Sleeping Still

The time over Labor Day Weekend 2000, a near accident on the interstate made me speak your name.
 
And in that moment just before a certain death, I'm convinced your love kept me safe.

Another semester and I’m still searching, in the wilderness trying to find a compass, a looking glass, a star to pin me somewhere true in this sea of love and space.

Some planes crash, a phone rings—but it’s not you, I watch the unburdened weight of a butterfly’s wings. Some worlds collide, some keep barely missing. Some stars shine, some bells sound while sirens chime, some songs play that make me miss a face I have never even seen. And even if we never meet, I have no doubt should your heart stop, mine will fade too.

Like kamagarinis washed by rain, two storms that pull like magnets, we're holding each other together worlds away, miles apart, right across from, so close...if we only knew.

August comes again, the night of the 16th and I say a prayer for you before the adventure of a dream. A train ride, a treetop jungle, and the battle begins stretching to travel the map of your wandering flame.

And the way this feels, I must be sleeping still…

Like Wildfires

Our hearts were like wildfires burning in unpredictable ways...
 
Not knowing where to turn or to whom.

Searching for each other with the heat of desire a path of destruction could not break.

Stars dying, falling,

shooting across the sky

to be born again anew

to align for me and you.

Winds whisper change as the seasons collide,

like bones laid bare in the sunlight undone by the waning moon.

The planets moving through the motions, axes upturned, emotionless they rotate

Tilting, turning, spinning

Threatening to lose their high,

To fall from heaven, to give up their place

To die.

ton nom dans la pluie

je l'appelle ton nom comme la pluie
commence.

mais tu ne reponde pas

il n'y a que le bruit de la pluie.

pour effacer mes memoires de tu.

Criminals

Your hands are criminals.
Your lips are too.

The resting bird, the ripened fruit,
wild and forbidden, they are not
yours for the taking.

My heart beats, my mouth
speaks...wings and wind, I'll fly away
in the wake of your destruction.

Your hands are criminals. Your lips are too.
But I am no prisoner.
My voice is freedom.

Cannot Quit You

I cannot quit you,
detox from you,
or go through withdrawals from you

because you aren't simply in my blood
you are my blood--

my red, resounding blood
as well as the heart beat pulsing
through each veing.

And the only way to get over you is to get over me. 

Sleeping Beauty

Dear truest lover,

It's your kiss alone that will wake me from this tossing 

turning sleep.

Spinning silks go round the needle's prick, 

will your absence make this curse complete? 

My eyes forever closed to you, their only wanted sight

--even when this world's darkness folds to the daybreak 

of heaven's light. 

Or will you fight the demons there 

so that our lips can meet, 

and breathe your breath as life for mine, 

unraveling the spell, 

like silken threads the ties that bind 

our restless hearts 

and make our searching dreams complete. 

And here we'll live until, 

gravity can no longer hold our wings,

feathered by unnumbered years. 

Unbound by the strings 

of this old earth's mortality and fears, 

we are two eternal lovers it could never hope to keep. 

So at the close of this life's last turn, 

you'll fly away with me. 

We'll tell our story to the stars, 

echoing infinitely through the skies,

and they'll shine with the magic light of our love 

forever to repeat.

Will We Ever Fit Back Together?

We stood around the sculpture in the sun, shadows casting perfectly, light spilling through the open spaces, the green hue of the image basking in its intended setting...

A couple of Wednesdays back, I had the privilege of listening to the sculptor of a current piece of public art discuss his newest addition to Chattanooga's outdoor sculptures which are scattered across the city. His sculpture, Wedged, conjures thoughts of two pieces, whether animate or inanimate, most certainly intimate, separated by time, space, a rift, a disagreement, a lie, a truth...a wedge.

Of course, we all looked. We walked around. We asked questions. We made comments. While we all felt these two pieces were once together our imagined relationships were different: mother and child, lovers, an axe, a textile to name a few.

"'Even though I can tell these two pieces were once one, it looks like they may have been apart so long that they won't fit back together anymore." Someone offered a statement that stirred my mind in revelations.

How many situations, people, parts of life work out that way? How many times are we part of something that works as a whole, but when taken away from it, we are apart for so long that we no longer fit together upon a return. Friends, jobs, lovers...self. We are so close to these people and situations that we know the next move, the next breath, the next words like a heartbeat in the clockwork of our lives. Then we move (away to college, off to a new job or city) or take a break (an extended vacation, a mission trip, a separation to re-group) or meet a new idea that shifts our perspective. And the rough edge where we once fit perfectly to someone (or something) else begins to change; the surface of our soul softens or sharpens and we don't match exactly anymore where we once connected like two pieces of a puzzle.

What if my soul mate and I have been apart for so long, having never found one another that we don't fit? What if my dearest friends and I have been in separate places for so long our lives are too different to be compatible? What if I look in the mirror and don't recognize myself? What if we've all been apart so long, we no longer fit together?

Isn't that how most of life is, though? Didn't we all once fit? To God. To Spirit. To One. To each other? Then, we were broken apart, wedged, fragmented. Maybe that's part of our purpose, to continually soften and sharpen until our pieces all fit together again. Or to learn how to love and live even with the incongruities, knowing we are all parts of a more magnificent Whole.