sandpaper

I was up until 4 am last night, looking online for tickets

I wanna take a train somewhere

I want to ride the blue bellied underside of an inexperienced wave and find myself on a lonely island that maintained it's virginity.  

It seems like all the great adventures were had by people who had dreams bigger than they were allowed to

People who were ambitious like dying embers, burning hotter when the pretty dancing flames died out and audiences stopped being amazing

I wanna burn hot blue like a full mooned midnight with stars hanging like thousand year old miracles for millions of miles around me lining my heartbeats like an orchestra, filling a stadium with heart wrenching melodies played for an audience of one

Or tearing down the house in a small room where orphans can feel at home.  

And home. . . used like to many "i love you's" empty like vacant ruins, never fully like hugs made by arms that touch your insides

No, home. . . 

Buried deep down in rooted memories untouchable like an ancient thought or a passed on lover, just out of reach but my soul is still prickled by the pain of it

Caged by Polaroid memories and empty beer bottled laughs, and wrap around porches, and tire swings, midnight talks, rainy day dreams, and tea not quite hot enough to burn your tongue but just hot enough to make you sigh

Home, like whispers from under bed sheets and good morning smiles

I loved you like October, like autumn, like the night before our last together moment

I loved you like a gospel passed around the world but holy like a first breath, a first dance, and last goodbye

I loved you like a rainstorm, like an ocean like a sunrise, 

And I held your heart in my hand like an offering

And I loved it, even the broken parts

Even the parts that you couldn’t love yourself

My heart wasn’t kept safe behind my chest,  it was on your shoulder

Exposed and unguarded. . . . And you let it stay there

Even though it was heavy, and weighed you down

You were always a place I could put it 

The stars are out tonight, and I am thankful that some things are the way they should be, that some parts of the universe aren't full of surprises. 

So tonight, I'm hopping on a bus, just to feel like i'm going somewhere, and I'm going to remember the good parts. 

I remember whispering in your ear wondering if you could love me if you knew my darkness. I remember learning that you could.  I remember looking up the sky and laughing at all the funny faces the stars made at us.  I remember thinking you'd be so much more than a memory. 

I meant to write a love poem. . . it ended up being just another goodbye sonnet sung with an off key melody tossed in a pile, full of dozens of my attempts at moving on.  I see the moon out tonight, so as promised, I said a prayer, whispered goodnight, from however many miles away, and I'll fall sleep with you on my heart like you were born there. Maybe I'll lose some of the pain in my tears, and tomorrow, it won't hurt so bad.  

I wished my hands were made of sand paper, so the things that mattered didn't keep slipping through.  

"Love's Pendulum"

Back and forth, back and forth
Loves pendulum swings me back and forth
Aggressively swaying me above realities sand bar
Oblivious to my plight tossing me to and fro'
No place to land but the ground, or the ocean
Where I would drown without anyone there to try and save me
It's a crazy world we live in.
The right person, with all the makings of something beautiful
All the right pieces in place all the heart strings tied in knots I didn't think anyone could break
All there most secret stories written across their eyes, in languages only you can fully understand
All the truth you need spread out across the smile they save just for you
Fingers locking, no need for keys to open them
Then you wake up one morning, the sun looks the same, the air smells the same
But you know everything that matters is different
Everything you fought for is gone like the centuries of history we let slip through our minds
And time moves forward as we look back, while our bodies are thrust into the future
trying to find balance, trying to find something to make it stop
and give us time to just "figure it out"
But time pays no mind to our quandary, no it moves forward and drags us by our wrists
Mocking our desperate glances "at the way things were"
And challenging us to stand up and move on like the past has no impact on the way the future changes us.
But we all know the past steers us towards whatever future awaits us,
Propels us, lights our path on fire and gives us direction
So even when we are lost, we can always look back knowing when we turn around, the leaves will have cleared and our path will be made known to our hearts again
I write letters to myself so in 10 years time I will stand a chance at remembering the way i felt when the world around us stop and stared at the way our eyes met, reaching out of our sockets in longing, hands grasping hold of the other for the first time,
I want to remember the way the world looked on and cheered like they all knew we would make it
Because in ten years, maybe parts of it will seem familiar but time changes the way the world looks at us, and in ten years everything will look different to me
In ten years i will read these letters, probably unable to recognize the handwriting
I will wonder, like i wonder now, why something more beautiful than the sunset that started it, found a way to fall apart
At the end it seemed our stone pillars turned into the sand I'm caught swinging weakly over
Tossed back and forth
Taking what I can, and letting go of what I can live without
And I cant stop thinking that letting go was the biggest mistake we made
letting the continents crawl into the doubt lingering in between our fingertips
and spread out across the landscapes of our knuckles, breaking us beyond what God could repair
I swing aimlessly, lost above impairing dunes heartache
Waiting for you to push me forward.

"hidden"

2am most often asks me what it is we fear most. . . And I always answer the same
Love… loving to hard like my heart beats don’t’ come with a price or not being loved enough like you can only wring out my soul so many times before it never takes on it’s original shape and becomes unrecognizable even to God
We hide ourselves like high school bedroom secrets nobodies supposed to know about
laughing awkwardly to fill the silences in between bed sheets and second chances
And I wonder how long we can keep these stories locked away in memories
I wonder how long before the secrets have had enough, break free of there prison, and the  silence caves in and enraptures us in colors to dark to be brave in
Why are we so scared to take off the mask and be bare . . . Exposed like a target
Let them be archers with arrows made of doubts and take there best shot
Be brave with me, take my hand
Be my tower
And I will try to be truthful, sincere actions, honesty character, may my words make mountains bend at their knees and cry lullabies to the moon at midnight when she illuminates space and the distances between stars, is she laughing or crying or just sitting silently from her throne in the galaxy does she notice how I stare at her. . . Dispirited and lonely, I stare at her, hoping she stares back with equal wonder
And I like to think it makes her sad, like mournful cello strings, that she can’t reach down and accept me, can’t reach down and heal my ailing soul
Like I needed her to
Cause I pulling of the skin that was never mine to wear
I spent to many years watching my dreams walk across high wired lines of never gunna happen
Scared to be wrong, I kept them safe in my deepest thoughts where no body could, mess with them
But you be my tower. . . Archaic infrastructure brilliant like an epic
Carry me when my knees buckle under in fear of the unknown
And I will dance in your arms the choreography of angels
And I will learn how to be brave. . .
In the movements may I find God in the struggle and the pain
May I be ruined like a last kiss heartbreak
And rebuilt like sunset, across an African plane
With nothing in site but life for miles
And may I learn how to dream again cause my eyelids have forgot how
May I confess my love to the moon and may she sweep me off my feet kiss me with her
Mystery
I ask all this in the name of the nameless power more purer than smiles spread across the face of poverty
May I be given a second chance to be brave, and come out from my hiding place
And show you all what I’m made of. . .
If you seek me. . . I will be found,
Although I can not say you will like what it is you find. . .
Because you have gotten so used to this façade. . .
I’m an unrecognizable
Severed and shaking in fear
Hear me tremble, hear my breathing quake like thunder
I am not ready, not fully braced for your blow
But hit me with all you got because the pieces that remain scarred as they may be
They will be worth saving
I hope the core of me is worth saving
I hope the nothingness of me fades
Will you tower over me like the moon’s kingdom and love me like her clearest and warmest nights
Love me like purple flowers, as I peel back my charade like
A child peels back pages of books where dragons are kings, and magic is not feared
Love me like beauty loved her beast at the end when she finally saw his heart
Behind the monster I am trying to leave behind my monstrosity so love me as
I slam that door shut and walk out and wear courage like a summer dress
That eats sunlight and dances to blue skies
I am finally becoming spring after a winter that lasted far to long
And it would mean eternity to me if someone was ready to roll around in my bloom
Enjoy my petals
And love me out of hiding

"Forgottens"

Forgotten ones
If lines and wrinkles could tell stories, his face would be a dozen old novels
Left on shelves unopened and dusty
Untouched and without love, but waiting patiently to captivate an audience of one
Spit falls from his mouth like a slow motion defeat
Making a messy bed on his chin
He lifts up dried hard hands thick like cow hide
As if I could save him

I have never felt that helpless
Never looked so out of place
Never wanted to be blind so bad. . .
But. . . I have eyes. . . They are green, and they work just fine

Against my better judgment, I look around like a perfect tourist
Mental pictures being taking without my permission choking down the horrific scenes
I know I will remember for a lifetime. . .

She dances towards me. . . The little girl without shoes
Head to toe covered in an ugly mess of trash and dirt
She dances in a long skirt amongst the ugly of her backyard as if she’s to  blind to see her life is lived between bags of trash and back broken dreams
She asks me . . . “will you dance with me”
We move like eagles, something brave and beautiful
Even with broken wings she soars proudly

Around my feet are all the tears I’ve cried mixed with all the hope I’ve lost
As if when mixed together they became specks of gold, she picks them up and tries to wash the dirt from her hair
She thinks she’s a princess. . .
I think she’s a barefooted scarred angel
Sent to remind me it’s okay to smile
So don’t tell me there is no God cause
I heard him in her laugh,
Don’t tell me he doesn’t love us
Cause I felt it in her embrace
I saw him in her smile. . .
I saw him. . . It looked like home

She takes my hand brown on brown skin. . . A beautiful broken masterpiece
She wants to show me her world. . . In doing so she’ll forever change mine
I nearly falter under the weight of the smell
Piles of shit and wasted food share the same space as her bed
She looks at me. . . With eyes like a love poem
Pleading with my human parts. . .they beg like a street corner
Broken and forgotten like the old man with the face that told stories
Don’t forget me
Sounded like a broken vow piecing itself back together.

I can never be the same.
She left me so full of joy
She made rain clouds break into smiles we call sunshine
She tickled the universe with her hope making it laugh faithfully
I felt like my grandmother was alive to hug and dance and laugh with me
Like a childhood secret
My own little barefooted dirty angel
Reminded me were my hope could be found and that my joy was still unbroken

She left me, like a prayer. . . hopeful

"Only Human"

I needed a break through today
I needed something to believe in
Something more than grand ideas
Like a child I believed I could do anything
I believed like if I could imagine it, then it was real
But God doesn’t bend to imagination
 I’m thinking more along the lines of truth’s that stay true before after and during the sad parts
Something that I could grab and like the hand of a soul mate our fingers would lock and create something that doesn’t break, like God had that in mind from the beginning.

The only thing anyone handed me was love.  .  .
If there is one thing I have learned about love is that it is something imperfect
That no matter how hard we try, even in our best moments
We are still nothing more than human
So when I held you close, I could hold you tight
 But I couldn’t make you whole
Like pieces to different puzzles we didn’t complete each other
My love had holes, that water like drops of our humanity leaked through
Falling on the parts of our souls that didn’t fit inside our bodies

My love was risky and when ours ending love risked killing me
I felt canyons of loneliness stretch out over my chest
Leaving galaxies sized marks on my eyes
You’ll have to look past my God sized smile to see them

I walked around on empty streets stepping on leaves
Wondering why the in the crunch of leaves I heard mourning for your death
 Why the rain cried memories on my head soaking me in regrets
Like I had a choice in how our story ended
I’m all loved out.
Some days my heart pumps just enough blood through my body.
Some day’s all I can do is hope my blood stays warm
And my soul doesn’t freeze over
I hope the coals of our memories are enough to rekindle my soul back to life
Cause I can’t survive that south pole sized loneliness

You see loving you was like a unfinished song
It had a epic beginning but no end
A lot of sharp prayers and flat crying
 My tears fell like piano keys playing sad songs in Autumn’s soft rain
And cello strings strumming heartache from the middle
Of my desire to hold you in an embrace that completes you
An embrace without holes an embrace that holds you up
And carries you to the feet of a greater power
Loving you
It’s letting you go but holding onto your memory
Love is in the center of all pain I’m feeling
It was opening up all my most delicate parts
Closing my eyes and gift wrapping heartbeats to be given
Knowing I might never get a thank you
Love was me and you, it was the risk we took
And it was something I will never regret
Love was a sacrifice of free will
It was waking up the middle of the night with you on my mind
And letting you stay there
And sometimes  . . . I still
wrap your old bed sheets around me
Because it’s the only piece of you I have left

Held ’um tight like I need them embracing me to survive
And maybe. . . In that moment I did
Maybe that moment was my last attempted at loving you well
And I know it wasn’t enough
And I can’t love you back to life

"Astonishing"

I share my favorite memories with midnight
And my saddest tears with the hour before the sun cracks open earth’s eyelids
Losing nights of sleep to attempts to change the world with my thoughts
I never could. . .
Earth was to vast, her problems to deep like generational curses dating back to when
Dust became woman, became son, became daughter
Became man vs. another man and his family vs. another day
And tomorrow versus this moment in time when we wonder if tomorrow is even worth fighting for
But we are fighters. . .
And we’ve been fighting since the garden or the big bang or whenever whatever you pray to said life 1st began
We’ve been fighting
And we’ve been dying like it doesn’t matter
Like 300,000 small children is nothing more than a number like 300,000 dreams couldn’t actually change the world 300,001 times
We kill like we breathe like we wink, like hearts beat, like our lives depend on it and when they do we kill twice as hard
And then lives do depend
All these beautiful, epic stories will never have their glorious endings
But maybe our bullets have better excuses then I do
Maybe our bombs know something I don’t
Because there has to be some reason why burning unread stories is something we salute to and vow to, and bow to, and bend to, and sacrifice to,
And ruin perfectly good happy endings for
For reasons unknown to me, something in me keeps saying that praying. . .
Must be good for something . . .
So we prayed. . . But instead of asking of God, we listened to his people
La’hore you cried my brother answer
Desamparados you cried my sister, she answered
Alajuelita you cried and I answered you, love scrapped from the sacred places of my soul
Na’robi, you called us home with a chorus of 2,000 thousand part harmonies rising from your slums
It will be love at first site, I know this now,
You are my bride or I am yours
It doesn’t matter
We are one, come together in an inseparable bond
Knots, tied together by earth’s gravity, to tight for even time to break
We are neighbors, we are sisters, we are lovers, we are one
Like raindrops we are fallen but when we fall, we land side by side
Where you break I crack, and where I fall you stand back up
We are Asia, we are Africa, we are Americas brown and white
We are northern mountains and desserts heated by love from a God
Who loved us enough to give us each other
Love from a God who mourns
When we bury childhoods in bombed playgrounds or kindergarten brothels
When we spit in our black mother’s face and slap our white father with hate
Why do we draw lines where we should have veins of red blood proving the same air we all breathe, breathed the same life into our lungs
I will stand on this mountain, face this scarred world and cry her love songs from the bottoms of my heart
So she knows someone loves her enough to do something other than burn her to down to her delicate flesh
I will love her broken, I will love you broken, please love me I am broken
And I am waiting for the day when my brother can wake up to the God hidden rinside sunlight
And my sister can go to sleep guard down and know what it means to feel safe
We were created to be different chords played in the same key by generations of finger tips
The same song, so everybody knows the melody
Because we sound better when we sing together

If you look at us closely the only thing that should be different is the way we love
Because my love has holes that yours can fill
And his fills yours and she fills his and I fill hers
So when stitched together we make a blanket big enough to tuck God in at night
And that’s’ the only time he can sleep,
When our love is whole
So lay down your guns, your signs, your politics, your egos, even you insecurity and go ask God how to fill my holes and i’ll learn how to fill yours so we can put our creator to sleep and sing the song the generations taught us so he has sweet dreams
Then justice can answers her curtain call and freedom will debuts it’s reign,
My heart will beat like victorious war drums pounding out orchestration of sunrise’s
And we will be the way God intended us to be . . .
Astonishing

Farewell, Goodbye

It ended, like it should have, with goodbye, and farewell
Arms waving like burnt flags
You, and me, standing firm atop decisions like gargoyles
Unmovable,
Our last second chance drowns like a soul without a god to save it
So we remain as stone
Lifeless and unchanging
Weathered and powerless to challenge our foe
Time, has walked away without looking back
It doesn't notice that we aren't following,

The sun falls down and casts a spell
Filling the hollowed out passion inside each of us
I can't speak so I pray with my desire
I pray with what I left

The sun falls down, it's warmth kisses, and makes me soft
The stars are lifted like a holy curtain
A blessed galaxy, proving God did something right
It's a full moon out and we are released
We are given a choice
Allowed to live
Accepting what I need to make me what I am not
I am freed
I breathe deep, only then understanding hope
But you,
You chose stone