Come Find Me

Wrote you a nameless note, said I love you.
Is that enough
for you to come find me?
Perfumed it with the scent of freshly picked
weeds and stale tears. I'm hiding,
will you one day soon come and find me?
Never sent you the letter. It'd said I'm lonely.
Crossed out very and always. Crossed out I. Then
Tore it. Burned it. Spread the ashes. I feel—
Won't you come and find me?
Was always good at hide-and-seek.
Once I hid myself so well even
I gave up trying to find me.
Like a shadow that has lost the sun,
a dream with the dreamer dead, an echo, a memory,
a place gone and a time past, a swamp—
if you are a river, flow this way sometime, find
me.

Do What You Love

Looking back at me, the slight counselor,
her head framed by thick shelves of dusty tomes,
strands of her grey hair stuck to her collar,
her crinkled dirty-blue eyes twitching still,
too dim to guide my heart’s drifting vessel,
said to me, “Do what you love,” in a tone
as though coming from bottom of a well,
not a shout, but an echoless whisper
of love that lives only to speak these words,
for when it stops it’ll recall the thirst,
heart afloat in ocean of salty tears.
So she drank her coffee and asked, Who’s next?

In My Own Bed

Sometimes I want to cry but I’m afraid
if I start I won’t stop until the whole of Earth
is filled and flooded with tears that hurt
the soil with salt that kills all trees and herbs,
daisies and gazanias, tulips and orchids,
and every heavenly stem of baby’s-breath.
So I must defend against destroying the Earth.

But sometimes I’m still more afraid,
petrified of something much much worse,
of shedding hot tears that always dry and fade,
of my choked weeping sounds that go unheard,
of roses that bloom, secrete their heavenly scents
just as before, trees that grow and folks who wed,
while I drown in strange tears alone in my own bed.

Dirty Eyes

I woke up covered all 
In fragments of a dream,
All sticky like the scent of skunks
That sprayed my storybook last night.
—Wash up!  the voices shrieked 
And pushed my head madly beneath
A pool of tears until I drowned 
Again inside another dream.

So tell me whose tears were that soaked 
The leaves I'd flipped through all last night 
With every flutter of lashes so moist.
So speak but make it soft and clean
And hold my hands and smile and joke
And only then describe my nightly scene 
The screens projected on my twitching lids 
The ghastly films my dirty eyes have seen.... 

Feel the Solitude

Whimper, holler, weep; and let burn  
your eyes and turn blood-red. You sob 
at night alone inside your room.... 
There's no moon.  It's long departed 
to watch the lovers nuzzle, kiss, 
by sonorous curves of Fraser. 
Breeze on their skin: a glacier soon 
melting, like their whispers—lover  
to lover, lips to ticklish ears. 

You must feel the solitude's weight:
The haughty air, the empty chair...
Listen!  The walls are crumbling, hushed, 
akin to bones that bound the heart. 
Rotting bones inside the concrete,
marrows of room within a room. 
Sound of your labored panting breath,
the only sign that here resides, 
a living corpse inside this tomb.

Let your shoulders shake and quiver. 
Holding your breath you shiver—There
you hope to keep the throbbing walled
(Oh the illusion of control!)
Loneliness aches; and aching's so 
lonely.  Ache that keeps you closely
dead-awake, and clings to your soul;  
ache and journeys through your body‒
but you it never ever leaves.

Release your breath, forgive your sin,
ease the form, undress the ego,
clear the walls without and within— 
to and from your heart.  Let tears
cleanse you of old and vicious pains, 
polish your senses‒scent of  bread,
taste of coffee, comfort of bed‒   
Let cry, this self, I softly pled: 
I'm drowning in your tears—unshed.