The Heart is a House Ever Changing

The heart is a house we are always building and tearing down, it has so many halls and rooms and libraries of all we have in memory and experience, and in some dark parts, we hold within our hearts the ugly shade of a lonely tomb.

I take the hammer and crowbar into the room marked with an "E" and close the door silent behind me.

I pause to consider the many things that have been felt, experienced, housed and done in this one grand room. Most of my work, she has already done for me.

To the untouched wall I begin to tear, to rip, to let it all fall. The undoing of a room, the moving forward, cleaning up, taking the books out to storage, the bed marked love, sagging in the middle, stained with tears unused for so long, to the trash pile where now it truly belong.

Soon the room will be empty, clean, clear and someone else will reside here. I take the "E" from off the door, consider it a while, but no more.

The heart is a house ever changing...

Dealing with a Loss

What good is a life without a little pain?
Or sunny days without some rain?

I just heard the news you were gone, passed away, slipped into the beyond.
I'm hurt, hurting, lost, sad

Too many funerals for someone my age, too many tombstones in my life, their weight is such a damning painful strife

I'll come visit you soon, I'm so sorry you slipped away, like everyone else who has ever lost someone, just one more day

I'd have gotten that letter in the mail, written, sent, done instead of wasted my only chance to tell you, you were family despite the difference of our blood

We shared so many memories, halloweens as a boy with the homemade candy, the badge from your late husband you passed on to me, the night you were robbed and i learned what a community was, each memory a poem to your life and a sorry to see you go

Rest in peace is such a heavy thing to say, it's not enough really, it's so small, but what is there left? In the end, the dark shade will take us all, in the end, there is only death

These Are Our Faces

These are our faces
Our places
Our time
And our memories
These are our
Remember mes.
Do not let us fade
Or turn to shade
Do not let us turn to dust
Or rot
Or rust
But keep us close
Your guiding ghost
Your guardsmen at the post
Do not forget
To forgive
Our lust for life
Our pain
And our strife
We are your fathers proud
And mothers glad
Happy reminders
Of times good
And bad
We are your kinsmen many
And clan few
We are the ones who
Made you
And through our living
Sang a song
Of your life coming along
We are the distant past
And your boats sturdy mast
Guiding you on to be us
To generations not yet come
Their strength
Mighty and strong
Until the job is done

Neither Heaven nor Hell

Neither Heaven nor Hell

Could ever hope

To free me from

This ugly cell

Where now I dwell

In the dark quietude

Of all I once held

Neither Heaven nor Hell

Could ever hope

To punish or free

Neither prevail

Against this heart break

Nor assail upon my gentle mind

Weak and weary

The pain, the sorrow, the woe

My soul to grind

Neither Heaven nor Hell

Could ever tell

A sadder truth or beckoning song

Than this my aching tooth ache

Within my middle

Where once a heart

Did belong

Neither Heaven nor Hell

The Cowboy

The cowboy knows no pain
He just rides that horse
Through winter snow, and summer rain
He rides in dust and flood
The wild of the west thick in his blood
He takes his sorrow on the chin and rides out time and again
Strength in his will
Power in his gun
Both his flesh and soul are bleached by the endless desert sun
Pale white like the ghost he is
Riding through every high and low dusty ridge
Six shooter by his side
All yonder cowboy knows
Is to ride that horse, to ride and ride
The cowboy knows no pain
Though his soul is a sad and sorrowful stain
His eyes tell truth where his silence would lie
He just knows to ride and ride until the day he die

The Graveyard in My Soul

I take a single white rose

To the graveyard in my soul

Where all her memories are buried

Dead but not forgotten

All this pain and misery she has brought

I push them aside, and look forward

To the graves littered about

I open my mouth to give a shout

But out comes only a whisper

Do you hear me?

Do you care?

The rose falls to the ground

I mean to turn my back, to turn around

But I stand statue still

Letting the truth sink in, letting it be real

The graveyard in my soul

Burns, hurts, bites, grabs, won’t let go

I look across its bone ridden mass

I curse and spit and flip the bird to my past

And then I wake from my nightmare, I turn, I walk away

Today is a new day

But no matter how far I go

There remains a graveyard in my soul

What is Love?

What is love?
I know not, I know not
I know only the pain it has brought
And the joy
In the moments between the pain
The joy

The smiling face and angel eyes
The happy laughter
And in love making
The sweetest song of bedroom sighs
I have tasted deep this thing called love
And have felt its hellish flame
Whether it be a heaven thing
Or a nightmare wasteland
I know not, I…I simply know not
I have loved
I have
But it has been taken from me
In her parting my company
And now my cracked heart
The bleeding is starting
And some gentle hand I long for
Soothe me
Heal me
With some kinder Love’s healing salve
Won’t you?
Where are you?
Come my dear and love me
Back to life
Take from me
This jagged pain, this loveless knife
Ran deep in between my ribs, piercing my heart
Oh dear heavens ever watchful
And blistering hell, always hungry
Now, the blood, the bleeding out,
My life was only at the start
And from me, she as cold as cold can be, has taken
And from one love to another love, and onward still, I must depart
I am not my pain
I am more
I am love waiting
On some distant shore
Waiting for new love
Waiting for love and more

Unending Night of Cold and Loneliness

I am the tossing and turning, trying to sleep, the blankets kicked and pillows pulled tight, the sweat upon the brow and longing ache of a lonely heart.

Unending.

I am the smiling face, with frowning eyes, their window open upon a brutal scene of empty rooms with scattered pictures, a soul house filled but vacant and abandoned.

Night.

I am the watching TV alone, checking the blinking command of every txt message, comment on facebook waiting to be read, picture uploaded waiting to be seen, the tweet on twitter waiting to be retweeted, the post on google waiting to be liked, search engines reach out with your crawlers and find me.

Cold.

I am the table with one empty chair, seldom used except by the mail, cooking meals too big for one, the face in the mirror, the bare places on the wall, the hollow sound in the open space, the single seat on the front porch, the slow motion gazer upon the fast moving cars.

Loneliness.

I am the laughing mask, the easy going friendly one, active and talking and yet still and silent, the voice of hunger, the face of thirst, the hand outstretched, the empty seat in the crowded room, the conversation soon forgotten, the vanishing puff of breath, the soon to fade memory.

This Rainy Evening

Two bodies covering each other, competing to be the others blanket against the cool rainy evening

All that seperates their intimate world from worlds beyond is one screen door shut loosely against the evening

And beyond that, the silky sound of rain upon rain upon grass and ground

Their song of bodies uniting but one more song upon the summer's evening

Quietly, these bodies and worlds go on competing

Heaving and seeking as only lovers may, a fire all their own to build with not so much as flesh and friction and moaning sighs

Their bodies heaving, heaving, in this the intimate competition

But one more song upon this rainy evening

This Too Shall Pass

We seldom remember the beginning of any storm
Those first few drops of rain so inconsequential, the whispering sound of their community falling and gathering all around
Nor does the water ever seem too high or strong or dangerous
Until it is

On the day my Uncle was found dead just such a storm had been building all around my family and I
Each drop piling high, singing the creek out behind the house into a rage
Until finally the water could hold back no more and all its chocolate milk fury came at us with a thunder and command befitting the gods of long before
We were overcome

This was the day I watched the road buckle and like a blister, popped and exploded its tar memory into the all consuming water
And the day I watched my car get filled mere feet beyond my reach
And above all, the day my uncle, homeless and undesired, found dead in a Colorado street.
Momma wailed, not cried, and the water no matter how loud couldn't drown her out
First she thought she was losing the house and then she found out she had lost her brother
Was there no good left to God?

My mother and father stacked their valuables as high as they could, hoping the water’s reach would not compete
And all the while I thought of Bay Saint Louis down in Mississippi where I had dug just such valuables out of strangers homes
Mad Lady Katrina had a higher reach than any shelf or even roof
But I stacked my stuff too and let my family hold to their belief

We were trapped
The water was all around, there seemed no hope, out back a river, out front a river, all around the rain gathered their community and sang deaths ugly tune
Dad and I ventured out, we had only one chance, “how high is the water papa?”, old man Cash once sang
Too damn high

Momma had a distant look on her face, her brother’s death had stained her soul, and the water that should wash away dirt was instead carrying it and threatening to stain her even more
Dad gave me an ax and a look I'll never forget
We started chopping down the fence he had built some summers ago, and somewhere between the swings, I had become a man to my father and an equal
And somewhere between the swings, I asked God why and even prayed, and all the while I thought of what I'd done to help others

I had done more than watched, I went down to dig out the buried lives of those drowned poor souls of the south
When Katrina tried our nation, and found us wanting, hadn't I gone? Hadn't I done something more than most?

And somewhere in the swinging the rain slowed and the waters went down
We seldom remember when the storm comes and seldom see it's recline but no truer joy had I felt than when the creek of my childhood had lost its bite
And left me with its gritty hard lesson
There will always be rain and floods but we can weather any storm if we pick up the ax
And no better boat than the family that rows together

Like all great rushing waters, and floods, and all storms along life’s way, the waters shall run their course and in due time, this too shall pass