Death, Love, and Life

They don't see the rest of me
They don't see the love of scouring through images of the Capuchin Catacombs
Looking at the stark story of life embedded on the dried stretched faces
They don't know of the frank curiosity with death's processes
Stopping by the deer carcass on the back road day by day, watching what happens
They don't comprehend the deep wonder of old pocked stone
Old leather books
Old bygone worlds
Children's gravestones in the centuries-old cemetaries
Prayers to God scrawled in 1840's prayer compilations
Whispers of other times emanating from delapidated houses

They can comprehend only my acceptable joys
My love of beaches, of waves
Of rain and snow
Of looking out the window to find flowers budding in the garden
They have themselves known the delight of freshly washed sheets
Or the thrill of the top of a roller coaster, just before plummeting
They can understand my protective fierce love of my children
My kisses on soft cheeks and curly heads
My prideful watching of lessons learned and things achieved

They even would understand my passion
The deep fulfillment of being skin to skin, body to body
The raw joy of physical connection
The sensuality and simple power of touch
Of fingertips lightly running the length of your spine
Or my lips resting, just so, on the small of your neck
And feeling strong arms keeping me close
Heightening every sensation to the point of ultimate bliss


But they don't know
Not everything
Because they would not understand

On The Communication Of Music

Music, springing as if from a long-forgotten long-buried font
   Loud clear crystal, tripping sprightly past bits of daylight
A rush, the mind crying for more, not wishing the song to ever end
   Though end it does, with laughter rolling forth, a cry of hurrah on the lips

Or misty and dark, pulling to one side and whispering "slowly, slowly"
   A soft breath, leaning back on a summer's eve with eyes closed
A soft smile, an extended hand, or is it a tender thought touching
   With tears standing in the eyes long after the last strain passes

Or somber and thoughtful, hushing wanton revelry
   Telling of what has been, what may be, what has passed already
Lost loves and forgotten wars and sorrows still fresh to the listening ear
   Reminding with deep note and structure to heed past action

No language for the transmission of words and ideas
   Just chords and sensations and the thrill of ultimate inclusion
Knowing this to be joyful, that melancholy, this other a cry to arms
   With nothing but a melody and a tempo to translate thoughts

Until I Met You

I was happy until I met you

Fulfilled in the deep sense of the word

Having everything that I might have imagined, but I wasn't imagining enough

I had something, someone to make me who I wanted to be

But in the process I was forgetting who I was

Turning my back on certain Truths about my being

To attempt the image of myself that I had constructed since childhood

I have never been normal

Never wanted the attainable

Never succumbed to the classness of society

But I was happy

Happy with my partner

Happy with my ambitions, my petty ambitions

That fall away from the stalk now like kernels of corn from the ear

On a parched Kansas day in August

I did not want to fall away

Rather, I yearned to keep that happiness wrapped around me like the sheath

Blind to the heat

Blind to the pointlessness

Until you, the free bird that found me, shook the stalk and sent me flying

And where do I fall now?

I was happy until I met you

My love of morbidity shunned

My intrigue about life, old Life, cast aside

You awoke my Truths, awoke me

And where do I fall?

I was dry and did not know it

Hollowed but could not feel it

I was happy until I met you, and we have never even met