E+K

Of all the words I’ve written - 
The truest ones were what I said to you - with every ‘I love you’ 

All the forgotten metaphors I’d toyed with 

To build a towering story - 

Or race the streets of nowhere - 

Never reached the heights of sitting next to you. 

Trekking the days of these ‘strange’ times together - 

As the outside feels like crumbling,

and we go on blossoming. 

In the silence of my pages - we’ve been building

A living, lifelong prose. 

The gentle aperture of beauty - 

That’s all at once, like striking lightening - and

Falling snow and - 

Crashing waves and - 

Vibrant pulse. 

Some days; all to tell and share - 

Others quiet by a book. 

Driving rarely near or far - 

But racing up the stairs. 

The music plays - 

The dinner sizzles - 

The movie whispers - 

The sun and moon forever shines.

The little notes stuck on our artful memories - 

For an indoors world (of three), where adventures fill the same ‘ole rooms - 

Still I follow you anew. 

Matching heartbeats by the ocean or our bed. 

And all the world feels at peace inside of me - and you. 

How we fall asleep laughing - 

And start the days - half hiding from the morning. 

With the rightest roses and holding hands - 

We yearn for one another.

While we plan ahead - and wish for summer. 

We'll do everything together - 

Creating joy by days - 

And now - I'll never stop my loving you. 

. . .

Pages of old

In a book upstairs - lives the pages of another life. 

The sweet joys - of days along the ocean and diving in. They remind me of all the year before this plagued one - and what can startle a late season. What getting lost and (totally) renewing really was. When tired was a compliment and toast to you. 

Swear it smells of long late drives home with the windows down - reaching out to everyone   - clearing our minds from crowded bars, circles of laughs, and “turn it up!” tunes -  so we could hear heartbeats and waves, till noon tomorrow.

I’d find close whispers and busied streets of traffic and hugging friends waiting - jokes long quieted and hungers still on the horizon. Worries of what never came. I’d remember every clever kindness, stumbling funny accidents and fast plans of my people - and I’d falter at the ease. 

I’d remember better, all we’ve put on hold. Or I have. 

So it stays closed - any romanced pages - like everything else of this whole damned time. It lives a room away and almost forgotten - like you and the miles between - here and the ocean.  

It temps an opening read, a new glorious page of entries - in tired evenings from return. It might tell me to get in that car and drive back. (It definitely will). 

     To fall into sands again.

     To start the band. 

     To have a Sunday like we planned. 

In the car going nowhere - just watching the ocean move. Letting the world be elsewhere. Dreamin’ on what should’ve been - and movin’ and groovin’ to happiness. To opening up and running down the street - and finding us all again. 

You (sweet past) have become the memory of what was - the benchmark of what ended. The waiting line to start the dance, the drink I should’ve stayed for.

. . .

Last plane to Boston: oldie

That's the last time I'll board that plane - 

When you're waiting in Boston to fill the time. 

When you're drafting another elaborate fable - 

And destroying the real - of its fantasy - finally. 

Leaving me again - and last - 

reminding me why I left. 

So unravel yourself so many nights - 

in damn memories, long gone. 

You're drinking in years lost - at a pint's empty swoosh - 

and tellin' me I'm the wrecked one. 

Tellin' her everything in the world is true - and hers - 

and wandering every night just doesn't count. 

You're aching for "different" in broken habits of regret - 

and lecturing philosophy found. 

So what's that "gut" gotten you? 

Choosing settling and goodbye - every time. 

Harden whatever you desire  - 

like that city, that you cant leave. 

Live in concrete rules - and let it ring. 

Make believe in boring. 

It's always just too cold - and you don't know why. 

But me - 

I'm swimming in the sea beyond - I'm under the Salem moon -

Giving you the woman I was to keep. 

Treasure a ghost - and hold her tight. 

She's not me. 

. . .

end this world tonight

In every thought before passing time -
that long slow time we're in -
I think of the sweet pulsing smell of a crowded place. My cherished passionate places of best adventures and long exuberant nights.
Of words I've said before and spells I've cast with dwindled time.

I can feel the dancing rhythm of a collective crowd; the spotlights that guide you sideways -
and the easy embrace of everyone around and with you.

Like so many of the places that I've left before, I try to conjure it vividly in my dreams
and empty mind - I try to go back.
I try to breathe passion in, like a recipe of memory.
Swirling the rocks in a whiskey drink
and remembering a time when all was happening.
When yearning was an appetite of joy - not a curse of silence.
When chasing the night and the mountains of someone new was bright escape - and free hope.

Now we threaten one another's safety - and we tempt the limits of our rules -
and we dare one another to give up rather than give in.

So I think of the freedom in becoming myself again - in undoing years of companies & regulations. To just be again - adorned in jewelry layers and barefoot soul.
Wandering to the roams of wolves within my wilderness -
of books & stories & long ago people that survive.
Because we can survive and become.


But for the first time in a decade's pass at growing up - I'd like to burn fences again.
I'd like to risk a tragedy with you - and get lost in the ending world of two -
loosing time from the outside.

Leave with me to imaginations - and make another song to sing.
So that in the next dawning of ages - we'll remember a little story that we were.

We'll forget it all, I know - and we'll walk back to what was.
We'll never be - but we could see,
the sunrise in each other's arms.

We could do all the plans of suffocating into flames.
We could smell the crowds together for just a little while.
We could end this world tonight.

Let me be this death of you.










. . .

Shut down

It’s hours after the world has gone to sleep - that I worry about it. 

It’s in the dark dawn that I lie awake and feel fear. Fear that Rome is burning, that hope is running, that after everything - there’s still only you calling me - and yet you’re gone too. 

Despite the chaos, and all the goddam building I’ve constructed - it can collapse that easily. It can be shut down and shut out - just like that. 
It can pause the life just had - when it was everything ahead.
‘Cause wasn’t I - just waking up easy next to someone - after chasing late hours and new songs - where only ludicrous hangovers were our immediate danger. 

Weren’t the worries passing by and the plans ready to play? Weren’t we kissing in the bar and wonderful... The last night of feeling, fading into quarantine. 

Now where have we woken to?
 and where will we next? 

I should be the poet of a masterpiece - I should rush the romance of the reservation. 
Create the worthwhile proof of an artist trapped inside the world. 

I should blink awake with a new feeling of future moves. Then again - I’ve sent those moves already too. 

And nothing changed.
The sun still stone, the winds still moved - and we start counting the days like never before. 

So wake the dawn we must, 

Bar the windows and hunch against the horrible storm of here. 

Pray for surviving, for passing over, for beautiful resurrection to joy again. 
We take the day and count the lessened blessings. 
We breathe again even when it stutters. 

How Id love to be looking back in a bustling restaurant in summer with you -
I can hear the noises, taste the shared wine, and smell the air rich with adventure and suspense - 
How we dream of tomorrow now - with such clinging need. 

So let’s grip it. Let’s dream on that instead in every midnight -
Open up and ready the change. 
Let’s make every moment out there again - everything we have. 
When we can give and touch and leap again. 
When the world re starts. 

. . .

What about Forever

So many times with you I’ve wanted to jump. So many times I’ve walked up to that big oak Church door - and paused happily -

I’ve knocked and heard the silence. 

I’ve run and heard the music, of us. 

When you talk of forever - 

Hasn’t that always been me for you babe? 

Haven’t we danced around the (text) messages - and kept promises of friendship - 

All to keep the years together? 

Maybe I just put it all together. 

I know I’m quick to decide while you take it lovingly slow - 

I know I rush you - and you baffle me. 

I know your words before you say them - 

And I know your tune even in memory. 

So take another slow dance with me and skip another heartbeat. When I tell you how they said forever - let’s think before we leave. 

Then we’ll tell another story - ask so many questions, and start the day 

“Like we were then” again. 

I’ll keep every kiss, love every change, and wake every morning - 

Knowing we chose right. 

. . .

Winter

What will we be

Without you and me -

Following days in the sand 

With the warmth of the trail found there?

Winter settles in and we change

Against all our best promises in summer, 

Without realizing what’s set in -

As early dusk falls. 

We layer up the walls again,

Waiting for the lights to change us back.

Wherever they be found or broken in. 

But what of life when it takes you away?

When more mornings are on planes

Than in your arms.

And more nights in an empty office

Than a sea of feelin. 

How slow the time goes now,

And how weary tired we come in from it each, without anything to share. 

Promise me we’ll meet the spring together

Even if there’s no ringing of the new year. 

Even if everything turns up wrong -

We’ll sleep in memories once close. 

That this long winter 

Will pass us better, after all. 

Pick up the conversation
at the start of every adventure.

.  .  .

Happy by the sea

I lay down

And I - think of you 

Like the tides on the waves of the sea 

I want you.

Lost like the wind with a calm smile.

As’if the fog of the fall, off the horizon -

Is smoothing everythin’ and I’m away.

So I think it all through...

Again wrapped up in you, 
or racing to the shore, or laughing with the music in the crowd.

It’s the sunrise along the pier kinda view, 

When its me and you. 

Easier still with every trip around 

the Highway -
I’d drive it every week if I could - meet you at every beach - 
Hold on to our summer a little while longer. 

Get back in your truck goin nowhere - It’s a happy place to be, 

Sitting free. 
Cause you’re always there - sayin’ sweet things to me.
With the sand and the smoke and the fishin’ ways.

Now I’m just countin’ down the days,

Listenin for the road-

To find me back at our place, our smiles in the dark, our easy late mornings 
- and Viking stories in between. 

Craving nothing but us, like the coming crisp -
Let the seasons wash over us 
And I’ll be here.



. . .

Like We Were - Boston 5

I spent the hours before dawn of an entire night, remembering who we were — 
mixed with the movies, the music, and the hurried, traveler movements of this last year apart. The touch of our famous goodbyes.

I dreamt of us —  and woke to who we are now.
Us living goals —  and gliding past skies —  and calling when it's late.
The airports,
the new strangers
 and the timezones of our friendship state.


How I miss you when you're gone — 
chasing cobblestones in Europe,
calling red-light after closing,
and telling me to wait another day.

Wait - until the moonlight that we feel — 
wait until the coming home again — 
wait until it clears for you to feel.
Feel "what you've always felt" and let it be days upon the changing city.
Let it be every late night, and last drink, and takeaway good story... let me have you this time and have it last.

What if I show up at your door (you say) — 
and we start this all again.
What if the miles didn't exist. What if tonight — 
we'd be us again, like we were then.


But we never were.







. . .

first southern night

That first warm southern night without anything of just before. How the sky had these levels of radical, historical, old piercing blues forming and I felt like a crash of all the women I’ve tried to be. 


I could still feel if I tried, like the aches and pains of you trying to try, but instead I just feel the sweat on my skin for the first time this thrilling summer, and the fresh clothes, and the lightening bugs...like I woke up to all new sensations, like winter was just yesterday. The yesterday’s winter of bending, and racing across the snowy city, and thinking that Metra track headed to your city, any way it turned. 

Now there’s just a free open space of the smells I can breathe in again. Of the nights that used to be something else..., and that strange blue sky changing, and this balmy neighborhood that’s still exotic in some lingering way...and a repeating pattern I’m determined to shake this season and every one later. 

Like a new dream, in a newer one, here goes the fun :). 

Just thoughts - Boston 4

Now let's talk about last night.
Are there words yet, again? Cause I only remember colors and I, -haha- can't stop the smile at the turn of every unrelated thought.
    It's all "just happy thoughts" blended at night. It's all the best I've ever seen of you, who you are, and what's formed together behind that handsome face.

I should get it together. I should start organizing back to cool factor - I should ready for the time between again... with vague metaphors and work around distractions.
    But if all I ever say right, are a few words of this space, then I've done a goodness to the future. To the heart, and all it has ahead; unknown.

Let's remember how we slept,
where we placed one another in movements
- and what the morning sounded like.

Let's meet at the top of something, or say something like that... But ya know, wherever it goes doesn't matter for now - cause for nights ahead I'll sigh asleep thinking of that memory. I'll see it on the seas, I'll hear it in the rhythm, and I'll think of you that way.

Because I laugh at all the ways you just exist, and you never quite get my joke. But we walk through city after city with everything to say and no way to choose.
So lead where to follow, or look at me with that happy goodbye - it'll all work out either way.

    For now, this morning in your arms will be my happy place for all of what I can see onward, into summer.








. . .

How's that for destiny

It's gone now. The last shadows of the darkness, the last tiny corners of the bad - I feel so sweet - it's been healed.

That was it, and a whole story more. (Later.) But let's take a moment for the equal balance found. The dreamily, romantically, lived opposite of all the pain of another woman who I was. Here, there were,- are- open hearts, kind soft touch and hours long expression. Here it's so real and so good.

Because I believe everything "sits upon" opposites. And still never thought I'd feel the right side of what was the cold side. Yet here it was - my hand holding a racing heart and mine, ...mine's a completely different surface of light.

Now, I don't ode this to an old beast - I say it to archive that the "soft spring nights" of my hoping fantasy - I just had. I just travelled years of time to more joy than it ever growled I wasn't worth.

How's that for destiny?









. . .

Boston 3

So go to Boston & think of me. Cause maybe that’s the girl I should be. Maybe I, maybe you, maybe any compromise wouldn’t do — or could be found. But here we are again, saying goodbye just near that wonderful town — with flights and fears and failing plans.

I remember the exact sound, how strange, that the door made the morning that you left. It said the sounds of what we always say too late — and you were gone and off. The sheets still warm, the room still sweet, my mind and heart still soft against it all.
It could’ve been two years ago — us ending at chapter 1, hello, and on again,  so then...

And now I’ve just realized that’ll be the last. That - ah - was what I heard as it spoke and silenced all the quickened blissful falls a second old.
We tried so beautifully this time.
Weren’t we great in all the new & old & speaking souls — taking slow breathes between secrets — and then on into a laugh. So I’ll strike the deal there and try — with you remembering mine, and me remembering...your whistle in the morning. And everything before and after the close.

Another morning just hours to come.




.   .    .

Call of the dark moon

I don’t know if I want to give this up to the lost spirits of writing, but it’s thinking itself through, it’s working’ itself out, and the heat it reckons to be called out. 

He told a lullaby kind of story that night… in the past-decency hours, in the wake of wine and wanderings across cities not connected. But this dazzling story… it seeped past the hardened wolf tales of my Book Of Historical warnings… it left a haze upon itself, and my mind, that travelled the conversation. Travelled to the isles, the mystical, the great oracles of the other side of the moon. (It was the moon!) It left behind my tired feminist strongholds, (hah), and on into the real insides of religion. The seeing, and the knowing, and the let it cascade, feels… my practicing past with mythology and tastes. 

And what of feeling? What of the words could fill this telling to reality’s reflection, I’ll never quite have those. Mind yes, and touch maybe, only, can tell what you know you remember…though it’s fading fast into archival glories. 

Can try to be, try to record it; the rising to mountain heights - the unleashed passion of your magical side. I can tell you instead of where imagination meets anew, ahh, “where” can be wherever you do desire. Cause you build desire, it doesn’t hit, you build upon being a woman, a storm, a surprise at every, sweet, meeting. 

Damn, that’s not it either. 

Let me try again. Try to say of the power of slow, in a half-asleep haze of after lullabies start it all… arching, ever slowly, your back, up off the sheets. The voice ever lower into whisper, the promises ever detailed. And you rise and quicken to bliss, but the listening — the sounds of creation — in a soft dark room with him changing and falling. Me falling and sliding down into it. Till the very floor fell into wine dreams. 

Maybe that’s close. 

... So goodnight to you friends. 

.  .   .

Thaw

When the weather's just a bit warmer than it's been all this hurried winter, that it heats, and you've got a smirk holding your face, your mouth, your whole aura -- with a quickened step up concrete stairs -- headphones pulsing and heading for home in this perfect Capitol city.

I can feel for a moment - the summer self brewing back up for the first time. And I think she'll be a force this time for sure.






.  .  .

Bluebeard

I'm living proof you can kill the monster.

Truly & fully with the absolute force he did show. Because what the fairy tales don't tell you is you don't even need violence - just lock him up in apathy and forget - and he'll whimper and whither in that destructive cold. Ah, that's right because the poison of it all - the poison he bestowed so slowly, so carefully, so dangerously - was already plenty enough to eat himself up entirely.

Why you're the princess with everything now sweet dear. Couldn't you see that all along?



By the hidden moon I poured a great gulp back out.. looked up at all the stars, at the beautiful life that I swear was dreamed up, so long before I even knew it could be had, in some cosmic hideaway with my ancestral name quietly upon it. Such a prayer that was. All in some long night wander it would begin...
Now the days long after go on, and they're starting now to evolve and the happy aging has begun, and I forget my own story sometimes. I forget the leap was ever destructive, was ever anything at all... because after the numb grew a joy I may never replicate. And out of the joy became a life. It all rolls like heavy waves across the night tonight -- now the brightest stars I ever did speak to in prayer because they listened finally.

Get ready. For all the incredible, yet to be known, sparkling future of great work and storytelling... all ahead (am I ready?), on it goes anyhow. Another call, another date with this city. I've got the world we believe in still rich in these veins like Baltimore alleyways where we made promises of what adulthood was.

I'm the woman again that I loved before. In childhood days waiting by the sea, in college ages of study then fury, and in sweet, now. 







.  .  .

New York

There was this lighted mirror in the bathroom, 
in a hotel in New York... — it made elegant, swanky uptown, fractured reflections in ochre yellow 
- as I lay in bed between the twinkling lights of the bridge and buildings and “vibes” on the other side. 

And all the big, rude, loud city that you like 
had quieted finally...with the music playing in just the right low echo with grip. 

It was the first time I’d breathed easy, 
and strange, in too many nights. 

So maybe there’s something here after all. 
With a new you and me... but mostly the me. 
Mostly all the brand new tonight I can see and fall asleep to. It's the phrase we're always saying when all your plans are with new spirits, new souls, 
and every time you check it - there's messages waiting on your phone. 

Thought I'd closed the door and left adventures behind 
but it was just a pause -- just a subway delay 
-- just an old me that I left far behind and gone. New York, the place I never wanted to be --  
but all the times I'm here has meant something. 
The force of the noise and the dreams of strangers - hits. 
The place that filled every college "when I get there" by my friends, as I listened, and thought of other things..sometimes you wind up where you never planned. 
After all the work, 
the moves, 
the miles and the messing up. 
Really made a new version of myself that I like the most. 
Like the colors of the life back home, the textures and the other city pace of it..

By tonight I'll be home again - coming home tired and full of art made 
- when home is new and right all along. 
Looking up at the grand scale of the train station, with a laugh. 
Wonder what tonight, and next week, 
and every next strange trip will bring. 

. . .

The old burning

Let the hills keep burning cause I don’t know you anymore. Let that precious, strange, desert place where the rolling cuts off every background -- slide off. 
And so you creep, and you make, and you let the land take you over. You let yourself disappear so no one even knows. 

All that mess and mourn, I don’t yearn for it anymore. All that buzzing television on repeat; like a retro moving spin top -- playing scenes. 
Playing sounds so different here - we press mute on all the noise and turn volumes up to what we feel. 
Or so we say, and smile, and answer professionally to what we do. 

It’s metal concrete shiny ways, so it feels a world away. Worlds away and all around the changing grasses of our changing forgottens. 

. . .

The Stage.

There was a time when we were all playwrights, and all the world could shine and shineeee, on—ward into the skies of our rafters and our rooftop laughters. 

We’d stomp booted feet on old, worn, soft - beautifully beat hardwood floors - that creaked - and we… Well we danced upon ourselves and our discovery of all of that. We danced and shouted - for bloody volume of the night - the right and good of it all then. 

The world blossoming and the words following — from onto stage the next day and back again — because we were Company. We were bred and we were lead into our inner workings, our inner demons, our inner joys - whether they were fleeting, or the truest nature I’ll still never knew. 

But there I know you. 

There I know the vague wild dreams of who I could be — back when it could be a journey you’d say you’d go on, and then you’d go another way. 

In all the ways it twisted round the happiness…. and happy wasn’t it? That was it. I’ve only just remembered it. 

Remembered not the place but the who, and me, that I was right then in that place - dream up to be - it’s getting closer. The pages have sure as those flown by and - wow - look around at what we’ve seen. 

You and me inside my head, the then and now and childhood and adult - and how that decade does commit. 

The stories how they changed, the eyes and wears, and the wrinkles forming there upon your sight —  war struck and still going, and the devastating desert of awhile, but I can see. 

The world upon which we built our thoughts, and our fashion and our everything - it can be seen. 

What was once a roar, yes. is now a whisper but so it does whisper… it’s gone from haunting demon, or fickle friend - to ah, lover once again. Whisper upon our pages in our places and let us be players once again. 

. . .

Whew!

There was a spider on my bed so I didn't sleep. So let's read this fast. hey! Ran circles round the past across blue lines instead. Thought how WOW!-great this all is. Thought about the rain too, and the dumping you, and it's all just making my mind allergic and delayed. Still it's rampant and dismantic. (Not a word? ah hell) Need the music and the dance, need the frantic and the pace.
Neeed a few weeks sleep, but I'm always saying that...
Here we go - fumble down and round with me tonight and let it roll across the records' rhythm. Let everything I've said and tried to say but not, restart and let it play. Play. What fun that is, that I know again and trouble it is, I know that too all daylight long. And day it's been, day gone again. Be again! Round and round and oh, I need a drink... (I should say) and maybe true. Maybe woo and hoo and hoorah what a change....transfor-mation all it's been. So let's go! Race across the street and wake with all the jokes and thought and hoo all surmised in sleep - and revel and revive and just go with it dammit! It's not that scary. Commit, commit to the work and the work and coming change to heat and legs and sweating proof of...proof of life and liberty and me just going going - mind gone going.
sigh.
Sleep and know me better.








. . .