colorless stand alone..

how can we truly know what it takes to sustain another
small gestures offered in periodic attempts
prove to be insufficient again.

i blame and i judge myself thinking i could have done more
i could do more
but don't and i didn't.

or did i?

too many people in my arena of this familial circle
believe in little
and give maybe less than what is needed in certain situations
and in this case it seems i've been handed the same sort of shortcomings

it hurts to lose another man in my life
it hurts that others have shut out and down on their own-
just out of reach.

pictures remind me that she has moved so far on from him
and she's taken a daughter with her.
she is deserving of the love
they both need someone they can rely on
but it's like swallowing something sideways to see evidence of their joy so soon.
i don't know if i'm protecting the brother who didn't offer more
or if i'm protecting what i see as loosely mine or ours.

so many things are shifting as i try to lay down my own roots in a 4 walled little house.
i'm beginning to realize roots have nothing to do with where your materialistic accumulations lye.
i think they are deep and unseen in letters that tie you to others.

T A N G Y E.
you have felt foreign to me at different points in my life
but now i am burrowed in your crevices
i am searching for some shelter in what you've held in the years i've belonged to you.
it seems the clan is dismantling quickly and things have begun to unravel.

who will remained aligned
and who will jump ship?

i'm needing some space
and some creativity mixed with a little self destruction.
i want to fill my lungs with the smoke of my youth
the careless wandering
and the endless resolve.

i want to forget the missing parts of this clan
and fall back to when things were quiet
out of choice
and not abandon.

can i get there if i wish hard enough?

i'm insatiable
and not finding what i thought i was looking for anymore.
perhaps feeling lost is where i will find myself again.

they say being lost is the best way to find creativity.

i could use a little of both..

he danced to the end of love...

leonard cohen sang me to the news of your passing grampa-
a melody for the tracks of tears to follow
there is no one story that i can share that summarizes 90 years of your life
there is only the sweet emotion of memory and calm that describes you to me.

i've long given up on memory to remind me of the story
i allow a single emotion to hold you close
as well as a snap shot of your hands.

so gentle and sweet you were-
with words of love
you'd respond
"i love you back"

i am sad but happy for you to finally be with your love again-
dad says you left us one day short of gramma's 7 yr anniversary of passing.
i find a beautiful melody of life and love in that.

you know i was with you and asked your angels to be there to greet you when you arrived.
i believe you have met your loved ones again

and i rest easy in that.

thank you for the wonderful father and brothers that you gave me along your journey.
i love my tangye men
as they are different parts of you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGorjBVag0I&ob=av2n

we are answers..

things could get serious here
as i warm to the idea of babies and how to deliver friends from the floors they cave to.
i'm on a blunt sort of waking
where i realize the future and the present are limited and in need of resurrection-
one where though i cannot bring him back i can bring someone new to the picture.

someone who could be him and someone who could be anyone.

i've never married but i have a desire to make her mine
despite the differences in meaning it could be a while until she and the rest of the judgemental world eyes see my way.
so simple.

you could test an ocean not to grow
but this tide in me continues to surge
and flow
and the only land i swim upon is her.

i think she can see me in it
and i think she knows it takes an ocean to move things this way
as they have in me.
as i hope they do in her.

you can trouble me now
but i don't ever want to get over you, love
i want to have a place to hang my worries and my fears
safe in your bare breasts
as you draw me in.

i will find my closure
and will find the words
to bring you to my side of realizing what we have yet to be.

so soon
so now
so you and me..

bridge between you and a void...

brother mike
i am not wanting the numbers to change tonight
i am not willing to go much further down the line without you

she said tearfully that she believes everyone is better off without you-happier and less shipwrecked
i know no one believes that..

she said you've yet to visit her in a dream
and i feel covetous that you have come to me a number of times in my sleep
we are happy, you are yourself and you're telling me things are ok where you are.

still, when i wake up i know you are not here the way so many people need you to be
and it makes me morose.

as the yearend forces us to move onward
i am hesitant to let go of your memory.
a new year seems too distant from when you were with us.
i am having a hard time letting go of it, you, and the grief that still holds tightly onto my heart.

as much as i want to move forward from the heartache and say goodbye to this year 2011
i need something familiar and close to where you are and where you were..

i trust myself and the good fortune that 2012 will bring
but easing into and out of our last moments together has been arduous at best.

i am forced, with incomplete resolution, to move from the last year of your life
into a new one without you
and it's toilsome brother..
so unyielding...

but when i hear your laughter in my mind
and think of the way you would have wanted it
i am light and i am eager to conquer the challenges
that the new year will afford me.
i am resolute
and beckoning the new tide that awaits to test my skill.

i look forward to carrying on in your memory and bringing your dear child closer to who you were.
i embrace the lessons and wisdom that i've yet to discover in your absence yet with you forever by my side.
i am ready and i am determined, brother.

and as this painful year expires and falls by the wayside
i am carrying you and it, heavy as it may be, within me
and we are moving together, brother
into and over the bridge between you and a void
and we will make our way as happy as we can be
to the unknown...

square spaces and circular promises...

it seems like a million distractions have kept me from here-
the world spinning, the memory fading
things called life.

i tried you-via your mother's work number- but you never got back to me
i've invested time in your reasoning and a thousand things that didn't occur to me
finally occurred to me.

the biggest thing i've come to recognize is that sometimes people hold our former selves hostage
people have a way of reminding us of who we were when we knew them or when they knew us.
and i am surmising, jimmy, that you, old friend and lover, do not want to be reminded of me who reminds me of you
and who you were...

but i have something to say about that
and it is this-
i hold on only to the good things about you and who you were and are to me-
sure, it's been probably a decade or more since we have held one another's words within earshot of the other, but your memory has been good to me.
your poetry,
your steadfast love

i hear you've gotten married
two months ago it seems.
you are making big things of yourself which i hardly doubted you would do.
in your mother's photos you are you- grown up and tall doing the very thing that reminds me of you
and only you.

you are dallying with your ring, that once was a ring we shared, turned now to your wedding ring..

i can understand and rationalize one of the million reasons you have yet to call me up
lingering resentments
idling feelings
disconcerting reminders of who you once were when you were young-

whatever your reason-
know that i'm still waiting
and am looking forward to getting to know who you are now...

conduit of fur..

lovely
she is.

unaware
and unavailable to me she is
long distance is the excuse

she is a recluse
when she falls into this
far away from me.

she's driving with part of me in the backseat of her life-
the thing that drew us together
she somehow gets to take far away.

but as i breathe in
i remind myself and her that our conduit of white fur is between us
as it always has been

and she sleeps better
and i sleep a little more aware
of the absence of the two.

sapho and i dream peacefully
each drunk in our own happiness
of what life used to be
before the rush of love
and the rush of puppy towards us..

there is no perfection better than the present
starry light.

like a broken record i testify my love
to awkward ears that can't
take me in.

i tell my wayward friend that i'm sensitive to the teasing
and she knows she can get me easy-
i'm a sucker for the tease
and she'll get the rise outta me like she wants.
after i unfetter on the floor
spilling my simple self all over for her to mop up
and laugh at.
she tells me she loves me
and likes to see me lose myself every once in a while.

though i'd rather like to keep myself more together in that sort of company
i forget the details of my better judgment as i pour over the ground that is only holding one of us up.

back to you my love,
may you soon come home to me
so that our four points of connection can meet once again..

hold on to yourself...

i have dreams of my dead brother
and though the dreams are there
the memory is sometimes swimming in me
and other times it is harsh

there is an obvious silhouette of him
and though no greeting is extended
he comes in my dreams to tell me a little more of the story
than i was willing to take in before.

often we are at odds
or perhaps we are one in the same
it makes no difference
because once i wake
i again recall that he is lost in me.

my mother and i talk of her hauntings
and how she cannot accept this
and i tell her to just be
with it
in solitude standing
just as he was
in his final moments-
but then again
he is her baby
and i will never understand that
or what it means to have a living in flesh part of you die.

i don't pretend
and i don't try to pacify the anger that she must feel.

we go back and fourth about the details which is a privilege of the living
and we restate the things we've been told and curse at the things we haven't

there was a sudden quake
then silence
and as we unbury ourselves from the rubble
we make slow sense of
the stagger, stumble and trip
of his life.
we learn slowly the walk he danced
gracelessly.

we learn of the tales miserably unfinished
and we try to polish the end-
make it fit the stories that we've been told
of the happy man
that didn't exist at the end of the day in that life.

i hold no grudge to those choices
or those friends
but i wonder
how lost he was
and how lost anyone was who believed the stories he told.

there will forever be a fire
in the solution
and the finding
of him
as he gave up his last breath in the largest of the 5 finger lakes...

how lost could he have been
when he lost himself?