Pride Strong

Women with full rich voices, pantyhose, studied rocking gait, and solid hands for holding each other up.  Men with cropped hair, delicate waists, iron in their eyes and hidden sway in their hips.  People with adams apples and flowery dresses, green hair cut short and long and in between, bracelets and construction boots and bow ties and eyeliner.

You are power, you are pride, you are strong, you are you.

You are sinew and tendon and grit. Binding muscle and toughness to backbone and structure. Brute strength wrapped in flowery tissue paper, the true gift that you are. You are enveloped in that strength. You need strength to be you.

You smudge society's crisp edges to a soft, natural charcoal image. Society cannot define you or categorize you. Rather, you are a living breathing thesaurus of perfect humanity.

You are as solid as the mountains. As real as the sequoias. As natural as a thunderstorm. Make no apologies for your naturalness, for your reality.

Discovery

How have I known you without meeting you?
Where had we hidden the two parts of our souls?
Rusty souls that perfectly match their jagged edges,
Like old worn friendship charms that have been buried in a sleeping garden.
How have I only just found you?
You, who feel me and sense me and read me and Know me.
We must have met before, of course.
Maybe in the garden, centuries ago.
With the scent of jasmine and sweat and wine.
Burying our charms with silver spades, knowing then, knowing,

We will find them again.

When the garden awakes.

Temporal Anomalies and Mute Dedication

This is for you, with your intricate pinions
Your soulful intensity, walls, and intentions
This, my dear friend, is a poem that's true
This is my poem for you

This is the scent left behind on a pillow
So soft and so faint and so delicately mellow
This is the touch that still burns on the skin
This is desire worn thin

This is the clock, our old hollow enemy
Endlessly ticking and marching relentlessly
Posture like lovers, loving like friends
This is how time makes amends

This is a song, and then two, and then three
All of them sharing the same melody
Playing on repeat, and playing for two
While tangled, I lay against you

This is the clock again, far past its prime
Telling once more of the passing of time
Whispering to us that years have gone by
While seconds are felt in your eye

This is our twining, our trust, and our dreaming
Our careless caresses and languid mute scheming
This, my dear friend, is a poem that's true
And this is my poem for you

If Desires Were Pinpricks

If desires were pinpricks
  I would be covered in spots of red
 Bleeding freckles, washed in pain
Rinse under the cold water, in the rain
Rinse under the hot water and be burned by flame
  If desires were pinpricks
I would have the constellations in my skin
 And all the starry universe contained therein
A wound, small and red
However seemingly limited
  Can become gaping, a hole
  A window to my raw and bleeding soul
 If desires were pinpricks
Then pull the bandages across my eyes
  Place upon them each a coin
For passage into a new day
   And let these constellations be washed away

Artist: Caroline Jamhour

For Ryan, For Paul

You grew from the delicate child of steel into the Metal Man.  I have a memory of you, twisted into beautiful scarred shapes, with amazingly sublime curves and sudden sharp edges. You can be warped. Beaten and hammered. You can be so hot as to melt and burn. You can be cool, firm, strong.  Your most intricate details are equal to your most mutilated parts.  Your beauty is in your unique flaws.

Because of this, you cannot be broken.

Where does it go? I don't quite know.
Into the woods in a golden flow.
Up to the sky like a misting glow.
But where, oh where? I don't quite know.

Disparate voice, or disparate hand?
You could feel king of the sea and land.
You could take hold of that wisping strand.
Oh! For that unity, that would be grand.

Our Side of the Lake

The clock has stopped.
At least, it seems like it. We hope it has.
Time seems frozen, and all is quiet.
All except us,
whispering in the silence.
The sounds of the traffic cannot completely reach us here,
here next to a quiet lake with many roads across it.
Roads drawn long by the streetlights,
drawn by the moon,
drawn by the starlight.
The roads waver, and sway, never disappear.
But we stay here, on the dark side of the water.
This side is quieter, this side is sweeter.
This side affords us the luxury of not counting the minutes between light cycles,
And ignoring the chime of the crosswalk.
These things have time and purpose.
They are predictable as the impending dawn,
They keep asphalt Life on the move.
Stately and timely, go and stop.

But on our side, it is hushed.
We can only hear Time distantly.
Our side of the lake has grass and trees.
Benches are barely discernable in the blackness,
and the path is only a black smear under our feet.
I know that down this smear lies the ticking of a clock,
and that soon we must be reminded of it.

But not yet.
Not yet.

We count the steps back to time reluctantly.
Each is accounted for with equally uncounted kisses.
Eight steps.
Ten steps.
Time is still on hold.
It awaits our approach back to the light before crashing into our awareness.
As we reach the road, flooded with that orange glow,
We become conscious of Time again,
and we must resist that overwhelming desire to flee back into the warp.
Run back into that silence and timelessness
that exists on our side of the lake.