electronic bodies of wave

after wave

have chosen us

who will guide them

if we pretend they do not exist?

who will guide them

if we pretend we do not feel

or hear their knock?

i hope

i am brave enough

to leave behind offerings,

metaphoric libations

swelled up, and then released

from channels of our obsidian, liquid abyss

feelings transported into little 

capsules called words

riverboats carrying memories 

of my sorrow and my moans

wisdom gained through both

cast from my cerebral cortex

to the rich muddy mass

of our outer-space

we come from a tranquil place

we come from embers and the wind

we set out in search of one another

arching over our vulnerable bodies

we try and try to propel the right kind of

kinetic reactions to really get things going

let us look upon ourselves

with understanding

lest we forget

we are all here together

in the midst of rising.