trials of the heart: trial by fire

Don't say.  Don't listen.  Find 'em and forget 'em.  Just because you can.  So much beauty and yet, no soul.  Where did the soul go from the pocket watch men?  They used to be dapper.  These days, not so much.  You hang out there.  On the edge of my mind's periphery, a phantom stalking beyond my view.  You break my consciousness and I see you.  But tonight, I'll be with you, either way.  Words abound.  Don't get pulled into the depths of the mire.  Don't get pulled into the weight of the judgments around you.  The human condition.  Silence.  The human need.  Connection.  I have paintings to go into.  I go exploring.  I have grass to walk on.  I have dirt in my toes.  Connection.  For all the fancy things on earth, I'd just like to sit and be.  I can live on wilderness if I have you to take me there.  I need your words and your song.  Like melodies on blue skies.  And you've aged like a fine wine.  Something eternal, immortal about your expression.  Light fingers dance across the piano.  Delicate long things that create such conversation in their tone.  Each note a word.  You've spoken.  It makes me content that I could hear you.  I carry you on in wind and rain.  Each day, I carry you through sunlight and the sun dappled shadows.  I carry you.  My tinder bundle.  My little fire.  You keep me going in this existence of lead.  Molecules of you explode in my head.  Keep burning me warm.

ventricular fortitude

While goofing off and wearing my heart on my sleeve, I forgot where it was and let it get burned and buried.  Here we are in a black hallway.  Heading on down to my open heart casket.  I can't get over it.  I share it and it breaks.  Tell me about the heart of glass.  Why would some youngster point out all of my failings like I love them?  Does he think I don't know I'm a mess?  Does he think it will make me feel any better to hear it?  I know.  I know.  And diseased cities get eaten through.  No more sun.  We walk on in the wild rain.  Hearing the seasons change.  We walk on in the setting sun only to be one.  I visit his headstone often and wonder if he's like Schrodinger's cat.  Is he in there?  My mind can make him awaken and cry.  But, no.  He was dead when he was lowered into the ground, remember?  You can't walk miles in a drunken haze to raise the dead.  It doesn't work that way.  She used to play in the cemetery.  It was like her playground.  Bare foot and happy.  Until the storms came and chased her away.  When you don't want to meet beating hearts, this is where you play.

seed bomb

He comes on like rain.  He sends strings of tears down my face.  When he is near, his voice breaks my consciousness and sends me into the shock of being alive.  These are resurrected words on a Saturday morning.  No one took me to mass, I walked there alone.  The trees are silent emissaries.  Today they tell me the doors are open.  I don't have to stay away anymore.  I can walk into woodland worship and be at home.  I can sit and meditate on that.  No more sparks in the dark.  No dreams of Roman coliseums and romance.  We shift from dirty death to lacey frills in a heartbeat.  If only my rain-wet hero was a long haired rugged Roman.  We dream in hieroglyphs.  Why is Maximus there?  He's on his way to die in Rome and I'm still hanging out in the Temple of Bel.   I'm waiting for some vines to deliver up the Greek god.  It is all in a dream.  You can be the perspective.  No matter what perspective you dream up.  I went to get fed when Tori rocked the Tower.  When green was in and I was young.  I had friends.  Imagine that!  I just want to walk out into a large garden.  Tell the troubles to get out of the way.  I'd love to walk into rows of herbs and flowers.  Tangled morning glories.  I don't belong here, no way!  We've shaved off some moon glow to be a slim slice of life.  It dangles in the sky tonight.  Each night, more moonlight, gone.  Until we are dark again.  I'm not ready for a darkened moon.  I'm not ready for dark nights.  Bring on the rain and sun.  Bring on the pain.  Bring Spring so birds can come visit.  Perhaps I'll draw him a map.  Here is my heart.  Here it is.  I live on the brink of the forest in a small home.  I toil with mint and flowers.  I grow sage.  Here it is, my heart.  It beats one small beat at a time.  It hopes for small things to grow.

Spark in the Dark

Luxor, Memphis, Alexandria.  I'm on the road to your bric-a-brac antiquity.  Surely, some knick knacks and knock offs line this road.  Pharaoh tarot.  I'm a Greek dancing through a dusty deserted lane.  I'm twisted along the Nile from Upper to Lower Egypt.  Looking for a flood.  A flood of emotions has held me captive for weeks.  I wanted to let red run, rain down my arm from self induced harm.  You smiled the next day, you frowned the day after that.  Hieroglyphs of emotional range.  Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.  You twisted me up in your movie frame.  A movie with really bad acting.  I've decided a way out of my pain was music.  Music is as it has always been.  Music is a way out, an exit sign to pain.  The voices of Opeth, Nile, Crematory, Moonspell tell me what to do and provide doors to leaving.  You can not harm me.  We almost burned together.  You and I.  There are no more sparks in the dark.  The electrical charge has been tamed.  It has been quieted and directed.  It wanted me dead.  Now it is wired up.  I'm in charge.  I'm driving away.  Poetry doesn't have to say anything.  It only has to provide doors.  We know.  I follow.  Sacred writing, ritual writing.  I'm wyrding out the ritual now.  No more pain, no more.  No more sorrow, no more.  No more defeat.  I'm done losing.  No more abuse, no more.  I'm not your stone to throw.  I can't ease your frustration.  I've got my temptation.  To be myself.  I have light, I have worlds.  I don't need closure.  I have wolves and night.  I have streams to follow.  There is this place inside of me that gives me all the comfort I need in the darkest of times.  I'm still here.