visible-world:

decreation:

GIANT SAINT EVERYTHING

August 06, 2005

There were days I wanted out.
But then You would go and do things
like dive into the Vancouver ocean,
big brilliant cliché poem that You are,
water rolling off Your back
as You swam toward a sunset
that hung like a sacred recipe painted
all the way around Your holy head.

And then there were the ways You caught me
moving back into my cave where the wheels turn,
same wheels that drove You off.
I should have told You
before talking in terms of Forever
that any given day wears me out and works me sour,
that there are nights when the sky is so clear
I stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for the stars to shoot at me
just so I can feel at Home.

What’s left of You now is a shrine
built from the pieces I kept of Your presence,
Your incredible stretch of presence.
It sits in Our room like a sandpiper
cross-legged and crying,
remembering the night we met
and the day You left, and the Light
shifting in between.
By the side of it stands a picture of the poem where I promised,
“You will never have another lonely holiday.”

The words “I Promise” and “Forever”
begged me not to use them
but sometimes I don’t listen to God,
so You can imagine how much it hurt
to let Your last birthday pass
with no word. August 3rd.
You weren’t the only one comin’ up lonesome.

Listen, if I had to make a list
of everything everywhere
- and I mean everything… everywhere -
the very last to-do on that infinite list of
every – single – thing – would be – to hurt You,
so I need You to know
that in an attempt to keep my promise
I did write a letter to You on Your birthday.

It was covered in stickers of flock-printed stars,
choir claps, and a bonfire of buttercups stuck in the air,
but when I finally drew enough courage
to send You all the Love in the World
my hand snapped off in the mailbox
from clenching.

It was returned to me with a gospelstitch, a hope stamp
and a note etched into the palm I had to pry open
with the pressure of pitching doves
reminding me
we agreed to let each other go.

There is a point when tears don’t work
to wash things away anymore.
Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.
I miss You so much some days
that I beg for the airplane to crash
with just enough time in the freefall
for scribbling “I Love You” across my chest.
That way – when they find my burning breast plate –
they will tell You how the very last thing I did with my life
was call out Your name.

A. R. L.

I know You’re momma didn’t raise no sissy,
so it’s best if I believe
that You’ve bounced back and been born again,
but in the bottom left corner of dreams
in the dark spot
where it gets windy and hollow
I can still see you flailing,
eating knuckle cake,
full torque and tender,
heart pounding from being pulled under,
feet bleeding from bracing for endings,
tongue dying to curse Forever
because promises murder us backwards
when people like me don’t keep them.

And sure, we all deserve absolution,
but especially You. You and Faith,
You’ve got the same hungerpunch,
same song
still rising off the watertrain running through the laws
of a moon dead set on daylight
digging marbles from the trees
in a Love not scared to make no sense
and man enough to see
the same devastating reason for living this life
My Giant
Saint
Everything

I promise You
Forever
these words have buckled my lips
so far back to the beginning
that I am now allowed only
Today,
so from my snap-chested heart spraying
fully flying
sending out the birds:

Today I stop believing in words.
Today all my visions converted to blurs
like the night We saw the Light
and I could not shut up
but I swear I was feelin’ silence.

Buddy Wakefield

thedarlingchild:

airwavess:

“i have a habit of wanting to rescue people from their boring wretched wasted lives and thrust them into enlightened forms of existence, sparkling and drenched in sun glares, but i really should stop assuming people want or need to be saved in the first place.  i seem to think that no one has thought to search for secrets in a forest, or found redemption in the windows rolled down, hands making tidal waves of air currents and weather patterns rushing by.  it’s like i want to think nobody knows about the brilliance found in barren beaches in winter, or what it’s like to lose your heart and eyesight in the blur of carnival lights.  it’s like i want to be this magic girl who takes you back to playgrounds at night and makes you stand on the edges of bridges overlooking dried up canals and expects you to feel something, but maybe you don’t feel anything, and that’s not your fault, but mine, for wanting you to so badly.  i want to teach everyone to waltz in dusty light in dim basements, to come out of comas only because of the color of the sky, to run through corn fields and to know as their own the wilderness in the hearts of horses.  but not everyone is banking on a wish, or walking on a dream, waiting for a line to be cast in their direction, not everyone writes messages on their hands or picks up strings off the ground, wears them around their wrists for secret meanings.  not every man who doesn’t wear his wedding ring has a reason not to do so, sometimes it’s just so your fingers don’t break.”

- cari ann wayman

philomel:

casimirpulaskiday:

starryeyedme:

i go to this window

just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(and
looking up in fear

i see the new moon
thinner than a hair)

making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you, silently who are
and cling
to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing
-and all about
herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges
inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams

e.e. cummings

airwalker:

“I drink chardonnay from a glass 
we bought together, wine
whose roots sprang from the soil
where you have set yourself like a sunflower.
The miles between us are doors 
you have slammed, thousands of no’s.

I wanted my love to warm you softly
as goosedown so your body could breathe.
I wanted my love to rest on you
lightly as falling maple leaves.
I wanted my love to show you your face
in a mirror of gold shining
from inside like the sun.

But you could not give credence
to love that did not seize you by your nape
shaking you like the assault of a tomcat.
You were suspicious of love that did not come
jangling labels like janitor’s keys.
You doubted a love opened to the sky
as any planted fertile field.

The burning horizon slowly tamps out.
The snake’s head of the needle strikes
blindly at record’s end.
Where you walk it is afternoon still.
You cry free as the familiar walls drop into place.

In the cold sky Venus has just appeared.
Every morning my loneliness grows more porous.
Soon someone will slip through the fretwork
move in and start breaking the glasses you chose.
You could not love, but only redecorate.”

poetry365:

You don’t have to say you love me..

Say, “I’ve noticed darling,
I can’t breathe if you’re not around.
And I’m going to try and make this forever
But, I know there are no guarantees.
And I’m not sure we’ll always understand each other
But, you’ll always be
The first person I look for when I enter a room
And I’ll always want to share my coffee with you
And I promise to keep your name safe
So that no one else in the whole world can say it
The way that I do.”

airwalker:

when the crows fly away 
with their compassion 
and I remain to eat 
whatever is left of my heart 

I think of my love 
with the odor of salt 
of my love who holds me in her eyes 
as if I were whole and beautiful 

and I think of those 
who walk the streets all night 
frantic with desire and bruised 
by the terrible small lips of rain 

I touch you 
as a blind man touches the dice 
and finds he has won