We flew to the moon

We flew to
             the moon via balloon,
watched the earth
shrink
smaller and smaller until it was a trifling, pea sized ball.
                                  I felt so light.
 
                                        The moon was a field of flowers:
poppies and tulips and whatever you like and the grass waved a welcome and we laid
                                               right down.  I looked at
                                                    the sky,
                                                         still blue here and thought about our getaway,
                                                                      how it was planned years ago. You were the
                                                                        ones.

The boy ran to his father, embraced in so much love and you girls, twirled, arms outstretched, giggling, flowing with the air, simple, fancy dresses fluttering with your steps and I closed my eyes, smiled
and relaxed.
Then He and I floated on a raft crafted from wood, square and big enough.

                                           Fear did not exist.


Poetry Jam

Love is determination

Love is determination.
                         Nothing more, nothing less.
This,
I have determined.
           It's neither lofty
                nor unattainable. Not
gushy,
gooey, grand.
I'd say it's work but
            that's cliche and love hates cliche.
                       It's choice, gleaning, grit.
Sheer but strong.
It's overthought and underdone,
                        a battle.
noble, gentle and hardly touched,
 loyal,
 present ever,
                         rising at night with crying babe, toiling in menial tasks.
                           It gives when emptied,
 found in silence, best.
Rare, delicate, less exciting than one would guess.
             It's
             intention, earnest,
patient when ill expressed, laborious but not impossible,
                    It will wake you in the dark,
drive you to your knees, not grouped with green but
                                                                         blue.
Crimson compliments, creating
violet and
             gambols less like
butterflies than settles
 heavy as lead.  If this be not
    the case, then love,
I know it not.
        Worn often by lesser creatures, attired
                                                             in shabby rags.
                                                            It growls in a mother bear,
stupefying, warm as
                                                                        sun,  For a man, I've known it once and grappled with its terms.
Now, not laid to rest but
found in different form,
 I surrender,
acquiesce,
allow,
 put down my thought with pen.

My own words taste stale
       or like a favorite meal,
      overindulged in too many times.
                              They knell in my head, a warning,
fly
                                                                   from mouth,
chewed on, still, out
            of habit.
                     They've grown dull at best, sickening, stomach turning in their worst
but I can't shut up.
     Incessant,
loud and lusty,
 they repeat
              the same old bull shit.  I need a mute button and a
                                     loss of ways to
                                                 write or the courage to choose from the menu,
                                                                                            something new. Monopolizing,
                                                                                               mastering my
                                                                                               mind,
vacuous as rhyme.
With heaven
  as
  a witness, I do solemnly swear
        to tame
       the
       tart, suffer silence,
              stave
              self-consuming, vain and vaulting verbiage.
                                                         Later.
Facts are vapid,
                                                                     feelings
                                                                     favored but my truth gritty on my tongue
                                                                      as your honesty meanders by.  I have to spit it
                                                                           out
                                                                               to save me, ask you what you can not answer..
If you could see me now, see me at all,
the burden of my song would shock you, the scandal of thieving seasons, the lyrics of
                          swelling heart, auditioning for a role I'm too
                                                       old to play now.
Ripen a new year without me, a chapter without my account, my
fluency is fleeing.  Mourning molehills
     no more.
If you want
               to hear my voice, hearken now.
                                   I'm poetic,
full of point and over bold
                                but for moments
                                            more.
The buffet's closing and I am not a
                                                                      smorgasbord.
                                                                              Get it while it's hot, fatten up and feast on what I've got
cause soon the words will
                       writhe, starved for your affection not
                                    again.
Supple once, superlative
          ever,
stirred by sword, they'll stream lulled
                                         and softened, oil colored,
whole.
 A refrain, thickcoming but anew.
You'll look
back in languor, languishing
        in all you never said, lamenting
                                       lack of valor but in sublimity of station,
I'll stun you with my strength of quiet.

Stating Finally

How ought
  one to know when
         the
            end of love should be?

                              Some might say,
 love,
 if it
be true,
         ends not.

How then, ought
   one to know when
love is true? (If emblazoned flame dims to mere dulled glow can she then be reassigned? 
                                               Destroyed in 
                                                              imagination, existing only in the substance of
                                                                          the actual, whatever that is, does she die with death or answer Hamlet in elements
                           strong and stunning?)

                                  I know not.  I know only this:
                                                  that she whispers relent-
                                                                                lessly, (must we treat her as
                                                                                                              a 
virus, kill her with starvation,
cure ourselves with lust instead? Abuse her in her
    redemption, her assumption,
                         her persistence, harbor
malice toward her tender grace?  Deny pursuit for fear
            of sham? 
Gloss illusions, hoarding piteous imitation, bargain legalities of- 
                               disadvantaged humans that we are.  
     Social dances, we empty purse of sentiments pinched,
 garnering interest as we go, shush her when she comes to supper, call her bluff, her fluff. It makes us blush. 
                        She's blunt and eager, sighing
                                         and we have work to do. 
                                                                  Reduce her to a grudge, shelve her, 
               hold her
tongue,
we of sober mind find solace in naked,
                      natural
void.
She is for the young, the stupid, the uninformed.  What might she say
      if we should listen?)
                                                                                   seeks now to give, requiting less a need than once, twice,
thrice before.
She is truer than
bluer, baser pining, tall and ever guiding, honest in submission, if less so in admission. (She won't be rushed so we snub her 
                                                          healing, sooth marrow with alleviating whim) She speaks
                                                                in silence and in words
                                                                in souls, in hearts, creation.
                                                                         Loudest often in her absence
                                                                                                  and quiet when observed.
                                                                                                                             She's all
                                                                                                                                      and everywhere.
Seen not
when sought by self.
Perhaps, nature, her purer form
        and realized
                                                                 deeper there.
She weaves with
       wind,
sings with swallows, dares to dwell in dust
                   and in these places, I admit, I've often overlooked
             her air.
                   Alone, I hear her
say I'm not and
she whispers
secrets I can not
         tell
and though I'd like to pluck her from the heart (for
what can the 
                  heart know?) and place her somewhere nobler - the soul is safer, the spirit wiser-
                                                                                                          I fear she'd just return.

And so the question haunting; (the
             thorn offending,
scandalous revery, composed of perfect view) this I find, I can return,
            to where love was born or made, discovered or existent all along.

                     In drops, I understand her mystery, exchange musings for her maker.
     Make
     me, still.
     Made me
once
 to love, be loved, to wonder
and releasing, I will give
                                                     and receiving, I will
                                                                                live.
"Where there is love there is life."
                     She is true as beauty, beautiful
                                      as truth.
Love
     ends not
for she possesses no beginning.
     She circles life and subject, inviting, not expecting,
hand held out or
     down,
I've grabbed her,
                entered now her orbit, retraction
                 no more a choice than day and night, embodied within a spectrum,
light's glory shining bright
 and encompassed but extended, my own hand travels out; an invitation lacking only expectation,
stating finally,
                love never ends.

Carry On Tuesday
The Music In It

What I Need

Gray suits me and I need you, baby.
             These days of sun
                                   strike
waken me
   and I find myself in need.
                       I want to
bask in sweet nothings and talk for hours,
                            hear your voice.
                                              I've had enough of Shakespeare's sonnets,
Melville's
musings,
Eliot's enigmas. I'm craving simple, lounging dawn-to-dark with television, treats.
   I'm weak.
        Weak without
you
and I need you, baby.
The commonplace, I long for, long nights at your place,
                                                                          please.
I'm falling short of words, not a thing to say.
I'm light and easy, healthy, waiting on your laugh,
                                                              relishing, enraptured by your
captivating superfluity,
                 silenced by your
flourished speech, patiently I'm missing you, desire dilating.
      I want to
              take a back road,
get lost in your gaze, marry in the morn.
             I've had enough of me.  I need some more of you.


Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

The Language That Is Mine

I want
         to pinpoint this.
              I'm like a crime scene investigator, staring at the wall I've covered in overlapped scraps of  information, facts and theory,
clippings of fragmented
                  feelings..
                     
                       I stand back, tilt my head like the angle viewed is going to make a difference.
                       I'm decoding, analyzing hints,suspecting clues; the infraction:  my love for you.
                                             And I want to
                                             add it up,
compare,
contrast,
           simplify,
                  find a reason why,
                                                                   a motive for my heart's rebellion.
                                                                     
 My mind
shines the light, searching
          to expose, drilling as hours pass but my heart won't speak.
Instead she counts the minutes, waiting to escape, plotting her next move.
            She sees
            something I don't
              or, rather, cares not for rhyme or reason, explanations,
                                     sense.

The writing's black and white but the lines are blurred
                             and what should be is not
                             and what should not be is.

                                                    Desirous cravings, hormonal, temperamental,
                                                                        vision clouded by recent famine, you've intruded
                                                                         into all I thought I knew.
                                                                         I sift through
your indecision, comb uncertainty
                                           and come up in equal knots, a categorical, entangled mess.
                                                                                  The elements
dissent and I protest but
                        oh,
 it's no use.
I can't steady any supposition, proposition, the mad frenzy of imagination trumping meaning.
    Apologize for absence with jagged excuse,
                                                      dim the lights, I'll forget the schism between what I know and what I  want,
flex beneath every unuttered promise,
                                            parse not for missing punctuation,
waste in expectation till
      the truth
settles like dust upon my shoulders, bare.

            It's coming and the wind is blowing,
                                          whispering her own  amour,
                                                                         alleviating all
remaining compositions of unmatched
                     parallels, drawing
                                             genius from my
countenance,
metaphor from proof, manifesting
mystery from my
    sinner's strut.
            Reduction, renewal,
            reaffirming weighty
                             the purpose of the song.

I'll leave
you lambent, basking
            better, not my own.
                   Relish rareness,
                       I like your quiet way.  I won't retract
                                             the language
                                              that is mine
but
    the muse,
             she goes with me, poesy prancing
                                        past your narrations so
                                                        neatly lengthened.

Free will carries far.

       
Wonder Wednesday

Beyond

Oh, leaping heart, frisky
                            flitting like birds from
                                            branch to branch, on a primrose path,
                                                 never pausing long enough to truly
                                                                                      see the new,
 blue wild or hear the lyrics of the  brook; her come away tune.

    Oh,
       heart, these days, your own song rings hollow, listless,
                              searching phantom pleasures
while beyond these walls you've built, there's glory.

Fly beyond.
Fly high, beyond the bounds of rocky confines of mutable moments.
Perch,
      heart,
lofty and noiseless, listen to the silence of your desire.
                   Soar above dry land, dry seasons.
Flight is yours
but fly.
 Rush no more.
Although, the land is safe,
you were born for air.

At Jingle Poetry and The Sunday Whirl