TangledWings

Loving It All

I want to love this life,
this life I keep pushing away from myself
because of some comparative dissatisfaction,
because there is some kind of understanding
I have not quite grasped.
I want to pull it close to me, cradle it,
not just the soft pink blossoms of spring
which sprout from bare branches then bare fruit,
not just the colorful leaves in autumn
that shine against the gray sky and
even glitter in their falling.
I want to love too, the burning unbreathable air of summer
which steals the earth's fresh attempt at life
and I want to love the unlovable winter
whose cold pulls away all color and whose bitter teeth
tear the world apart.
I want to love more than just the life and resurrection,
I want to find a place in my arms
for the things that kill this life
without a second thought, for the things
that rip through beauty, never looking back.
I want to surrender this fighting,
this holding on, and wake to find beauty
in the very things that rip beauty apart.

A Poem for Thursday

They lie across the bed side by side
facing each other, their bodies only
a breath apart.  They both carry secrets
in their brown eyes, they both have hidden
and visible scars, they have both grown old,
grown into a place where they are tired,
tired of having too little and being afraid
of giving too much.

"I'm not sure I know how to do this,"
he whispers tentatively as he brushes
a few strands of hair from her face
with his fingertips.
"Neither do I,"
she assures him.
"All this is new to me and I'm scared.
Everyday I want to turn and run
the other way."
"Me too," she whispers,
pulling his body closer to her own,
resting her face on his weathered skin,
"but I'm so tired of never showing up
and loving only a little.
I don't want to be afraid of being loved
or worse, of being seen.
I'm too old for games and lies
and holding back.
I'm too old to not take this risk,
to not stand here with nothing
between us.  I'm too old to
only give you parts of myself
instead of my whole self.
I'm too old to keep hiding,
to keep tucking pieces of myself away.
If I keep holding on to them
I'll never fall apart and if
I don't fall apart I'll never find myself.
I choose you.
I choose you to push against,
to scream at, to make love with,
to discover myself with and
I want to be brave enough
to give you all my humanness.
I want to be brave enough
to accept all of yours."

"What if I can't sit
in so much love?  What if
I can't accept so much
humanness?  What if
I can't look you in the eyes or
let you look in mine?  What if
I can't let myself be loved?"
he asks, his head bowed and
his fingers laced between hers
as if in prayer.
"We could start with a few promises.
We could promise if we want to run
we'll tell the other.  We could promise
if it gets too be too much we'll say when,
than back away until we're ready for more.
We could promise to look each other
in the face.  We could promise
not to lie to ourselves any longer.
We could promise we're in this together."
He wants to make promises
just as she wants to make promises.
He wants to know who he really is.
She wants to discover all her secrets.
He wants to fall in and never look back.
She wants to open her arms
and take it all in.
He closes his eyes, bites his lower lip,
falls into her body and whispers
his answer in her ear.
She breathes in the scent of his skin,
kissing him lightly on his graying temple,
then lets herself slip into the
dark corner of his chest.

And that's what could have happened,
and that's what could have been,
if only one of them had rolled over,
if only one of them had given in,
if only one of them had found the courage
to clear their throat and stop
staring at the wall.

Sunday Scribblings {What I Carry}

She carries her poems
She carries her poems
like braille across her face
She carries her poems
in her blood and bones
tied to her wrists
and tangled in her hair
She carries them
on her lips and pours them
over his skin as he sleeps
She carries them
in her belly where they become a tree
growing from roots whose fists grip tightly
to the earth's damp flesh
branches reaching from her chest
to finger the sun
leaves with upturned faces
waiting to kiss the stars
She carries her poems
in the train of memory
she drags behind her
through the desert sand
and into the pastel horizon
She carries them
like a raven in the cage of her heart
flapping wildly but without feathers or form
a fierce flier who lifts into the air
once the door is open
and becomes a hawk
in graceful, powerful, attentive flight
She carries them
cupped in her pale hands
then tosses them towards the sky
to be scattered by the wind
weightless dancers twirling in the breeze
She carries her poems
in the dark secrets in her eyes
She carries her poems

A Poem for Thursday

*****in preface to this poem, and because I'm trying to learn to honor my poetry and let others know when something is meaningful for me, i have to say i really like this one.  i'm proud of this one.*****

There was a single cloud still hanging in the air
as the sun slid down the last window of day,
a pink organdy ribbon of a cloud
dangling in the blue-gray sky,
flapping lightly in the brisk autumn air,
and somewhere on the other end of that cloud,
somewhere standing near the edge
of the broken horizon,
there was a girl holding that sheer pink ribbon
between her fingers as her hair, newly let down,
fell to her shoulders, tumbled into her eyes,
got tangled in the few remaining remnants of light.
When I look out across the west and squint my eyes
I see a mirage of her and I want to drop this life
and start some holy pilgrimage to find her.
I want to run down the darkening dirt roads,
tripping on rocks, stirring the moths
from their sleep, until I make it to that crumbling
but surviving desert expanse where she stands
waiting.
I want to be there when that ribbon slips
from her fingers and is carried away by the wind.
I want to see the look on her face as she watches
a sliver of pink disappear from her sight.
I want to see the bashful way she lowers her head,
shaking it slowly in recognition of how easy it was
to let go.
I want to see the smile that breaks across her face,
a smile I want to name but can't quite reach--
confident yes, but more.  Flirtatious, yes,
but that would make it's power so small.
Passionate, brave, knowing, and free--
every word not quite right
but the whole of them all exactly what I see.
I want to see the way she walks into the night
with a new kind of grace, a new kind of courage
and hope spilling from her skin,
a new kind of razor breath filling her lungs.
I want to see the promise that paints her eyes
and leads her back home one step at a time.
But most of all I want to be there when
she glances up and looks in the direction
of the rising harvest moon. 
When the silver light hits her face
I want to see if I can find in her features
any resemblance of my own.

A Poem for Thursday...A Poem for Autumn

If God Were a Tree in Autumn

I want to be surrounded by so much gold,
lost in soft warm light, a hundred arms
holding me loosely, swinging me into
a wild blue sky.  I want to let go of
knotted fingers and let myself tumble,
unafraid of falling because the autumn leaves
are endless and there is no unforgiving
earth to break my fall.  I want to
stand under swollen branches, golden kisses
fluttering across my skin, so many
the wasted ones gather around my feet
begging to be picked up and tossed into
the wind for some other hungry soul,
for some long forgotten wish, for you.
I want to disappear in a fiery dance of color
the beauty of it all crying out to be remembered
as the butter glow of love picks me up,
pulls me close, and tattoos the scent of
season's change onto my greedy skin.

A Poem for Thursday

The knots around my heart loosen and my love falls around you
like rain that finally slips from the tight grip of the gray clouds above.
What I leave here in the muddy soil of my silence is the forceful pushing
of arms that have forgotten how to embrace, arms that can't remember
what it feels like to hold the soft spiny humanity of another soul.
What I take with me as I turn towards colors that break the sky in two
is a place inside the center of my chest, open and spacious with
no land mines and no barbed wire fences, a place large enough
to hold the resistance of both me and you, wide enough to contain
all the mistakes we've whispered when the other turned away,
deep enough to let forgiveness puddle at our feet and seep into
the ground discovering our roots.  The knots around my heart loosen
and I invite you in, taking your hand as you leave your fear
at the door to be washed by the eager hands of
the afternoon rain.

An Invitation Part 1

Your eyes worry me.
They hold so much I don't understand,
so much I want to dive into until
there is no fear of our own humanity,
our own weaknesses, our own faults and
failings, our own deeply rooted fears.
I want to give you this open space
between us to be nothing but your
most real and honest self.  I want to
see you, all of you, and not let my
fear pull me away.  Give me
the beauty of your humanity and I will
give you mine.  We can exhange the
things we hold so tightly and let
them melt in our tears.  I'll take
your scars, you can take mine,
and maybe in the giving we'll find
we're stronger than we ever thought,
we'll find we don't have to run
from the things we fear most.
Yes, your eyes worry me.  They
hold the world and I feel so small
and I know despite my big words and
shaky promises I'm tempted to run.
But that glimmer of brown wraps
around my legs and I stand still
waiting for one of us to break,
waiting for the freedom you can
only find in the broken pieces.

In Honor of Poetry Thursday

Well, if you've been following the status of our beloved Poetry Thursday created by the fabulous Liz then you'll know it's come to an end...well, at least the organized version.  What Liz did in creating Poetry Thursday was give poetry lovers. both new and old, an opportunity to not only share the poetry they love but to share the poetry they written themselves.  Through the Poetry Thursday experience bloggers who'd never shared their own poetry found the courage to put it out there into the world in bold black and white print.  Pretty amazing.  Although I'd been loving, reading, and writing poetry years before the creation of Poetry Thursday for me it was a chance to stretch my creative muscles and take even more creative risks.  In the year plus since the beginning of Poetry Thursday I have grown so much.  I have written more poetry than ever before and I have been introduced to so many poets I wasn't familiar with before.  So while Poetry Thursday may not be around any longer the impact it has had on my life and my writing will always remain and in honor of that I will continue to share poetry on Thursdays. 

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Something ripped the sky wide open,
a jagged tear letting in the light.
Something pulled the thread that
ties the heavens together and the
clouds came unraveled, drifting
through the morning in colors so
soft you want to touch them.
Something peeled away the dark
silhouette of last night's dream and
the stars tumbled to the earth
and were lost in the belly of the sun.
Something did this all, and I hope
it was me.  I hope it was the razor
edge of my happiness that cut into
the sky and set the morning free from
its dark cage of night.

It's Thursday...and Thursday means Poetry

Click here to visit the traveling poetry show...the theme is utopia and although i didn't write anything for the theme i did write a little something...

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You sit on the steps of the back porch staring across the nothingness
that fills the space between you and the distant horizon.  In your head
you toss around all your faults, all your wrong doings, all the pain you
know you've caused, all the lies you know you've told.  I know your
thoughts because I know your eyes--brown, forgiving, distrusting,
hungry, lost, on the verge of some kind of holy freedom.  I would give
the world to love you but your eyes won't let me in.  I hold in my own
scarred hands so much I want to show you but your eyes always pull
within.  I would string a hundred words together and tie them around
your wrists if I thought they would help you see, would help you find
your way home, but your eyes never break from the invisible promise
you keep expecting to walk out of that broken place between the
earth and sky.  One day, when I've traveled as far as the roads of
this life will go and I finally reach the horizon that haunts your soul,
I will step from that broken place you've come to depend upon, dragging
my skirt of poems like the wild eyed creature I know we both long to
hold, letting each word brush against the hot earth and stir the dirt
behind me as I go and when you squint your eyes and catch a glimpse
of my silhouette coming like a storm, know I am bringing to you every
promise I have collected along the way, know they're held tightly
against my chest, know they hold no magic but the magic you breathe
into their lifeless forms and also know I am coming to read aloud
every story you hold inside until they've all been told and witnessed
by the stars, until we find the ending you've locked tightly in the
gentle darkness of your brown eyes.

I've Been Hungry for Words Lately...

What you can't hear in the hushed
silence of my better days is
the moaning of the stars as they
prepare for night, their five-pointed
hands reaching into the black
for dreams, for memories, for the door
my soul tries to close before my eyes have
a chance to glance into the room beyond
for that face I remember, so young,
now so changed, that has always seemed
to belong to me, whether or not it ever
gave me a second thought, whether
or not it ever remembered my name,
whether or not it realized I had made
plans.