My Dream House

What is a home?

Is it the building,

Or the people living in the building?

Is it where you live now,

Or the place where you come from,

That you call home?

My dream house is more than bricks and mortar.

It is more than wood,

…and paint,

…than windows

...and aluminum siding.

It is more than all of the amenities that come with a house

Such as our two-car garage,

Or the man-made pond around which we gather

During the lazy, hazy days of summer,

In our repose.

My dream house is more spiritual than physical.

More emotional,

Than corporeal.

It has more in common with nostalgia

Than it shall ever have

With the building where I take my evening slumber.

The difference between a house and a home

Was something that confused me as a child,

Until my older sister explained it to me thusly:

“A house is where you live,

And a home, is how you live.”

And it is about how we live

That I wish to speak with you today….

We all live in some form of dwelling,

And we depend upon that dwelling

For a myriad of things vital to our well-being.

Without a house, we would be vulnerable to the elements

And suffer both physically,

And emotionally.

Without a safe place to lay our heads,

…to care for ourselves,

…and to store up the necessities of life,

We would find life to be one seemingly

Never-ending hardship.

Similarly, we all live in some form of spiritual dwelling,

And we depend on that dwelling

To educate and inspire us, and to make life worth living.

Without a spiritual house, we are vulnerable to our disappointments;

We suffer emotionally, and psychologically,

And become enemies to ourselves.

We act against our best interests,

We obsess about what is wrong,

And we lose the ability to appreciate what is right.

Life becomes

One seemingly never-ending hardship.

My dream house, therefore,

Is a house of the spirit–

It is the dwelling place of all my most precious memories,

And experiences,

And adventures,

And acquaintanceships.

It is built on the principles of the people

And the places where I was raised.

Its load-bearing columns run deep,

And its support beams are strong

To carry the load of a wounded soul.

It is a safe place,

And it is large– for it must shelter my massive insecurities.

But it is also a well-spring of tremendous joy!

Where even small efforts at something worthwhile

Invite celebration.

It is colored vibrant with opportunity,

And bejeweled

With what survives of my childhood dreams.

It needs no lawns, for there we see beauty in appreciating things as they truly are–

And we accept the entire world

Through our very doors.

There, we focus on the good, and not the greedy.

On the helpless, and the needy.

There, will you always find a hand up,

Instead of a hard time.

In my dream house, you are valued for being your authentic “self”;

Without trappings, or titles, or the litany of other vanities

People use

To tear each other down.

There we live what we are,

Instead of lamenting what we are not.

For in my dream house, self-love and self-acceptance are a way of life:

And everyone receives what he needs

Until he is whole again.

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Adored

You weren’t like other girls.

It always felt like you were entering the room

When everyone else was

Walking out.

Our last, first kiss,

When you took off your shirt, and your bra,

Exposing your back to me.

Titillating me by coming onto Mike

Until I called you away from him,

Cradling your breast in my hands,

And got you to make love to me instead

And three days later,

You and I were living together.

Most girls left me wishing I had

A nice inheritance

Or at least better bag of bullshit.

But you, you were so phenomenally

Intense!

You thought mulligatawny was a dirty word

Until I told you what it was—

And then you thought I was dirty!

“I was raised in a satanic cult.” you once confided in me,

Then added, “I’ve got a secret; I love you,”

“…and I am a pathological liar!”

Knowing that I could never misunderstand.

You loved with a perfect wit,

And a lunatic wail…

Remember that summer when we stopped working out

Because that working out thing

Just wasn’t working out?

And so all summer long we scrogged like little bees

Fucking off the pastries

We’d eaten in the morning—

And remember that asshole neighbor who was

Always hawking that, “I’m a surfer, not a soldier!” smugness?

Until one day, I just couldn’t take it anymore,

So I punched him in the nuts!

Self-righteous fuckers shied away from us

After that…

Alone in a world

Where human beings loved as sincerely as dogs,

You opened your ears whenever I opened my mouth,

And the intensity with which you understood my chaos

Felt dreadfully unsettling!

It reminded me of what Bill Cosby said, that

“Every closed eye is not sleeping,

And every open eye is not seeing.”

For you were not sleeping, and I

Was clearly, not awake.

But this was how I taught you

Not to expect too much from me,

Then I became ashamed of how readily

I conformed to your lowered expectations.

The dimples in the small of your back,

Once the embodiment of all my hopes,

Soon became an obligation you came to resent.

You, the risk-taker—vibrant!

Always goading me to wish I was a better person,

Even when it was so perfectly clear

That I simply was not.

Tangled up in blue

Tangled up in you

It was all tangled now…

Dead fish in the stream who mused about Yogi Berra

Who once said,

“You can observe a lot by watching.”

And we knew how to do that,

So we felt safe—

Allowing the blessings of experience to make us sharper

With each cut.

From whose bright lamp it shone

Neither great in patience, nor in sorrow, yet also

Not great in shame—

Though fraught with all the imperfections

The hands of our minds

Had wrought,

And deeply desirous of a world

Where people didn’t know

How full of shit we were.

You needed God, and I, a therapist,

And time to savor these exploding moments…

But one day, we found ourselves in a strange land,

No longer strangers, and so, no longer with charm—

Just an iceberg of habits and tedium

The depths of which we were both

Loathed to plumb.

Whipped dogs that didn’t bark

A bent dick that didn’t fuck,

On a really, really bad day

To be African-American.

Sorrow

Had finally fist-fucked its way

Into our relationship.

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I Read Your Words, and Felt A Wound Inside

I read your words

And felt a wound inside

I thought had healed

Millennia ago.

The damnéd twinge of

Deepest, dark regret

Revived, as if

Omnipotent half-gods

Had broke’ their vows

To crash into our world,

To lick our wounds,

And feast on sin again.

As to relive the earnestness of all

That once was us—

And ne’er shall be again.

As if the need to feel the damnéd hues

Of all our pangs,

Eclipsed their divine state;

Driving them mad to taste mortality—

To know the force that caused such souls

To die.

For death is sweet, to one who cannot die,

And love is pure, when ignorant of pain;

And men are noble, excellent, and kind,

Firmly ensconced in poetry and prose.

But death destroys the germ

Of all that’s good.

And love is deadly as a razor’s wail,

And men are mostly what we wish was not;

And poetry and prose is not real life.

And you are all I ever loved, and more.

And I am less than what I thought I was.

And love is vicious, villainous, and cruel,

When it’s sincere—and given to a fool.

And like these demi-gods, I, too, would fall,

To feel such love, and passion once again!

To know the souls interred in that dark place,

And resurrect, and mend our love’s disgrace.

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Paradise Found

I

Every woman is on a journey—a journey of self-discovery, and self-acceptance.  A woman’s heart, and her mind, and her world, and her body, are the turnstiles of that journey.  They are deep and mysterious realms that have hidden corners, and dark and forsaken places, as well as places of absolute brilliance and joy; where beauty floats, and swirls, and inhales, and exhales that woman’s peculiar essence, and rhythm; …where she finds her true-self, and all of the things that she loves, or would love, or could love, or should love, but cannot.  …Places where she is brazen and vulnerable; accepted, and ugly; lovable, and unlovable... all on the turn of a phrase or the touch of a lover’s hand…  I say that she is on a journey because these magical, these sacred and forbidden places, are not all her own—she does not own them, any more than one can own a tear that has fallen from one’s eyes, or one’s innocence, once it has been lost...  They are a part of her “self”, and her experience—they are elements of her world, and her past, and her body—none of which are all hers... and so she journeys to them, and from them, and through them, and in them, and with them she communes with herself, and with what she values for a time, before she is compelled to return to her life’s routine, where she is only half of this other self—half as good, half as evil, half as interesting, and half as essential to her life.

II

Paradise is not about running away to, but about no longer running away from… It is not about being swept up, but about lovingly embracing a moment of perfection and holding it to one’s bosom and never letting go… It is about making who you truly are “acceptable” as an everyday lifestyle.  It is about accepting all opinions of yourself without anguish, knowing that, “Yes, it’s true; I have been all of those things at one time or another in my life, or in my mind, but now I live differently; I will confess who I was, if you will confess who I am!  I will accept what I was, if you will accept who I am!”  These are the conversations I now have with my heart, and with my mirror—and on occasion, I even have them with my fellowman…

III

Of all the things I ever found, the most meaningful was when I found relief from the weight of life’s expectations.  I say life’s expectations because it was not just my own expectations of myself, or my loved ones’ expectations of me that I needed relief from—I needed relief from the very concept of expecting things from life.  By this, I am of course referring to the unhealthy expectations we have of ourselves and of others, and the people we love.  We expect them, and they expect us, till none of us are happy.  By training myself to turn off my mind, and open my senses to what is going on in the world around me; by seeking out quiet and solitary places, places of inspiration, and places that compel introspection, I have learned to cherish the communication of the cold wind upon my skin, as well as the painful bite of rocks beneath my shoeless feet.  They let me know that I am alive!  That I am connected to something greater than myself; greater than the bullshit that starts me to brooding when I’m not in tune with this… whatever the problem, whatever the pain, the cold wind, and the unpolished stones, remind me that I am alive; that life is not perfect, and that small efforts at something worthwhile are better than hours wasted obsessively kicking oneself over a litany of unrealized expectations.


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It's been a while

Is this thing still active? I just logged back on, are we still taking over the world, one letter at a time? Read more!

blindspot

split second adjustment

 after screeches of mate

oops, i didn't see you hiding  there....

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This Man I Loved

This man I loved: 

This recondite man of coarse,
And hurtful phrases—
Always belittling, always berating,
Always, always,
On my case…

This ignoble king
Grown humble with age,
And fear of retribution.

Bane of my childhood,
Yet sorely missed.
Who, to this day, still rules
From the grave
A corner of my world.

This island of unresolved issues…
Who’d never punched a man
Without knocking him out,
Or saved a child
With his eviscerating opinions.

In whose dark light, so many
Lumen have fallen,
Barely glowing their hiccupy gloam,
Debauched, bewildered,
Dwindled, vitiated, decayed.

Coruscant no longer.
No longer fit to dream as they used to—

Lumbricoid terrestrials banished
From the sky.
Like the king who banished them in the ardor
Of his reign;
When he hurled thunderbolts and insults
Because kings could not die,
…and all the gods
Were dead.

A small man, sequoiaesque to his progeny,
Erecting impossible walls
And annexing the wills
Of his children,
So that they would never thrive,

Or ever fully recover.

Just like you—Old King,
Reticent and complex;
Not given to feeling sorry,
Not even for yourself.

Employed at eight,
Engaged at fourteen,
You raised three families without ever once
Saying, What about me?

We knew why you hated us:
Why you hated me—

The foolish boy, whose visage so closely matched
The man’s who had abandoned you
So long ago.
Whose face I wore in ignorance
Of your pain, along with his name,
And his blame.

Just as I blamed you for your faults
When I was young,
And your faults seem so clear,
And mine were less demarcated
And acknowledged.

I rheum over you now, oh instigator
Of my oppression—
Like a dog grown used to being kicked.

Humbled to the point
Where I could really use your wisdom
And certainty—
Which has outlasted my own.

But we were not saints.
We were not lucky.
And in this,
We are not alone.

---

[1] ‘Recondite’ – difficult to figure out or understand.

[2] ‘Lumen’ - organisms emitting visible light. 

[3]  ‘Gloam’ - the time of day immediately following sunset.

[4] ‘Debauched’ – Morally corrupted.  Having been lead away from excellence or virtue.  Having reduce the value, quality, or excellence of; debased

[5] Dwindled’ – having been made to waste away, to cause to grow less in size, intensity, or number; diminish or shrink gradually.

[6]  ‘Vitiate’ - To reduce the value or impair the quality of. To corrupt morally; debase. To make ineffective; invalidate.

[7] ‘Coruscant’ – to emit vivid flashes of light; sparkle; scintillate; gleam.

[8]  ‘Lumbricoid’ – resembling an earthworm.

[9] Sequoiaesque – possessing characteristics that are similar to those of a sequoia tree.

[10] ‘Reticent’ - Not revealing one's thoughts or feelings readily.

[11] ‘Rheum’ – to tear up, to weep.

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We Shall Emerge As New Creatures

We are not misfits.
But men and women
Learning to live again.
Learning to trust
In our own abilities
And in the decency
Of others.
Learning to seed ourselves
With the hope
For a better tomorrow
Despite the bitterness’s
Of a perilous today.
Our doubts,
Braced by faith.
Our hopes,
Backed with action.
We are not victims—
But victors.
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An Ode to Martin Luther King, Jr., in Remembrance of His Eighty-Third Birthday

These days, few ruminate what could have been
Or calculate the costs of what was lost.
Sadly, we live the lives of lesser men,
And scarce concern ourselves with what we ought.
When tragic, did those missiles blast, and slay,
T’was not only the light of this dear man—
Who bravely bore the burdens of our cause:
Aware of what he’d someday, have to pay.
T’was not only the dream, that day, to end—
When hate took aim, and charged him for our faults:

To whom, a paltry monument we’ve laid;
Dishonor, to his legacy we’ve brought.
To all who bore brutality—who paid
Time, after time, with blood: yet still they fought!
The more resolved to hasten forth that day:
Stalwart in hope, resolved to greet with peace—
The slings, the arrows, and the burning cross.
For our sakes, none of them did shirk away.
That in our day, all men might live in peace—
Such were the dreams for which those martyrs fought.

And so, today, we honor this great man:
Extol his works, recall brothers in peace.
But also, we’ve a duty to extend
This legacy bequeathed to you and me.
That this man’s works might bear their proper fruit
That joyous day, when finally we learn:
Concern, compassion, no longer at a dearth.
The world in bondage to a deeper truth,
And from our madness we men have soundly turned—
Then, peace, not war, shall finally rule the earth. Read more!

indignant at unjust trials put on offspring
the days were not enough

shed not yellow band

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