You hold no Universe…no balance, in your hands.
Release what you thought was yours.
Allow the busy minds to be full with content over their choices.
They want what they want…give it to them.

You hold no Universe…no balance, in your hands.
Release what you thought was yours.
Allow the busy minds to be full with content over their choices.
They want what they want…give it to them.

both hands on the steering wheel
direct impact
no hands on the steering wheel
no hands
steering wheel into flesh
the soft
then the crushing
crushing of ribs
an explosion
an exhalation of breath, lungs
lungs pushing
pushing the heart upward outward
no more breath
no more heart
no more air
no more blood
blood everywhere crushed now
I know what it feels like to love

Photo Credit: A.P. Cook

Old
Habitual, rote faithfulness
Adherent to rotational, gravitational patterns
Latchkey Love
Learned avoidance, practiced to perfection
Like clockwork, the thrill won’t work
Time, you are becoming
Old

Sub-zero warmth on planet You
Editing me
One hundred percent chance I’d be puzzled
Morning, noon, and night
Your steady rainfall left me
Adjusting, crash-landing
Unsure now whether I survived
The fiery-attack I thought was your love

I originally came to complain
To cry so silent here that just my Creator could make sense of this outpouring
This graffiti-papered grieving
To tell the sky what it already knows
My disdain for the wafting scent of muscle on the backyard grill next door
My need for mercy for the muscle and might ripped from my chest
To scream to the sky of this guy, who took
And took
And took what I gave readily — easily — from love
And kept, and refused to acknowledge was gifted to him
Yet looming, this anniversary, I can neither complain nor cry
After all
For all the love letters
Eternal
Penned by lovers, that, too, paper and letter the sky
And God gave a garden and set my eyes
That I would see
Gardens of flowers for me

A wind I’ve not heard before
Today
A rush upon the rain
An energy
A constant speaking, the whirring
A struggle to understand
Some language I believe in
And cannot yet decode
Thus, a dread
Faith filled,
I will not prophesy
But beware

What historic shadows do we live with?
What bricked, mortared, and hole-riddled, but still beating heart will we keep saying suffices?
What love? What?
This battered banner
These stars
Ready now, to tell true stories
Able, finally
To let go
To grow


The mountains welcomed me, “You’re back!” and promised me they’d have my back, should some Great water way — or two — recede, retreat, or otherwise act as cowards for too, too long.
Oh, harim, how they cried to me, spoke truth to me, “Here’s Jenny, an ally to thee.” At once the Sun shone once again, as I embraced my Westward friend.
Her shores were rocky, her waters cold. But I, at midpoint, felt less old — and trampled — then. And my ears acquiesced.
For t-w-e-n-t-y years before, life’s fog obscured Jenny’s lore. She sang it then, she sang it now: “Courageous woman, to the path you’ve chosen, the mountains bow.”
