Starving

Some days, it seems,
without my choosing
I am not grateul
not thankful
not happy to be alive
without you
But here I am
anyway
Gorging on your memory
digesting the past over and over
and over again
with starving eyes and lips

Some days, I am not grateful
Only faithful that you have
fed me enough
to keep me full
without you here

Too Far

When the words in your throat
Strangle you
When the hope in your heart
Is replaced with complicity
Not able to remember pain
Or joy
Or future
Or past
When the poet in you is covered
Buried alive
Barely alive
When you feel the pain come up
And you tell yourself
No, I can't speak to you today
Or this week
Or this month
Or this year
And the pain buries
deep down
Cuddled around your happiness
For warmth
Growing bigger and sicker
Each day
When the life you live begins
Killing you from the inside out,
That's when you know
You've gone too far.

Salvation

I feel you everywhere I go
and I find you, traces of you.
sometimes it's unexpected
jimi hendrix painted on a street corner
in Dublin
Jefferson Starship on the radio
on the really hard days.
A really funny, inappropriate joke
at the table over
Days that just work out
and days that don't.
Those times, finding you is a 
secret code only I know
and you
those days, finding you
feels like salvation and
loosing you all over again.
Craving your soft hugs and
fearing the coldness after the warmth.
Those moments
I forget.
I painted my eyes with you
long ago.

No

The day you took my home
ate it up and left me
empty
the day you destroyed my voice
swallowed my "no"
I couldn't recognize it
I had been preparing for this day
trading dignity for safety
years of dulling my fear with
The illusion of control
Believing I could stop the fire inside you
From burning me
Not allowing myself to feel my
Already chard skin
I turned over and exchanged
your rage for my spirit
Your touch burned and
branded my skin
and my silence told me
It'll end soon
I don't know why I said "no"
on that day
the reservoir of refusal cracked
and slipped out the truth I
had avoided
contained and hid
the day you took my "no", and
flatened my words underneath
your weight
was just another day.
My life had ended
long before

Curves

I can trace the curves of my body with the full moon.
I can feel the flow of my cycle as the ocean tide
rise and relent, blood and water, ebb and flow. 
Is it any wonder? 
I move to the beat of the universal heart.
I feel the breath of the world as it is
Whole, deep
Simple in it's complexity.
Me.

For My Lost Love

I look for you everywhere

Every second of everyday
I look for you and I find you
I seek you out
Create the spirit of you in every action.
I find you in my giving,
In my connections with people I never
would have connected with before.
Before you taught me what it is to
Connect with people
Through a concerted effort
To see one another for who we truly are.
I find you in my passion,
Pulsing through my blood.
I hear you say, "Yes, now is the time for action"
And I listen.
And i show up.
Because I look for you
And find you in the news
Sitting on cement, arms linked,
In articles on the just treatment of humanity,
In the eyes of people I know
I can learn from.
I look for you everywhere,
And I find you in everything good,
And difficult, and necessary.
And still, it's not enough.

Gone

I thought I saw the mountains today

though the train window

for a moment I forgot where I was and

felt a rush of the familiar

I never knew I needed.

I thought I saw the mountains today but

they were just clouds and

I was still gone.