Anger is Weakness

(Negative Space, CAI)

Don't you know
Anger makes you weak?
He delights to eat at you
crumbling the knowing that lets you hold
your own true feelings to the light;
you don't even notice his manipulation
his chemical machinations
making fight feel like action
flailing like power
a vomit of distortion
exposing what you are
ugliness on display;
this is not a way to be strong.
Anger laughs to take you on
take you over
roll you in his palm
drive through you, make you think
you know your mind
when we all see
a coward
a weakling
a danger unloosed
because you never had the strength to find your way through
to face your own truth
Anger marked you his target
his victim
his rube
you are his whipped horse to ride
settling for shame labeled pride
hiding behind one side of false dichotomy;
unaware and unbecoming
as Anger becomes you.

Hidden in plain sight

Stealth (CAI2018)

You know, you don't know what you're missing.

I make a tremendous friend
when, inevitably
life intrudes with reality

here is what I bring:

my eyes a pool of respite
my lap a neutral plain
my hands the embodiment of kindness
a place to lay
your worries down
and be, just yourself, with me

but also

I have made my friends
in the Universe
I bring their cleansing sight
a heady blend of truth and might
beyond the scope of mere mortal reckoning

I am a plaything of time and space
a creature of this place
and I can teach you something crucial
about how to be
if you let me
if you want.

but in the end, I guess
you may find that's not the way
and that's okay, too.

Writer Block

Exposed (CAI2019)

I hardly dare to write.
That is how dangerous the truth has become;
even I hide my song
even I
run away, after all my promises
despite all my promise
I break Heart again
I say,
make it easier! soften the blow, remove the pain!
and no response forthcoming,
I turn my smile another direction
pretend that I can't see
all the futures, as they jostle and writhe
in my periphery
Rife with demands I don't believe in myself to meet
so I choose just one, a well worn path
for a donkey like me
hoping no one notices I'm built for speed
before I have to run for my life
and hoping by then
that I can.

Alone

Isolation (CAI2019)

Never alone, suddenly
alone
and all the times I've told myself
that alone would be better
I was better at fooling myself than
knowing myself
leaving well enough
alone.

Bearing Wall

Bearing (CAI2019)

He asks me
like it matters
he asks me,
are you ready?
but whatever I answer
he hears what he expects.

this is no small plot
this moment I inhabit
this place, this space standing
under my protection
projection
of my unstable foothold
in the space of time and place
of the place in space
and time
that's mine
though possession has no meaning
in the rhyme of now.

Are you ready?
Like matter
has any bearing at all.

No Blame

Night and Day (CAI2019)

He says, Child, don't you know?
you can't fuck it up.
you don't have the power
How things go, is how they go
how they will be, how they are
functions far beyond
your ham-fisted factors,
your desires, your choices.
Hush and be; hush and know
you are only where you go
the acts of war
enacted through your open doors
when reality requires your inevitable participation;
your execution earns no shame
no blame, except
you know
it does

Raw

Raw (CAI 2019)

To let it go
takes heart
a letter to myself, a decision
made in haste
not in jest but
not quite seriously, either.
I know I cannot meet her
where she is
and she can't reach as far as me in any case
to let it go
takes courage, but it looks an awful lot
like cowardice
like fear
like watching it drift away without reaching
but what if reaching
is the most dangerous thing of all?