Relationships

Be upright in your thoughts
 and downright in your dealings,
Let go of your dismay
 but hold on to your feelings.

Let sisters stand as one
 but separate and distinct,
And learn some love for each and all
 before we’re all

 extinct

Common cares and carelessness,
Singing songs and swinging arms,
Coming in community,
Children, knowing chants and charms

Soon forgotten, future framing,
Blaring trumpets, blocks of blaming:
Innocence — immunity —
Casual

Community

Years, and years, and decades —
The sights change, the sounds change, but
The silences are the same

In this silence, here, tonight,
You and I are driving down a beach,
With our young children sleeping, in the back,
Watching a multicolor sunset
Over a deep blue ocean.

In this silence, glowing, pulsing,
I’m a teen in my room,
Unable to sleep, restless,
With a drumbeat of hopelessness in my head
Only music could drown out.
Thank goodness for headphones.

In this silence, wide, and flat,
I remember the cries of pain from
Other residents in the hospital,
Some crying for the last time,
Some crying out of sympathy for the others,
But somehow, the silence pierced it all,

From the before drumbeats,
To the sunsets after,
Woven together

In silence

it’s true, I’m a believer:
but yet, I understand
that much I thought within my grasp
is past my weak command

for love is not a shouting thing:
when all that noise is done,
there’s only just the all of us,
and all of us

are one

in the rhythm of life
in the movement of bodies
music makes friends
out of recently strangers

music mends hearts
when joy is in shortfall
when harmony seems
like a theory at best

music makes friends
if friends can make music
but times have made hard
what we long took for granted

When years go by, as sure they will,
We must swim out against the tide
That carries us to apathy
To lands of pettiness, and pride

That can become our final homes
If we don’t make the effort then
To use the muscles we neglect
To get back where we should have been.

The heights we could have, should have reached?
There here, when we’re together beached;
Alone, to laughter we’ll succumb,
And let love, like the waves,

Just come

The field turns green,
Then overgrows —
Intentions good,
But no one knows

What trips will be
Before the climb,
Or what we lost
When we’ve lost

Time

He wasn’t always old.

For years, at breakfast,
Saturday, A.M.,
The five of them sat
Laughing, in a booth,
These friends of countless
Days and years, with miles
Made of joking laid
Between them.

Though each their
Missteps made, they had
Each other’s deep but light
Regard, respect shown best
In humorous asides.

A company of men who tried
To be the men their fathers were
Or weren’t; each journey carved
In scars and letters, wrinkles,
And in love.

But absences began, as sure
They must: for time takes
Soldiers in, onto the
Battlefield we last must
Face, and slowly, gradually,
The voices raised in laughter
Shrank in count.

This is the bravery
We’re never told we’ll need:
How to go on without,
And how immortal friendships
Dwindle with mortality.

Now there’s just him:
And laughter like a favorite song
Still lingers in his head upon
A Saturday, A.M, without a place
To go or deep true friends
To go with.

here’s the truth:
my knowledge stops
right where your
skin begins.
love is the source,
the flow all
that is, and all
that’s underneath.
hypostasis:
when you fill up
my lungs, collateral’s
the damage to
my heart. but all of that
is truth, and truth’s
a tangled bedsheet
in the dark