D is for dandelion

I owe it to you.
Standing up after falling,
holding myself gently.

We disentangle ourselves
from memories of togetherness,
set them to continue drifting,

once a week I still wish I
had worked harder at my
pretending.

I owe it you.
The conscience of my limits,
the opening up to impermanence.

Lacuna Inc.

Wondering whether I would
have you erased if that was a choice.

The elation of nights awake
versus the sad silent months.

The hours spent arguing casual intelligence
and deliberate stupidity.

How much of my grit

would suddenly be lost.

To tell of the person you made me
in the space of fifty-five words.

(Flash 55 Plus challenge over at the Imaginary Garden)

(I couldn't use the Plus word in the text, but I was driven by it. Lacuna Inc. is a fictitious firm in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where people go to have troubling memories erased)

Three or four years ago

It started out with words.

We were infatuated with
each other's thoughts,

so eager to occupy our minds with
each other's ideas

we would sit side by side at cafés,
on boardwalks and spend hours

sipping from each other's psyche
before we harmonized silence.


"As we drank our tea, we chatted about our relatives, our childhood years, and our shared memories and we spoke ill of no one."

Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

(For Apparatus Mag NaPoMo day 3 prompt, and the PAD Challenge)

liebe biel

Liebe, Biel. 

For God's sake.

(and I do not mean me)

(This is my attempt at completing Found Poetry Review Impromptu #3 - "Vispo", imagined by Nico Vassilakis, I must say, one of the most beautiful and peaceful writing exercises I've ever tried. I'm gonna turn it into a full poem soon.)

Aloneness

There is no
aloneness
in my head.
There is always a
thought of you
that will keep me company,
that will make me smile,
that will surround me
with wonder,
that will cause me to crave
a life I cannot have,
not with you,
not outside my head.

Written for NaPoWriMo day 1 prompt imagined by The Swamp Scribes and A to Z Challenge. 

But I shall not be

I need to say this

you know I'm such a fool for you.

You got me wrapped around your finger

Do you have to let it linger?

- The Cranberries

there was a man
in the land of Uz,

whose name was Job; 

and that man was perfect,

I need to say this:

I am nothing like him.

When you appoint me as

his modern-day translation,

does it make you Satan or God?

Is the suffering you inflict upon me 

your way to break me,

or a means to verify my love?

You'll come look for me in the morning.

(for Isadora's Out of Standard challenge 'What's my line?' over at the Imaginary Garden)

Not afraid

Yesterday I sat for three hours
in front of the man I love
and just stared at him.

I have now memorized
the exact location of
all his spots.

I have drawn a map to
the cheek dimple that
follows his mischievous smile.

A couple of hours later
I had a dream I burned my hand
by touching his face.

I cried as it ached,
but I wasn't afraid.
I am not afraid.

(Setting the mood: Pode vir comigo - Phill Veras)

When I tell him I love him

He does this thing, 

the man I want to live for. 

The extraordinary man I want to share 

all my lives with. 
When I tell him I love him. 

When I trust my heart enough to

scream it. 

He walks away.

He walks toward the silence of the mind.

He lives in a place inside himself I'm not allowed into for as long as six months. 

As if six months would change it somehow. 

As if I were sick and just needed time to recover. 

He does this thing,  

the bearer of my dreams. 

He cuts communication. 

In a way I feel guilty for saying it out loud. 

I love you. 

I love you. 

I. 

Even knowing love is

the one thing no one should ever be ashamed of.

I. 

dead language alive

This is again
a language to say.
Back from the dead

without stories
it remains pure;
The tongue

licks old truths
as it would do
to open wounds

just now with an
improved understanding
of the physiology of taste.

You are standing in a field looking at the stars

I have now renamed
the world around me
after you:
the alarm clock,
the toothbrush,
the stars in the sky at 5:30 a.m.
when I leave for work,
the clouds
(when they are there),
the sunrise,
the empty seat next to mine
on the bus,
the subway stations,
the trains,
every block I have to
walk back from work,
the trees I rush past,
the traffic lights, 
my keys,
the shower,
my own reflection
in the mirror,
the pillows,
the bedroom walls.

Soul and forward

We love who we can love, and the rest stay ghosts. 

- Marty McConnell

I think it's time to fix things.

There's a lot to be done around the world,
a lot to mend in nature and people,
especially in people I guess.

I thought we were all meant to
live cordially together -
men and wolves -
but when we meet,
given the grandeur in one another's eyes,
we don't know how to go about
the enchantment.

We break things, bones, hearts.
Later to ache humanly.

I followed your trail
into the forest
and learned you first
from the top of a tree
because you wouldn't
trust me near.

I think I wasn't ready
to love a creature
as callous and detached as you are,
but I did.

The years run through us,

I doubt I'll ever be able to race you.

But I see you slow down the pace

and walk by my side at times

and I'm honestly grateful.

You keep disappearing among the trees

whenever I try to touch you.
you would expect me to cry
but this time I promise not to.

Every so often 

you push me away
but when I am allowed close,
I think to myself that it's the
fathomless, perfect
quietude of your soul
what draws me to you.

I think I wasn't ready
to love a creature
as beautiful and free as you are.
But I did.
I do.

Image by Chiara Bautista

You might write me nightmares

watch me create my own world out of silence,

granted only half a minute of courage daily.

to love. to need. to hurt.

to forgive. to let go. to repeat.

watch me come back to you.

watch me respond to estrangement 

with proximity.
to mean my promises.

watch me dance around your fire.

it frightens me

you're suddenly so important.

it frightens me

you've already changed me.

it frightens me

you might write me nightmares.

Elephants

the ringling brothers is
ending their elephant acts
eighteen months ahead schedule.

we need to acknowledge it:
the elephant in our living room
doesn't go with the furniture.

maybe it's time to let him go.

The fourteenth

I've taken an important decision:
We're going to be friends,
this lifetime and I.

I promise you patience.

I promise I'll get old
one year at a time.

I promise I'll wait
for you.

Today's been dragging.
Today is the fourteenth day
into my vacations
and I've had a lot of work,
but I'm saving tears for a
rainy day.

Been thinking about my first house and
how much I'd like you to
have a key.

On days like these
to open the door
and scream your name
to know you there

to breathe my dreams upon your chest,
the sureness of being safe.

Samsara

Why I can't let you go.
Why you can't love me.
Why fate keeps

bringing us together
so you can hurt me
over and over.

Why I don't fight back.
Why I repeat the same mistakes.
It's tiresome.

In another life,
when we have paid our debts,
when our souls have grown wiser,

you touch my back
with your chin,
warmth, silence.

Nothing is desperate.

The weight of tacitness

- on how loudly I can scream your name -
twenty-five years ago
my partner standing three steps away
I learned in drama class
that every so often no one wants to scream,
but sometimes it is necessary.

In my favorite 'chick movie'
there is a girl who asks a boy to walk away for fifteen meters
so she can shout out everything she is afraid to tell
to his face.
Her 'I love you' is ultimately abducted by the wind.
The boy never hears it.

I have this recurring dream in which
you leave again and I want to stop you
but when I open my mouth
no sound comes out of it
and I wake up crying because I know
how easy it is for you to just go.

Heretofore and hereafter

I had a dream I dyed my hair in intergalactic hues
and when I woke up I laughed at myself
thinking about how it would never happen.

I owe you an apology.

I did not see you in the small things.

Yesterday was the hottest day in the city in the last 105 years,
I escaped to the mountains and the sky was so clear
I should have remembered to look for you.

Forgetfulness discredits my promises.

I am in love with a young man who
does not know how to be loved
and I can't teach him.

I tell him he matters and that I won't give him up,
and I choose to love him every new day all over again,
no matter how difficult he makes it sometimes.

I owe you an apology.

I did not see you in the small things.

"If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love."

― George Orwell, 1984

Classical mechanics, complicated machines

It's time the things you
say and do
stop messing with
my body.

you are near,
my knees get weak.
you leave,
I get allergic to the air.

you look at me,
I drop the world.
you turn away,
my heart caves in.

you fabricate me stories,
I pass out.
you keep silence,
I die.

Everyday a little.

The organization of taste

I start a museum
with the seeds you spit -
tamarind is an acquired taste,
I want to tell you.

I want to tell you it took me time,
first to understand it,
then to cherish it,
sourness.

I may have wished
once or twice you were
sweet rather than acrid

before I learned that
all the tastes exist on
all parts of the tongue.

Breathing exercise

He laid on the couch and
fell asleep with his shoes on
while I, sitting on the corner
of the room,
studied his body
under dramatic lighting.

You figure
first and always
among the things I cannot touch,
like the flying man
and the rooftops
on my favorite painting.

I loved and I love you.
Even when you told me not to.
You push me away,
you tell me to leave.
I am stubborn,
I won't listen.

I've been stashing all the thrill
below my fifth rib
for years now,
it makes it hard for me to breathe.
That is why I have and
will always speak my heart.