"Poem is where the heart is"

The following poems/prose are pieces I've written more recently. This exact month 10 years ago, I picked up a pen and wrote my very first poem on a McDonald's napkin. HA! I think it was about how Fantasy and Dreams were my only friend or something to that affect. Perhaps sadness has always been an inspiration to any artist. . . though, memories, love and connection aren't far behind.

I still write on napkins, and probably always will.

Here goes:


1) MY WRITING PROCESS: (And then)


I sit to write
and
I hear the echoing ache in the voice of Tennessee Williams as he was
struggling to bring dreams to art
I feel the eccentricity of e e cummings in all of his lower-cased
ill-grammar of glory
and the teaching spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke in his letters to a
young poet. . .

I see the heart of my mother, as a struggling young wife, the
disappointment and pain she must have felt, and yet the great joy she
has experienced through her wild life.
I see my heart there too enduring the pain she has inflicted upon it,
even unknowingly, but also the immense love she has unselfishly given.
. .is there also-- and I believe that she is equally unaware of her
mistakes as she is blinded of her magnificent goodness.

I remember the sound of ice cream trucks and the voices of excited
children during games of Red Rover during warm, breezy summers in
Northern California. . . the tiny blades of grass stuck between my
toes, and the reminder that it was time to go inside when the sun was
on her descent. . .

I also re-live many moments of despair that stayed far beyond their
welcome. . .nights so long, that morning never came. . . All the
struggles from foolish decisions, life's curve balls and possibly
divine love. I think of all the people I've loved and hurt, and the
ones who have loved and hurt me. . .

And I feel deeply inside my being, the nervous laughter that comes
from relief.
. . .like a confused and love-needy man who attempts suicide, only to
discover that his complex contraption of death has failed him. . .
there is a moment there, when the noose uncoils from around his neck,
disengaging the puzzle of time into a thousand broken breaths, which
say everything somehow . . . but nothing that language can bear to
utter.

Yes,
I pick up my pen using the memory of great poets
The imperfect beauty of my mother's humanity
and the childlike enthusiasm of youth

And with the extended casualties of my broken soul
I have the ability to put my pen to paper,

smiling with the gratitude of relief--
that although I deserved to die from my own self-inflicted weapons,
something reminds--
the writer, the lover and the life-giver in me,
that her book has yet to be written.

And

as the pain lifts from my mind just long enough for happiness to tiptoe in,
the incorrigible laugher of sorrow returns. . .
and then,

then

the words come


2) MADLY

There isn't anything worth a damn in this world except wild, mad love.
Not tamed, obedient love that can be placed in glass containers on
display. . .but undomesticated passion, the kind that disheveles your
hair on humid nights as the wind blows against you and waves crash at
your feet. . .it's the look of your lover that ignites you both into
flames of surrender neither is prepared for. I'm talking about love
that asks you to be things you didn't think you were capable of. A
love that requires us to carry burdens we didn't think we could carry,
which become delightful to take on for the sake of another. Oh the
pain and joy that comes from truly knowing another and by them, to be
fully known. There are so many avenues easier than love's course, but
at the expense of spirit and flame? Who wants easier? Perhaps we've
dreamt of love in stories...Romeo and Juliet, or a lost princess out
at sea longing to find her prince. We read of love's doom and
splendor, yet seldom recognize its truth and preponderance in our
lives when it comes knocking at our door half-dressed and homeless. .
.

Today I watched an old man at Lake Ella. His hair was dry as straw
and his face looked worn, not only from what life had perhaps given
him, but also from what he had lost. The sun touched his face in
desultory segments, as if he couldn't be fullly warmed by it. He
reached down for pebbles, moving them carefully between the grooves of
his fingers, then slinging them into the water with an almost precise
rage. I wonder to myself if he has lived in this town for many years
and had once sat at that same bench with his young wife. I think of
how much he loved her, how they met and the conversations they may
have had around the lake, holding hands under a clear May sky.
I got up from my pondering to walk past him for a closer look at his
face, but he didn't look at me. His face, now full of shadow,
remained steadfast on whatever he was dreaming about. . .her face, her
eyes, the way she smelled, or how when the light of the sun hit her
hair perfectly the red in it reminded him of the madness of secret
moments only they had shared. . .

As I made my way back to my car something touched me lightly, like the
fine edge of a knife blade. I felt it cut me, just slightly and
inside I flared hot, then cold, then hot. . .and then

I thought of YOU, whom I love, madly.


3) WE ARE THE PROOF

We disengage this puzzled night like specks of stardust being shaved
off the moon. Our liquid eyes insist that we murder the doubt which
fills them, but we find ourselves unprepared to be changed, like a
country being suddenly bombarded.

Our days are filled with fingers turning pages, casual sips of coffee
and random stares which tell a thousand truths.
Other people fill their days with million dollar estates, mind control, 401K.

But we are strangely sufficed with our own version of dreams, as your
eyes smash molecules and rivet me unknowingly into strange regions
(imagine an ocean full of flames or a blanket made of seashells)

We are not as we should be, but we do not wish to be as we should.

I hold a coma in my hand which stands for the patience we are both learning.
Behind you, hangs a mirror that doesn't reflect us accurately, which
stands for our destorted perceptions and limited minds.

And between us are words which we will never know the definition of.

Today you wear those unknown words instead of your dress shirt, with
pants as plaid and strange as your intrinsic self.
"God is here.", you whisper. . .

(you know-- scientists say that there cannot be two separate laws
governing the universe simultaneously, but I think they are wrong tonight.)
you are one

I am the other

And we dare to cross dimensions, as if our dreams were a wild river in East Texas.