Love gives you a face.

The hustle and bustle
around me
hustles and bustles
endlessly.
A thousand somebodys surround me,
and I have become
another faceless somebody,
another taken parking space,
another mass of breathing matter.
A hundred eyes glance away from me,
a dozen smile hello,
but no one sees.
No one cares to see.
The world around me overlooks faces,
but love gives you a face.

The mall stores bustle
with girls in large sunglasses
and thick mascara;
masks for their insecurities.
Popularity tells them to mask themselves,
but love gives you a face.

Love sees eyes for what they are;
the truest mirrors of the soul.
Love smiles at the curve of your nose,
and your forgotten facial hair.
Love sees the little red blemishes
and dances with delight
for the simple pleasure of having seen them,
for they are what make you,
you.

Our souls cringe and hide
when a mirror reflects us
back to us.
Our lonely hearts tell us to
hide away.
But love gives you a face.

They say there is a distance between
Tallahassee and south Alabama.
They measure it in miles,
and post their fancied gulf
on bright green signs
along the interstate.

They say there is a great distance
between you and me,
but I do not believe them,
because I feel you dancing
in the honeysuckle-wind,
and hear your whispers
cut through the salty air.

They say that love is blind,
but really, love is the only thing
that can make you see:
for without our connected heartbeats
I would never see your apparition
gliding between the yellow pines
to comfort me.

They say that there is a distance between
Tallahassee and south Alabama,
but I do not believe them
because I feel you here with me.

Oh heart! (why do you sink?)

Oh heavy heart,
why do you sink?
You are so weak,
so frail, so broken!
One day absent from her voice
drives you downward
like a stone;
-all alone.
You beat for her,
I know that well.
You pump with joy
at the sight of her eyes.
They drive you wild with buoyant frenzy,
more alive than oxygen.

Oh heavy heart,
why do you sink?
Your buoyancy has shriveled,
leaving you like a raisin
as heavy as a stone.

Oh raisin-stone,
You are so weak!
She melts you like butter,
and spreads you like sweet grape jam;
consumed by her kisses,
and engulfed by her love.
But, oh!
You live to be consumed,
and beat to be engulfed!

Oh unconsumed, unengulfed raisin-stone,
why do you sink?

If I could swallow the night.

If I could swallow the night
I would open wide my lungs
And drink it in.

I would drink in the darkness,
The cool, and the quiet peace
Into my soul.

The penetrating quietness
Is a balm of Gilead
Like no other.

The singing stars reach tired ears
WIth a song of heartbeats and
Rythmic life.

They call, "Come now, come away!
Dance with our light and watch for
The sunrise.

There is no time for sleeping
This is a vigil of breath
And whispers.

If I could swallow the night
I would open wide my lungs
And drink it in.

Ode to ignorance. -Mag 115

You cannot capture my freedom
Though you daily try
With voracious appetite.
You, who are a
Vampire of freedom,
Who feasts on the unchained hearts of others,
Cannot capture my freedom.
Though you chain my feet
With musty bonds,
Or place me in a
Confining, glass jar
So you can observe me
Sleeping or awake,
You cannot capture my freedom.
For, I have books,
Which break all chains,
And the iridescent light
As my constant companion.

This piece was written for Tess over at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/

The type of friend you are.

Dedicated to my friend Ross Ponder.


You are the type of friend
who is a master at sharpening iron.
Even in the midst
of the clamor of battle,
as the dark ones hover close
with teeth gleaming for my soul;
you are the one who leaps out
from the trenches,
builds a forge from his own soul,
and does battle with his sword
while sharpening my own.
When it's all said and done,
and my enemies and chains
lay broken at my feet,
you are the type of friend
who bows down in humility
to wash the blood from my feet.
Your humility and bravery astound me.
The world needs more friends like you
          For there is so much dull iron,
          And so many bloody feet.

In Artefex Carmina

Here is a poem I wrote about 3 weeks ago. I tweaked it a bit for this weeks meeting the bar.

There was once a girl who lived in a white-cedar house. She lived in a particular time, perhaps it was this one; in which life had lost all originality. Her name was a common name, perhaps jenny, or julie, or amy, or susan; but she preferred only to be known as, “In artefex carmina”; the artist of songs. You see, that was precisely who she was. At the young age of just 18 she left everything she had ever known, carrying only her small, silver, music-playing square. She had determined to live her life with a soundtrack. Setting the shuffle, and tying her strands of indigo-black hair into a ponytail, she embarked. She took the only road she knew; the oak lined dirt that led away from her white-cedar house, into the great, deep unknown. She did it step by step, and heartbeat by heartbeat, and song by song. She made it into the great unknown, but once there, her battery died, and she had nothing with which to revive it. So she spiralled. Artists without inspiration always spiral. She spiralled into shooting things into her veins, and smoking things into her lungs, and inviting those who did not love her into her heart and soul; and in the end, her heart and veins and lungs were left broken. She wished she could trade her blanket underneath the overpass for her white-cedar house down the oak lined dirt road, away from this great, deep unknown. Sadly for her, life rarely ever gives back white-cedar houses, as they are somewhat hard to find. In her blanket under the overpass, with her broken veins, and lungs, and heart, she finally opened her ears and closed her eyes, and she heard. She heard the sound of the overpass creaking, and the sound of busy cars, and the sound of careless ravens and whispering oaks; and beyond that, with other ears she never knew she had, she heard the wonderful rhythm of life. Her veins and lungs became alive with the sunlight rays of kick-drum sound that flooded her soul. The shattered pieces of the heart she had left began to beat for the first time in a long time, and once again, she embarked. This time it wasn’t a journey away from anything, but a journey content with where it was. She walked and walked, and as she walked, she sang. As she sang, her haunting indigo-black voice reflected the voice of the land and life around her, and people began to stop and listen. She walked past plains, and mountains, and hills, until she reached a yellow salt ocean. As a gift for her haunting voice, a fisherman with a salt and pepper beard, and broad, wrinkled shoulders offered her his broken down ship. She felt at home with this broken ship, for she too knew what brokenness felt like. As she ran her fingers across its worn and splintered sides, she recognized that it looked just like her soul. The girl with the haunting voice spent 6 long months repairing that ship. At the end of it all, she had worn and cracked hands, and her haunting voice evolved and subtly sounded of sea-salt and grit. As she boarded the old fishing ship to say goodbye to her temporary home on the shore of this yellow salty sea, she sang a haunting, gritty, beautiful song that sounded so much like life, that the fishermen forgot their grudges and smoked pipes together. She set sail to the wind, and beckoned it near with a siren call, and the wind wrapped around her and under her, and through her to set her sails away. No one from the yellow salt shore, or the creaking underpass, or the town with the white-cedar house ever saw her again, but the ones who heard her sing say that they still hear her salty, gritty, haunting indigo-black song through the whispering oaks, and cawing ravens, and creaking overpasses, and busy cars to this very day.