pieces misplaced..

there are just some moody days
when i feel like falling in love
give me some light
give me some energy
and i'll do the rest

we've come across a thousand words
and we've backtracked even more
from days long gone

she says i hope i can make it up to you someday
and then reminds me that she loves me.
i let silence answer her words on my screen-
sometimes words aren't enough to fill the gap
that 38 yrs creates..

i turn and think of you
and i think how you've lived pretty exclusively
left love on the outside of your heart
and i think that these are days you can't get back
they are days you may someday regret not filling with love
of another
or with another.

i read that love is as practical as anything else
and i want to tell you that
but instead i hold that truth a little closer
and i promise to love you a little more

i am feeling a little lost
but not for mis-direction
but more because i've been dreaming lately
and my dreams aren't the things of contentedness
they are struggles and rips at the seams
and boundaries that have been ignored and stepped upon.
the boundaries that permanently scar-

i am feeling a little bit angry that despite realizing i've outgrown her
she still creeps into my life and reveals her insensitive memories
and even more careless impressions of me from a past we've been passed out of.

i'd love to fall in love
with an idea
with a secret understanding
but today i will settle with words

and the realization that i'm a little bit tired
and a little bit scared of what's yet to come
the same way that i worry about being more than a little misunderstood..

vinyls seats and torn napkins..an old letter opens.

she says it's good for the both of us
and i can't help but sink a little deeper into the the vowels and adjectives we use to explain how we witness each other.

i speak and foolishly tell her all too much so much of the time
but as she bends lower and tucks her hair behind her ears as she does out of habit
i want to reach over and just touch her face
witness her a little closer
weaken her defenses
if even for a moment

to see if she's actually listening.

we are all never truly listening i swear.
out of nowhere, if even in my damnedest attempts, i am caught off guard
i am distracted
by who i am and who i want to be
by what i am feeling
by what i want to say

i am suddenly an old man
an old woman
broken and deaf
and at just the wrong moment in existence

and then the moment is gone.

i am sometimes the temporary visitor
with a half packed suitcase
one door here and one
in the next moment
or next lifetime.

i tell myself
that this is no way to live a life
but i swear it happens
and then it doesn't.

and in some moments
i'm frozen
stuck in the moment
a head tilted back
lips parted open
breath moving slowly in and out

eyes closed
and a waiting is happening.

that is where i am right now.

mesmerized and still.
and i'm listening
with everything i have.

angelic voice in my ears
slowly stripping the defenses i've spent a few lifetimes honing
and like a dress
i find myself bare with my cover around my ankles
naked in some false hope
that served no purpose at all.

i am as random as they come
and i'm as flattened as the the tallest building is tall.

if you need to call up to my towers
or find the love that resides in this body of mass and water
you need nothing but a willingness to climb
and be tested by some faulty elevators

but know you will rest easy
once you get higher..

the redeemer in us..

melancholy and sticky i lay here trying to fit into all the situations i can imagine myself in

sticky with you like glue on my fingers
running with drum sticks looking for  the skins to beat a rhythm of myself into

you'll never know how the disingenuous talk has worn on me
i think of the millions of words my eyes have crossed
and the millions more my ears have suffered.

there is nothing that surprises me more than the absolute truth in the matters of the heart.
i walk in
bent on the moment
and i greet all the dogs at my feet and in my bed
and i find a woman silently reading from some book that will bring us closer to our truth
and i find myself further from mine

the irony passes over me for but a moment
then in the next breath i walk over to kiss her
kiss her like yesterday was only ours
and like tomorrow will never arrive.

i am no fool
i know how things can change
i know how allegiance can be traded like the skin on our backs, if they aren't the right hue
but i digress
and willingly give into these moments of chaos searching for the grace that i want us to exist in
if only in my ever changing mind

you'll never know i am the least involved in the making sense part of this
i am at the mercy of my expansive heart and even more boundless mind.

i let you see this side of me
messy and faltering
crashing in and upside the tidal walls that are supposed to contain this

call them breaker walls-
and i will tell you of a death or two.

angst in the pores of my misunderstanding
and clarity in my intent

we are the same in our dissimalar take on the subscription filled world.
we are the same in our principles
we are different in our expressions and risk taking

perhaps a bridge will unite us
as the words coax us closer
to finding some similar
understanding

of what scares us most.
we can take on these big things
the two of us
all we need is a table
a moment
and a few orders to work us out

meet me anywhere and we'll unfold all of this

two worlds
a million hang ups
and one meaning
in what it's all about..

links and smokey mirrors

i overcorrected she said
as she slowly slides out of her seat and away from me

this is how these things fall to pieces
the romanticism in the world explodes in the tiniest moments of intimacy
it just falls where it will fall

i'm riding along this wave of newest self discovery
i'm hovering along the walls of shadows
looking for ways to lose myself
when i suddenly am forced to reckon with the idiot truth in the matter

you can't run fast enough away from some truths that find their way to the doorstep of your consciousness.

i ran into your lover last week and she seemed happy with her new love
sort of like she's forgotten herself in the new direction
we spoke
and we ate
and we talked about things that were things but not things at the same time

and i recalled how at one time i was a regular in her life
and how i was more of a regular in your life
and i realized how neither of you fit the key i held
neither stuck around long enough to stay tuned

it is what it is
and that's the way it inevitably goes.

but on to you i find my mind
and my imagination

a slow departure from the distractions
i want to understand the strum and the quick tempo inside of me
that you give rhythm to

somehow i lost myself along the way
and as much as i wish i could
as much as i would
there is no simple complete solution.

oh how i wonder
and how i melt into the made up situations

then i wake up
and walk around with this proverbial boner
waiting to bone the way to the middle
of the truth

if only it was that simple.

i dive and i swell
all about you
all inside of you
and i wake up feeling just as confused..

witness

4.22

new world immigrant reaches out to first world indigenous
the exchange was more than complicated.

it impacted me much like the failed response:
leaving me confused and hopeful just the same.
that somewhere, somehow
the new people of our land haven't forgotten or unlearned how to care for the ones who founded it..

you said tonight
you can illicit a reaction in much the same way you can push a button.
you sat across from me, splayed across the vinyl recliner taking the same pain as i was
 saying nothing
breathing deep as i was reminding you from across the room
you know i will always tell you just what i want to tell you
and you will tell me in your own way things that i will understand.

it's about semantics
and it's about the in between questions that don't get answered by living in the now
the questions live inside the moments lived on auto pilot and lived in the moment

we trust differently.

i know i am a lonely love
i have my limits in letting others in
and you have a hard time getting close enough to see the opening.

you think i know what i'm talking about
but in reality
my fingers miss the abstract letters of recognition on the typerwriter i first learned emotion on
and my mind switches gears where there are none

oh how i miss the challenge my friend
how i miss the roll call to be present in conversation

we take those chances and show our vulnerabilities
we dive deep to find new oxygen for each other.

when i return to me
i ask myself why i'd ever want to leave the space when i'm closer to everything
but the dismal distractions find their way to me inevitably
and i trade my exotic space of awareness for the strange fruit  that they hang in front of my tired eyes

waiting on a friend..

be just who you are she says
as she leans in close enough for me to smell tomorrow on her

how can i wake up wishing for a different set of circumstances?
circumstances that omit so much of what i thought i wanted.
how do you reconcile the realization that what seems to work for everyone else
doesn't come close to fitting this proverbial womanly self?

sitting awkwardly in a place i've sat a million times before in passing
feels different when i'm waiting for her to come out.
i'm smart enough to know the seeming escape that so closely symbolizes who you are to me now
is not the exact direction i'm heading.

i'm merely feeling things at a level of clarity that i've seemingly been too distracted to see before.
perhaps i'm more awake.
take away the toys, the gadgets and the lover
and things break down to simple again
and become more easily swallowed..