In some other world

In some other world

We're all growing old together

We were there when we all turned 21

Just like we were there when we turned 16

We watch clouds on blankets

As the wind rushes against our cheeks

And "how have you been?" has no meaning

None of us have learned what it means to live in the cold

and changes come in increments

as they should

No one asks what we will do

And we all know everything can be worked out

We carve deeper and deeper infinities inside each other's hearts

and no one can say that a gesture is her own

Yes, in some other world

I've been there often

in smiles and touches and understanding

But today I wonder

If in that other world 16 or 21 really had any meaning

If maybe our desperation, our dreams of separation

Carved the first nicks into which

the stream of our understanding has flowed

in that other world

Could I write poetry

Or taste coffee

Or feel so sad and alone and connected in suburbia

Under blue skies and palm trees on a winter's day?

Goodbye other world

remain in my heart

but today I wake up among paper bags

and plastic and strangers and a million good byes

and a million hellos

But today I will laugh and cry and taste and see

Because I know, deep in my heart, here,

and in some other world,

we're all growing old together

It is I

It is I, the eternal illness

the eternal sick

the eternal dark

the eternal knowledge

that i will never be with you

that we don't see eye to eye

that we claw at one another's

souls

that we were separated at birth

that the cord was cut

that i can say where your body ends

and where mine begins

it is I

eternal lonliness

eternal longing

eternal existence

I am pain, nausea

a heaving torso, a writhing spine

and wet eyes

I am sick with grief

even we are sick with grief

A gulf that pierces us all

right through the center

black stitches through a colored quilt

it is I

I that holds the world together

Autumn

Oh how terrible the beauty of the first day of fall

The girl can only cry

She senses deep power

She senses the wind within

And if she were to perish

So she could dance

But what to do with the body of a mortal

Such power would kill her

Trample her to death

As unharnessed horses

for they know her not

though they rage within

But how to harness the wind

How to tame the sea

to forestall our own deaths must we kill?

She dices her own pain with words

The sea is calmer now

But oh such power

She must be the power

Or she will surely die

of grief

of a broken heart

of the waves crashing into her shell on the sand

But to live

To face the wind with dry eyes

How?

Create her pen whispers in black

Create

Translate

Translate

Translate

May your words sing the wind

Your steps the sea

Your eyes the skies

Your fingers the trees

Your face the moon

Translate, she dries her eyes

Saturday Afternoon

She was a young woman now. She sat on her bed and her heart ached. It ached with deep longing for completion and meaning. For relationship and a shared life. She sensed that depth existed. She felt the call to intense waters, to balance, to encountering a soul, a place, that would shift her own and give the whole a moment of ecstasy. Give her a moment of ecstasy. To fill a latent potential. To strike her match. She longed to burn. Every shifting center has a million purposes through which it is fulfilled. Through which it provides fulfillment. A match when lit, a doll when played with, a car when driven. The earth, we, endow beings with the gift of giving. And those moments of realization of purpose are orgasms, fulfillment, divinity, life. This pen, this ink, this paper, ecstasy. They satisfy the greater situation and so satisfy themselves. But she, where did she fit? Who could write poems with her form? She longed to spill ink. Longed. Was a writer near? She was within her grasp. She smelled a life that she knew long ago. Before she understood anything at all. A candle stand, molded, elaborate, a foot or two tall reminded her of a bygone era, that lived deep within them all. What were all the surfaces referencing? Children, technology, money, Africa, god? Her bedroom told a story of enslavement, though she could not exactly say why. Four walls, a single window, sharp edges, space. No matter where she looked, there she was, within those four walls. They contained her mind. The "outside" shaded and glassed. And there she rested in the middle. Minute, staring at herself from all directions. Floating in space. She breathed in chilled air. Her mother told her people believed in empty space once they stopped seeing the air as a being. A being she had an intimate relationship with, yet she could still only think of molecules and space. A wall separated her and her brother. Floating in boxes in space. Calm because it was Saturday afternoon.