This Wilde Charade

The romantic in me

Wants to kick the charade

And love you less like Shakespeare—

But it’s this Portrait

Of Dorian Gray that’s damned me Wilde

I don’t dare

Bliss

Don’t know how long I’ll be back,

but I am now. It’s like

waking in a movie theatre

while the credits roll and suddenly

everything and nothing’s changed.

You don’t know what everyone else saw

but you’ll take their word for it.

And with arms akimbo they just watch

you pocket your hands and head home.

So if I don’t see you today, then tomorrow

perhaps we’ll go swimming? And maybe

for just a while we can pretend

that I never left us in the first place,

and that this was all a dream, and that

starting over didn’t have to mean the end.

Destiny Awaits

To some today’s today.

To others, today’s a destiny.

Broken Hearts

One day

When ready

I’ll tell you a story.

A story of a boy

Who never stopped running.

I’m just not ready

To break your heart.

The time between collision and capsizing

There is something very scary

about imagining a life without flaw,

as if insecurities were a sin

you could merely pray away?

There’s something cynical in that,

something dangerous.

Something I haven’t the heart to feel,

it’s something impervious.

Because with great peril comes

an even greater awakening, an awakening

which floods the veins with frozen certainty

as the waters eating the Titanic.

It’s the time between collision

and capsizing, which we find ourselves

relieved of our blind faith, knowing

with grave admiration, the life

we’re living, is all we have.

July Reflection, 2020

The boy who cried gently to the wolf.

You can sense it you know,

yourself shutting down—again

with the change of scenery, again

with the change of heart.

It’s like trying to stop a freight train

running yourself empty, till

all there is is but to explode.

It’s a very empty place to be living.

It’s a very empty place to be born.

It’s a beautiful fall day, though, isn’t it?

Isn’t it beautiful, this

in depth exhibition of yourself—

without the guts, with all the answers

and nothing all that good say.

Again, another Fall. 2020

for richer or poorer

I would rather be

a poor man

with a rich soul,

than a rich man

with a poor heart.

Topanga Beach. October, 2020

The Devil to one is God to another.

The Devil to one

is God to another.

It’s a cycle continued

that is, until

we stop looking to the sky,

stop burying our trauma,

and look our neighbor

dead in the eye,

without retaliation or judgement

and listen, to one another’s heart

which beats to the same rhythm

as a newborn babe

that is, until

birth begins

its earthly decay.