It's been a beautiful escape,
this time away from work
as I prepare for a wedding.

I think I shall miss
this calm relaxation
when the week of rest ends
and I return to my jobs.

I read through the night
-pushed away the dark hours
with stories of light
-and now that dawn breaks
I will take my rest.

To be refined/reused

The sun may have melted
Icarus's wings
in that desperate flight-
but it was the sea
who dealt the wounds.

Maybe I'm holding onto sanity
with just two fingers,
but better than
with only one.

Just when I think
I have finally slipped free,
Regret slams back down
like a vise I am one inch short
of escaping-

He is built the same
as this shade-once-a-young-man,
all skin-and-bones frame
with wiry muscle you don't expect
holding him together.
He even has the same concave indent
in the center of his chest.
He's a runner,
occasionally drawing,
quiet and reserved at first
who diligently works.

The similarities burn
until differences surface-

Dedication to multiple sports,
not music.
He draw ideas and images,
art not the plans
for something he'll later build.
His eyes may be blue but they're dark,
and he is not broken,
at least,
not in ways he's not trying to fix.

I will see this youth for himself,
not for the friend long gone.

I looked up
The Language of Flowers
for a poem
in order to
Enhance the Imagry
but then it got too complicated
and a little too pretentious
so here's this.

I'm awake alone
(comme toujours)
and I miss you,
you dumb idiot,
who said you wanted to write
and keep in touch
but didn't.

I could've told you about the cat
vanquishing the
cheese-eating surrender monkey
that is my dog,
or how Bollywood films
as a genre
are now my favorite thing
(il n'y a pas
du douleur
a la pensee
de regarder ces films
avec toi)
and now I know how to say
"father" and "mother" in Hindi
in addition to the Spanish I've been learning.

When I return to school,
and have things to occupy my time
that do not also bore me,
I will forget.
To remember invites regret,
and when I return to my hermit ways
you will be
but a dandelion.
lost in the wind.

I don't know how to tell
the silly boy
I decided to trust again
that dance is my temporary church
and I do not mean that to blaspheme.

I have no church family,
no roots
though I'm trying to grow them
and they keep getting snipped.
I am a wanderer,
cut off.

and there are few times
when I don't feel like a
worthless piece of shit
no matter how often I
pray to God that he correct
this fucking pathetic, vain
way of thinking.

when I dance,
I am chasing something Beautiful,
something Good,
I can turn my mind away from me
and my soul is so filled with joy
it forgets every mar on the world
and rises to sing praises
at Heaven's gate.

I will be a lark at break of day rising
for I know the sun I seek
can be found wherever I look

So much time
and effort
wasted,
ruined along with a tire
on the side of the road
and just when I finally
was recapturing
what I lost
it slips through my fingers.
just when i was starting
to make friends.

all these demons
throwing themselves
at a desperate attempt to get out,
to be shrapnel
in an explosion
touched off by the simple denial
of my only constant joy
when I was blocks from satisfaction-
I swallow them down again
with only a few loose cannons
to nick at those I shield.

I could not gather
again
the strength to venture out.
I could not rejoice
in the challenge that would lift my spirits.
So I will curl up in my tears,
an addict denied my fix,
and let the painstakingly applied eyeliner
run down my cheeks.

It's a clever little line,
the one between asking for help
and asking for attention.

Trouble is,
I've never been good
at fine lines.

All the world was mine.

How strange
That I might feel at home
In a stranger's arms,
And yet I was.

How lovely,
That he might sit at my table
And talk with me,
As friends,
And let me babble incessantly.

I'll not let go
of the hesitant "may I?" with a hand on an empty chair,
of the "thank you," pressed to an ear.

I will dance out the door
and into the arms of sleep.

I'm chipping off little pieces
of me
and planting them about.

I've had to throttle
the life
out of those that became weeds.

I may have cried
over seeds
that never grew.

And yet I hold in my hands---

a bundle of paper,
secured by twine,
with stamps all the colors of the rainbow--

a cup of tea-
and once, only once
coffee-
warmed by another's toil--

a shirt purchased
somewhere I've never been-
pressed into my grasp
with a smile so excited-
that suits me as if it had been made for me---

the fruit of a garden well-tended