Sunday, April 23, 2017

Monologue

One day I wrote a poem about my heart. I guess I was trying to understand how it worked, or something, so of course I do this stream-of-consciousness sort of freestyle thing that goes on for two pages. Was it good? Definitely not my best, but I guess it was all right. That isn't really the point though, is it? Was it honest, or did it help me to understand myself? Well, maybe in pieces. What I recall the most about the poem was that it was two pages long.

A two page long freestyle, stream of consciousness poem, in size 12 times new roman, single spaced. And at the end of it I still had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. It just went on and on, and I ended up jabbering in circles, as a result? No clarity, only more questions.

Now one day, in the much more recent past, I wrote another poem. It wasn't about my heart, it wasn't about feelings or right and wrong or moral centers or what people expect of me and you and everyone else. It wasn't about acceptance, and it wasn't about friendship. It had nothing to do with social stigma or politics or the education system. It was a three line haiku, written in a chilly, rainy night in a room open to the woods and flanked by wysteria. On blankets that smelled slightly musty, and the noise of a few dozen bees about five feet from the foot of my bed. There was the popping of bamboo stalks on a bonfire in the distance that resounded like gunshots, and the sky was completely inked black by clouds.

See the point is you don't have to puzzle over everything. Not everything can have related logic patterns and make perfect sense.

Life doesn't MAKE sense. Life is chaos. Love is chaos. And the heart? It beats, it pumps blood, it can be dissected and recreated into a jet engine turbine that doesn't have a pulse, or whatever. It can be measured and tested, it is a muscle in a body full of muscles and it is made of flesh and blood, and without one we die.

But it is also the part that links our souls to our bodies, you know. When something hurts, we feel it there, in our hearts. When something gives us immeasurable joy, that is where we feel it. It is the safety pin holding our souls to our bodies and an anchor to this reality, and the string to the end of our kites. And that safety pin bit, the clincher, the anchor, the little golden thread is an inexplicable, incomprehensible mystery.

Who the hell am I to try and explain or fathom or logic it?

And in that case, who the hell do you think YOU are to try, either?

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Love Poem


To Jes & Jayce

My heart Believes in many things
In first sight, distance growing & true.
It used to believe that one was for one
Until it began to think anew.

There are so many of us here,
dwelling, fighting, laughing on this rock,
And we are split, fractured and divided
as we look for a heart's building block.

Who is to say that you love only once?
That only one person will be all you own
That you can only live in monogamy
Or else be damned, outcast and thrown.

My heart Believes in many things -
That My Love is true and kind
But that another can make us whole?
"Yes," my heart made up it's mind.

So when we three walk hand in hand
With smiles and hearts linked like a fence
One man, two women, all friends in this void
If we're at peace? If just to try, it just makes sense.

Monday, April 10, 2017

How Many

When man was new
And soul-gifted, freely given
And Will and Spirit born,
How many were there to go around?
When the Earth was young,
And man first crawled about,
helpless infants fresh to life
They all had a soul each, I assume.
One for each matron, girl and crone
One for each brother and father
One for each lover and each villain.

But that was many years ago.
There is no newness about man,
And I wonder, at what point
Did whomever-up-there decide
"Well, I just ran out -
So let me break them into pieces,
That way everyone gets at least a little."
Because they evidently thought it fair.
But it isn't.

Since we all only have a piece
A sliver of something once whole,
We slave and search and wonder
for the rest of us, driven, determined
to find just one other piece of us.
So in fact, whomever-up-there gave us holes.
And if you happen to find one piece -
Or Good gracious lucky you, Two! -
Hang on to them good.
Because it only makes sense that you -
And them, and her and he and whomever you see -
Can fill each other's souls in
Like a puzzle. (Or another cliche.)
Add thus be a little more whole
Then you were before.