abandon

I know acutely the experience

of leaving my heart unguarded for too long

and suddenly recalling the necessity.

If I have my wits I am a professional

and I can see your kind coming through your masks and your siren dances

but the wind had changed and I thought I was in shallow water.

Do all drowning men feel as foolish?

I should know better.

I should have known better.

This man is cragged and far too rotten for change

and sunlight only speeds up decay.

Study that line.

I accept its truth, it is your sickness not to.

It is your optimist innocence that allows you to believe that you could change me.

It is my self proclaimed curse not to change.

I suppose we both could have been a little more honest.

I’m a terrible dancer.
This is simply an immutable fact of my existence.
Sure my feet pound to rhythm
and my hands wander through the air
tapping away on the notes of harmony.
I breathe and let my back twist itself inside out.
I rock and sway and bob and weave and roll,
I allow myself the peace of imaginary clairvoyance,
I shutter in the facade of liquid reality
and feign that I can glide as a pebble across ice.
When in actuality I move like an old woman’s strained chortle.
My feet lightly knock off beat
My hands twitch in arthritic pulsations
Like a child reaching for candy in a grocery store.
I heave and let my back pop back into alignment.
I clutch and shake and tumble and unravel and land hard,
a dirty mess of exhaustion in the midst of no sound.
I am a lovely dancer.

An Offer of Madness

Fly with me and find a deeper, sadder reality.
I’ll prove to you, for you, with my coarse and reddened hands
that madmen build towers too–
we laugh at their tumble and sustain our infection
within its hallow echo.
What do you think of my solemn offer?
Will you put off redemption to try a life of possibility?

Make your life an exception.

double dog
I ^ dare you.

Happen

Rise,
chase this comet tail through the dust crowd of doubt.

My educational mantra.
Are we all blindfolded fools,
waiting our turn to play the king?

Fall,
and return to your birthright of ignorance.

leaning further out

Unto ourselves a faded silhouette crumbles.
Did you ever really know me–
I let in light through a broken window
only to patch it with a darker cloth.
I feel cloistered here, beyond reach
beyond redemption.
Is that the long line, leading from that mosaic gate
and is it holding in our holding out?
I turn and fall back into mortality.
My faith is as fallible as my hands.