“look for a way around,” you had said
“walk another way, swing your
hips east instead of west” -
and so, i tried to listen,
cautiously, fervently,
somedays even religiously
to place my faith in “the other way”
and from a stone, i became a pebble
from a pebble, i became dust
and the roads still meandered,
but for Someone Else this time
because all the yesterdays
would want to vaporize
and all the Todays
will belong to you now,
planted in the palms
of your weathered hands,
and you’ll wait and lean
against the closed doors
for the clouds to part
once i set out to walk away.

i had left the remainders of my life,
where i couldn’t trip over them,
wrapped in pieces inside boxes
with sharp edges that i had forgotten
to put away, because ever so often
a secret is such a good companion
and the only one we ever get to have
and still, no one told me that
someday, the fog outside
would set into my eyes
and i would stumble around
stone pillars imprisoning me
in my own home.

when i close my eyes
all i can see
are spools of thread
unraveling,
and i watch them fall
when they come undone,
meandering to the floor,
one step after another,
hitting the walls,
knocking against banisters
and slowly my ears
tune in to the sounds,
the thumping of empty
hollow tubes against
planks of wood
covered in carpet
made of wool
from balls of yarn
that held secrets
in their hearts of hearts
made only
of sugar and
maybe some air.

my life was just a dream,
a constant ray of light
streaming through
tall stained glass windows
over higher ceilings
where the church mice
could never crawl up towards,
and who ever found a way
touch and feel God the way
I feel my skin webbed
between my fingers –
life was inside me,
or so i was told,
sitting cross legged
next to my own God
who I couldn’t find,
couldn’t feel, couldn’t
just will into existence,
and there were mounds
of dirt that I walked through,
that I sat on, that had my heart
buried underneath–
i’ve felt depths
and i’ve felt blackness
that wasn’t always
mingled with the textures
of foreboding
and the timbres of silence
where no amount of sanctity
could have found me
before i found myself
and learned to breathe
once again.

it’s just another world of sand
and when a grain of dust moves
and settles down again when
no one’s watching,
when no one’s listening,
when not one person turns their head,
could you ever feel it passing,
grating through the curves of the hour-glass
to settle into your eyes.

don’t lose heart now, she said to me,
we’ve all walked on these roads
fraught with the sounds
of broken vases, and cracking china,
and shattering goblets, shuddering,
tinkling above the ground with the
earthquakes raging beneath -

- but roads rise and fall,
and breathe, like we do,
like they always have,
and their edges
will soften with time,
if only to make walking
without shoes
just a little bit easier.

elbowing my way through boxes. yea, that’s what

i’m doing. i’m elbowing my way through boxes.

you know you’re going to be bruised purple if you

do that. you know…you know how your blood

congeals on the surface.

no, these are soft boxes. but they have sharp

corners that look like they’re just waiting to cut into

me.

you know, it’s so easy to bring your hand back

and walk away. 

easy was never my thing, you know that. how

could i ever see the light

if i didn’t push through doors?

like pin pricks? do you really like them? all

because one man’s dust is another man’s gold?

we sat together to breathe

under own trees, didn’t we?

my truth never became your truth.

i would like 

to get out of my dreams

and breathe in the air

that my face wants to feel

just to feel alive

and if only to put my feet on the ground

and let the grit of the road sink in,

because sometimes pebbles sprinkled

along the way can tell me where i think

i need to go.

yet, so often,

i find myself 

standing still.

i dance better with blue ribbons, i’d always thought,

and brown poles that let the purple

clowns lean on them, you know, like maypoles,

not that i’ve ever met a purple clown, but Billy tells me that

they fly outside French windows when 

poet’s sit down to scratch words on to paper

and the world moves on with nary a word revealed,

and all for the quest for the squeezed dry wisdom

from pearls say aye, because when we’re done

chasing our own kaleidoscopes and when we fawn

over pieces of colored glass,

because rainbows somehow became far too cliched,

we’ll be back to prancing

with blue ribbons all over again.

i’m not going to die, i thought,
turning pages from day to day
from breath to breath, soaking in
the ink in my fingertips, climbing mountains
of words meandering through wooded trails
to pretend
that i had once tried to live -

- because i know air moves
above the atmosphere,
above the clouds, above the blue
skies, where i can breathe, where
i can lean back, where i can inhale
and pick my own book
to pen down my own stories.