A tentacled masculine life
Of backyards and meat
Grass tidy and neat
You found yourself a wife
Is it all so toxic
If you found peace
In a role call
To feed and heat
Not for you
Yes for me
It just ain’t me babe
In this we’re not the same
Maybe the only life I’ll lead
Is of anonymity and femininity
Every now and then
I find a balance
Optimism that’s paper white
Not yellowed by time
Or wrinkled by tears
My mind inside a paper lamp
Lifted by a breeze
Carried by the wind
I don’t want to come down
From that glowing height
Forgetting
Is a drug
A crutch
And a curse
It serves its purpose
Remedies the past
A prescription painkiller
A memory marauder
This crutch steadies the brittle
Weaponizes the worn out
Welcomes the willing
But it is indiscriminate
Tosses out the baby with the bath water
What’s broken with what’s whole
Until it’s all a wash
And nothing is dirty or clean
My art isn’t inspiring
I’ve tried that
It isn’t me
My hands shake
Most of the time
From negative thought
Do I write for catharsis?
Or is it wallowing?
Are those any different?
I try to stay positive
But my writing turns dark
Like an unwanted sunset
Though sunsets are often beautiful
I’m just as much a force of nature
As that oceanic blitz
Just as hit or miss
Sixty percent water and forty percent pain
The embodiment of the thunder and the rain
I’ll always be this way
A torrent and a grace
Obsessive and compulsive
But secure in my own space
I’ll always be the breaker
You’ll always be the shore
You need the calmest waters
I’ll always want much more
Maybe there’s a wrong way to do this
And maybe there’s a right
So wrestles my mind
As you lick the honey from your lips
Sweet-mouthed and sugar-eyed
I’ll wonder from this point on
If you made the right choice
Between my voice
And the words of other boys
I never got finality
I see that’s the problem now
Left hanging like a severed branch
Thinking it may still grow
One good gust and it was over
Every new day brings us closer
To finally letting go
I have no words
When I feel this way
Sadness and angst
From you and for you
My hands go numb
When I allow my heart
To take the journey back
Towards the start of this road
I can’t forget the finale
The unwinding of the story
A frayed and tattered end
I can’t forget the future
Threads divorced from tapestry
Allowed to weave again
When a droplet of reality
Disturbs these glasslike waters
The entire surface dances
Shaken from peace to turmoil
Awakening from slumber
Is that ever a negative?
For better or for worse
You’re made alive
Quickened to moving and breathing
From stagnation to stirring
Given new vistas
New ways to view what’s old
Rekindled from long-cold coals
I’ve met the lonely soul
The face of a stranger
In my own eyes
It’s only in the rippled view
That I see myself clearly
For who I am
Rather than who she made me
That water of life
Is of my own making
You wanted me in totality
The stuff of your dreams
Untainted by my reality
Where I could only offer bite sized pieces
I wanted you in quiet moments
When the edge wore off
And my nerves weren’t firing
On all the wrong cylinders
We wanted something
Bigger than ourselves
Somehow we got it
Two beautiful faces
A glimmering future
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