The First Time

I’ll never forget the first time for some. It comes in their teens. Is this beautiful example of being a teenager for others? It comes late that final realization.  For most of us will never forget

I remember my first time, I was six. This was not choice. Of course, but design. I remember being unsure of why I saw him and felt something akin to what someone would call love. I like the way he looked even though at the time. I was too young to understand it and so then I got on my knees and I, prayed.

Dear God, please save a sinner like me. My first time realizing I was going to hell was when I couldn’t understand why I was created in a certain way. That didn’t seem to be defined by the black. And white binary of others. I was for no better word different. But I seem to be okay with it then. After all, I was a child. All I knew was the way I was wired. Seemed like a problem so the only thing I could do to understand it. What’s violence both by that? Which was given to me in that which I seemed incapable of not giving others for so many years. I was a walking burning, broken little boy

Now, near 40 years later, I wish I could pick up that child and say all the things that were never said to me but you see, I am not here to combat the beauty of the words within grace, but I am here to combat the tragedy of the words within sin, there are no doubts things that humans do. That should not be done. I am an example of that as much as anything. But this is not a diatribe against the deities. Or deliverers of their words. Cause I believe that there’s beauty within The hallowed halls of buildings. I could never walk

I have set hundreds and hundreds of times and listened to organs and guitars. And words echo the truth of what I was told young that I broken and all. There’s an example of love

Whether sinner or not, I do believe that if there is a God above or below or around us that God must be love. I do not think there is some unbound creature. Guiding our ways and judging our sins. But I do believe that at the end of this life. As we become untethered by our flesh, we find ourselves and The Truth of what we are and that is. Beauty

The beauty of a sunrise, the tragedy of a sunset, the power and fear of a storm and the peace of clouds that roll yar creation culminated.

That is the truth. I will hold till my dying day.

From the first time to the last, I can tell you. It is not the tragedy of that six-year-old but the grace of the 20-year-old of 40-year-old and I hope of the 60. And 70-year-old who will someday be able to say? I am love the personified truth of everything. Beauty and tragedy

My first time on my first time was beautiful because I am much more truth. And tragedy, I am much more love than loss. And I am the fucking culmination of creation. I am an example of God made flesh. I am the final stopping point before we lose the body and become simply the soul

And each time I feel this I can say this is as beautiful as my first

Sunsets and Goodbyes

Saying goodbye to what you love is death in itself. This separation of hopes and dreams from lived reality, well, it is….

Planting a forest and burning the trees

Wanting to dive with sand for breath

Shattering a window before the storm

Goodbye at the start

And on and on the cheesy or heart break goes.  This flowing of ideas trying to fight for space on the page and characters on the screen.  Too much with too little time and late at that.  But that’s where I am.  I can say with peace that at times love overflowed my biggest walls. But here as the sun sets there is a final swell of an “I love you” made at the goodbyes that kept coming.

So I’m building this place and time. My last goodbye as the sun finally sets. Hope in agony a sonnet filtered with dismay and acceptance. Not as a bitter diatribe against what others love about me. Nor even, what I love about myself. And there is much to both.  I can see and feel the truth in love shown. In affection given and in embraces made when words dared not sound. I am love encased in flesh.  I don’t hate me at all.  And I know so many others love me too.

But here. Here I am leaving my heart.

Setting it down, bottling the beautiful. Giving it one final gaze before I give it a goodbye.

Barbed Wire and Red Balloons

I love writing letters.

The first one I ever wrote was attached to a balloon and sent off to the sky with some sort of hope that whoever might someday find it would write me back. I must have been around 10; a lost little kid surrounded by the familiar yet foreign. Looking outside my own homes walls for sense of peace. Because home was all but peace. A cocktail of failed promises and realized nightmare.  Not for sake of poetic conjecture but the lasting truth of those days. This side of 5 decades later have revealed that truth many times over. That cocktail watered down to something not so much fire but smolder. Some days more ember and smoke but all the remains of what once was rage held in a tiny Colorado kid.

And I remember vividly the time HIS card came. A picture of that balloon strewn on his fence. I’d like to say I can call that more beauty than broken. It was bright red and barbed wire. That sort of dichotomy that a neon graffiti’d wall knows too. Art found amongst the ruins of the forgotten and forsaken. Both breath and brokenness carving itself in glorious refrain.

And I saw myself in that balloon. But that farmer sent me momentos of what I could be.  Postcards held promise. Keychains containing the maybe of safe doors and kind hands. He’ll never know how much life that envelope held. He was a stranger sharing love in 3 inches and 5 in ways that block long school never would.

I think sometimes I travel to find him. To thank him for giving me the wandering of how far a balloon could carry.  Or maybe, to find her.  That girl I loved. In words confirmed but in action denied.  I wonder, if she is still looking out her widow waiting for someone to write back. Wondering if her balloon is coming with it’s story too. Promising all of beauty I’ve now seen these many days since.

And sure. I’m not all joy and balloons.  I am more barbed wire than I’d like.  Scars work that way. Even unwound wounds remain. I can’t send the letters now where mailboxes once were awaited.  But I can keep writing NOW. And I’m still looking for that little ones balloon. Looking forward to telling her we’ve made it so much further than we ever knew that balloon could be.

And so, this is for her:

Dear Little One,

I found your balloon. It landed on a fence on my ranch. My home.  I’m somewhere so different than where you were when you sent that hope. But I found it here. Or maybe, it found me. Here’s a few things to remind me of where you could some day be. A postcard pointing to all you’ll some day see. A silly little keychain. You’ll always love silly little things.  And keys held not for what you own but for reminders of where you’ve been.

And this letter, because you are worth writing to.

Always,

-Me-

Burn

Burn

I burned our letters today. These momentos of a love that once was and the hope of the love that it might have been reduced to ashes.

And for those who saw the video to this piece will know that it wasn’t quite that simple. The ground was wet, the paper would not ignite and the lighter itself unable to create a spark

The frustration of what wouldn’t burn all the more fitting. It is true that to love me is like standing on a bridge being covered in fire and doing everything you can not to fall in as you burn it all. I can’t really think of where that analogy should go other than to drop itself into some sort of abyss that is not death and it’s certainly not life, but is more like nothing

That’s what my heart feels like.

Nothing

Not burning or ash; not poetry or prose.  Just the nothing that is what it can’t be and wants to be what it never was.  It is just me; trying to light my own heart on fire even if that means burning the very essence of what it is. All that lost poetry in her rage and anguish in her hope neither strong enough to hold her or warm enough to light.  She and me and us not fuel or love, but just a road stop on someone else’s journey.

And this rage is not giving way. The paper won’t dry and the lamp won’t light and I am just a raging heart wanting to burn or become poetry at last.

Coffee Cup Hearts

I’ve seen him in there so many times. This mountain of a man. Had he not been so often with his daughter I would not have questioned the fact that he was a father. He had that kind of aire about him. He was kindness and strength if anything and just his smile and his size.

The kind of man you would draw a father to be if you only had one space to do it.

What drew me to him though was not his size or even that kind smile the girl always at his side. So often they walked in together that seeing them felt like the best part of my week. Although nothing about him gave the presents that I should be worried there was a Holiness to it. After all, he was that girl’s father. And i, into my fifth decade was still a little girl wanting a daddy to call her daughter.

And if I could call it betrayed I would say that my soul betrayed me when I finally worked up the words to tell him; “You healed the little girl that just wanted her daddy there”

And there I stood less tattoos and more terrified. As if in the kindness of his eyes I would once again be lost looking for my own. I could not have expected response he gave, with a gentle quiet he simply said “it’s pretty easy, because she is so cool”.

Had the doubt in me not Rose to the surface I could have fallen into his arms and cried this cries so often I have wanted. But there I just smiled turn to his daughter and saw what I never felt myself.

She was at peace

Simply a little girl watching daddy perform magic over a cup of coffee and a kind heart.

He will never know the healing he gave that day. But if the cosmos aligns and ever he reads this he may know it is true. Nearly 50 years of burden felt lightened by those few words.

A heart healed

A little girl less loss and more smiles. Wrapped in the moment of a father simply loving his daughter.

Tomorrow Then

Dear Anna,

I know I haven’t written for too long and I am sorry. I can offer you only the consolation that I see you in my mirror, and in my hands, and in my tears. You were beauty surrounded by the destitution of indifference. And as choices have laid waste to my life and others I think of you often. Because hope always held its head high. Because hope held hands in the sweltering heat.

But and I cannot take back all of the yesterday’s I promised you that one day so many year’s ago. But I can promise you that one day I hope to stand at that gate once again. I know that it will not take back everything that was torn from you. But all of my sad “what ifs and should have beens” from yesterday will pale in comparison to all the “might be’s” in the hope of tomorrow’s.  And although you will not be standing with me at our gate. I want you to know that you will be there too.  You are more with me in my heart than even presence could be. You were the purest love I could have ever known until I held my own childs hands.

I don’t know if you are alive, I don’t know how long you were after I left but what I do know is that you were alive then. What I do know is that as I found myself I found you in all of my tomorrow’s.

I find you and all of the days that I’m not sure my heart is worth anyone holding Because even then you held my hand.

On days that the scar tissue feels more prominent than any curve. I would desire. I feel you. You were beauty through the deepest of scars. Shining past anything the world would call ugly. You were never ugly You were beautiful.

And I see you in all of my lover’s eyes. In the “I love yous” Spoken in truth, I hear your voice. I hear the first time you told me that. Just two scared kids trying to figure out who they were and who might love them in this world. In the three decades since I have realized we are all just scared kids trying to figure out who loves us. You knew even then and I hope you still know.

I see you because you were a promise that was greater than any I could have broken, and I broke many of them. I would offer you all of the sorry I ever could but I know that can not take back those moments. I can only offer the universe my desperate plea that I will never let down another way I did you. I can only retain the promise to that little girl in the hearts of other little little girls in the women I meet.

And we are all little girls desperate for someone to show us that we matter.

I have been in love and been so many Anna’s at the gate that there are days I’m not sure I ever left. I am the orphan, waiting someone to call me family.

But I know I did because I remember the tears that fell that day, the rage that rose in the ensuing months and the self that’s still fights to this day. and you are and were and have always been a promise that there has got to be hope even though everything has told you otherwise

And Anna, I am thankful to you. I am grateful for everything you have taught me these last 25 years and I wish with the fiber of my very being that I could somehow tell you that. I can only tell you I will try to live it.  To tell you in the others that are you because they are lost too that I will still try. I will try to be the hand you loved then and try to be the feet that came back.

I will come back to you in all of the moments that I choose to love in spite of a world that would tell me not to. To love others. To love myself. And to love always.

And Anna my Love,as always. I love you

Better

I believe I can tell the future. No, we’re not delving into some Madam Marie mystic credit card bullshit. But I know I’ve seen moments in dreams manifested later in time. This construct we call reality perhaps a matrix simulation or maybe I’ve done enough drugs to tap into something beyond the veil we hold up to ourselves. Whatever it is, I know. Or rather, I believe I’ve seen into a tomorrow I’ve caught glimpses of today.

My future telling less a $19.95 sales pitch and more a beyond cost plea. I believe in the intangible of tomorrow simply because I must.

I live in the now not for desire or acceptance but for necessity. A prisoner in part so a dreamer in full. I am… a believer in the better.

I am here today because of a daydream I once had about a reality I never expected. There, amongst books and a fire I sat surrounded in the reality awaited. This forest cozied cabin my Love sat opposite me engrossed in a book of her own. Yet, our distractions in each other converged in the moment she saw me, her own version of the ideal woman. I was her dream too.

This moment has given me the last half decade. I am as they say; waiting. With expectation I know I will one day unexpectedly find myself in that moment itself. I suspect I will cry, tell her I love her too and breathe. That heaved sigh of a heartbeat held in all of the tomorrows that todays struggled to await. And there, the future awaited will become the past once lived and I’ll go into the yet unknown.

I the dreamer now the dreamed. Living amongst those better days.

Empty Rooms

I used to watch the sunrise. I tried to today but instead I found myself here.

The caret like some creator conducting creation as the color of its symphony slowly floods this moment.

It is… blinking. In beat with everything and nothing as my soul itself seems unsure or unaware of whatever this moment means.  And I mean it when I say every moment means something even if it’s that the moment will fade into the great nothing that is background of a story itself.

But as no one is background to their own story I’d like to think no sounds fall upon deaf ears or sunrises remain unseen as even the universe itself is just atoms rearranged again and again into whatever destiny or coincidence commands them.  We are.  Here.

Here now, as I write this piece I watch the ever steady blink, blink, blink and think; will this sun stop rising when I’m gone?  And I suppose if we’re specific; here and then and that statement being a question are themselves lost in the story some day too. But right now this ever flowing and falling thing we call life seems unwilling to be caught by my caret.

That’s the blink.  The blink blink blink a writer sees as they ponder the words they’ll use to convey whatever it is they give. Facts, feelings, faiths, maybe good or bad by whatever standard we give them but all the same true to the moment they’re offered to the unknowable of what is next. That following blink. Blink. Blink.

Maybe my stomach will finally stop hurting.  Or is that my heart is heaving itself so strongly against my chest that my stomach is just trying to get out of the way…. I just wanted to watch the sunrise. To wax about its colors and contemplate everything.  Yet my stomach had other plans. And my heart; she.. she… hmph… she wrote this as much as my hands ever did.  That pesky little pump pumping blood through this sack I call body now finding itself filling my mind more than this moment might make itself able.

Ah.  Tears. That’s what I needed. My eyes now pushing away as if they needed a break from images being clear.  They’re quitting too. And that scares me. But blink, blink, blink… a new moment. And now. Where was i…

Trying to watch the sunrise.. I missed it. This dusk isn’t quite the same as I look around the empty home I knew. This last decade held together inside these walls have seen more change in me than I think the sky did as I wrote this. But I’m missing the point. I can’t see why it all has faded away. Walls bare as home becomes house becomes someone else’s story book cover. I am a foreigner now. Merely saying goodbye to the dreams I thought I’d have here. And that’s the hardest part. I had dreams. They’re fading the emptier this house becomes. Even gone perhaps. Lost to the now that became was and then faded entirely.

All now is the blink. Blink. Blink

3 Truths and a Lie

I thought I would start this piece by telling you a bit about my day. I woke up as usual as the sun was beginning to remind us that we made it through the night and started my 1st pot of coffee. I fed the cats sat and drew then my weird little pieces I would vaguely call art that are more like mathematical lines drawn prettily. This is my standard morning one which deviates very rarely from itself. Exciting right?

Although this is hardly poetic it does exhibit certain truths about me. One I really really like coffee, but because i drink so much of it and eat so little food my doctor told me my choice was to start eating consistently or give up caffeine. I gave up caffeine ya. And as much as that might seem like a sort of victory it was done in the paled truth of an eating disorder that generally makes me feel like i belong under the cover of night. Like some sort of fat Superman darting to-and-fro from every donut shop in delightfield place that the sun can never find me

And then I turned on my computer to remind me that long ago I made another choice that it is better to make money than a difference. That is not to say that there is something inherently wrong with making money just that at the cost of daily giving up my sword feels like I die a little bit each time I have to write emails to people who would gladly see me lying on the street.

But today within the 1st hour I found myself fighting every tear I could muster. It was not strength that kept them flowing for some sort of sense of b******* b******* strength that kept them from coming just that I felt too tired to even let them out. As if each drop was a betrayal from me to me. It was not just my disdain for a company that has decimated my sense of self but rather a self that has decimated my sense of purpose to so I turned off my computer And sat in a sort of exhausted silence. Too tired to even hear music

So I went and spent the day Doing things that I wanted. I walked about and looked at toys with a man who seems to care for me in ways that seem to be more a sign of his dementia than my value. And I wept and his arms as I recounted the number of friends whose eulogies I have heard this year alone.. But this is not a piece about sorrow. Is about the resolve to find myself in the darkness and shed some m************ light. In my boyfriend’s arms I felt seen if not normal forest. But I do in those moments have peace and that is something wonderful

And then spent the afternoon working on cars and taking parts from a junkyard with my oldest son. We laughed and mayor may not have been delinquents ourselves as a few windows were “accidentally” broken or as I told my son last week they were liberated of their confinement.

I’m not sure where I am on the truth and lie counter. Or even if any of those were lies just that maybe the reason for them is there is of course ecstatic beauty and a lover’s embrace, and obviously I see my son’s laughter as a reminder that I have done something right. And if I can say so I must admit that I think a woman who can do more than just what society deems her waste to be worth something to be admiperiod that is to say that I am something to be admired and not just something but someone

I am after all, human. I am the fly in truth and fear and hope. To exist is to be inside of a duality outside of itself. We are cursed with this yet blessed by our thirst to find meaning in it

And I think I am finding meaning in it. Maybe that’s the only truth that matters right now

Words

I hate being called brave. This word of adoration meant as a sort of elaboration on my willingness to put myself in situations that others might not have the “courage” to do. You see I have traveled the world and this country most often solo in-and-out of circles that most would deem unsafe. With rarity have I ever felt that sense of fear or even hesitancy when often those around me have found themselves in-and-out of prison and marked “criminal” , or worse, unworthy.

It is true that I find myself at home amongst those that society deems as less than them simply because of choices they made or simply their bodies and often the place with which they would have called themselves home. I have never had to choose between murder and theft to put food on the table for my siblings at age eleven. And that is not some sort of far fetched theoretical person. That is the truth of a life of a friend I have known who spent most of his life in the systems this countrys calls justice. You see we have these fancy words we define others by when we know less about their truth than we do our own.

And I am a lover of words As much as many I have known and called friend. But it is often my words fail me when I try to define what it is that drives me and more honestly what it is that denies me. You see it is truth that I generally do not find fear in the places that we call dark. It is in the light of a fresh morning and the eyes of a true lover that I find myself afraid. It is harder for me to make that 1st step off my bed on mornings I had hoped I wouldn’t have to see than to ride into an unknown night. Getting out of bed is a journey that feels more perilous than most any I have ever made to places that most would never dare tread.

So is it brave I ask you to speak up on things that I feel are necessary?

It definitely is for some.

But for me this does not feel like bravery when it is simply an indifference to my own safety and survival. I didn’t push against my own society because I felt like there was something I needed to accomplish for me, It was because I do not find consideration in my own continuation especially if it is for the safety and lives of others who cannot speak up. It is easier to put myself in the site lines of murderers than it is to put myself in the reach of a lover. So what fear or bravery do I have when it is simply me coming against those I want nothing to do with? I could not care less about the stunted self fulfilled adoration of the “conservatives” or religious right or whatever delineation they define themselves by when it is truly just a representation of their own lack of humanity. I do not see myself as brave not because I do not think it takes courage to speak up for some but that for me defines me as someone that is expendable in the fight for something greater.

Please do not call me brave. I do not deserve the words of our tongues to bring definition to the definitions in our hearts.

I am not brave, I’m just tired.

And I do not know any better word to define what I feel then those 5 letters. That word is to me more often true than any other I can find to be defined by

Tired

Tired that into my 5th decade I have not found a purpose or at least a preparation for better lives for my own beloved. I do not see myself as a poster child for a cause or the image to be used for those that want to take up their own fight and fight with their lives. If anything I feel I am just that cautionary tale about choices made and things taken and opportunities wasted.

Before this bumbling chest beating slips into a deeper melodrama that will be easily looked over as depression, by sadness, or whatever comfortable word we want to define a broken person with; I am not without hope. I am simply losing the energy to grasp it for myself. And that feels like failure. I feel like failure.

And I don’t know what word to use to define my desperation other than that truth. I am desperate and clinging to something that I cannot even see or describe with any words in my limited vocabulary. I wake most days a bit disappointed that I didn’t have the courage to ensure I would not have to wake up again. For me it is not courage to remain. Yet there is that dwindling desire and maybe, just maybe, I might someday see this thing that was called the promised land. And do not mix that in with religious ideologies about whatever is next when our lives are done. For me the promised land is not wherever I end up when I am dead but wherever I help open up for those who are still alive.

So maybe it is hope

Maybe it is bravery

But I believe it is simply the desire to leave something better in the world than the one I was given. I don’t know what word I would call that. but I do know that…… that….

That “something”

It might be enough for now