El Corazon Amarillo

I found a gold balloon
tucked safely in
your book of words.

You speak of yellow hearts
and foreign lands
and returning from the sea.

I know none of these things
but through your eyes.
Indeed,
I know very little.
I am still on shore
and wondering
what use I am.

I left this life once, you see -
a chance given,
my soul took its flight.
But still,
I linger, tethered
and no reason remains.

I am compacted ash
waiting for the rains
and wind
to make sense of me again.

Nameless Suns

There is a time
that is about stripping away
all from your life
that does not make you live.

There is a time
that is about paring down
and turning around
and down and back again
until all you have is a
worn circle of dirt
beneath bare feet.

There is a time
of peeling back your skin
and standing pink
under a burning sky
of falling friends
and ashes for homes.

There is a time
for all of this,
but it is
not
now.
Now is the building time,
now is the mending time,
now is the learning time.

Now is a slow creation
with skilled breaths
and cheated hearts that still love
and rusty voices
that never forget
how to weave matter
and thought
into nameless suns.

Misplaced

I have been
misplacing my pens
lately.

Or maybe I place them
and then move my self
to more empty locations.

Words are pouring in
like the sickness that came
in the night
but it doesn't get better.
They only beget more.

I hold them close,
the only children I will bear.
Though they are neither disease
nor child, truth be told.

They are Spirit.
They are Divine,
they are Neruda, Oliver, Rilke
following me home
in slim volumes
that sleep with me
on blankets of down.

They jostle as I reach
for the pen I cannot place
and whisper,
"More."

The Devil's Hand

It feels like the devil's hand
all fire and want
bubbling up from damned places.

All there is to do
is let it burn me down,
and find that silver flame,
the thin kite string back to me
and follow it out
of the dowsing waters.

And on the other side
I blink the ashes free
and find I am not lost,
just pink skin
and tired mind
but not destroyed at all.

Starling Barge

Everything is brilliance
and dust
and dying stars
on my doorsteps.

Shame and shining joy
war for coverage of my heart
and just for the night
I let joy win,
knowing shame is never far.

For now, joy's door
is easy to nudge open,
the setting sun holds it there,
a barge that pushes and ferries
my unkempt wildness
into wordless song.

In joy's light
everything is starling moments,
beginnings
and formless creation -
the root of me
sunken deep in the dark soils of time.

It is splendor -
uncontained,
wild and free
the dust of the Universe
breathed in through my
solar sun
and lighting softly
on the heart.

For now,
it is all that I am.
It is enough.