leaping

leap from new cold life,

to land among new home trees,

and praise what's within.

bound and bound away

from the dead wood that wounds you;

that branch had passed on.

i've been getting high

on all the wrong oxygen,

my head hurts, i'm spent.

i thought that was you,

standing at the edge of fine,

within my green bounds,

come to prune the hurt,

come to burn the pile of pain

you found on the branch.

but you just stood there,

in your silhouette of hope,

not telling me things.

so when you jumped off,

hitting the harsh ground running,

my roots broke your fall.

this tree is not green,

the water drained from its soul,

frost-bit bark cracking.

things we nested here

have abandoned their warm nests

and flown to find you.

but that's not too bad,

i would hate to have to care

for them anymore.

leap from new cold life,

to land among new home trees,

and praise what's within.

there are many trees

standing in my broad orchard,

waiting to be climbed.

the leaping is it,

shoved from the shivering loss,

to find myself here,

renewed by the hit

upon the grounds of my roots,

heels sprung and bones bruised.

the turn comes once tripped,

once the spine straightens anew,

once the blood returns,

and i can recall

without looking bent backwards

how that old tree lived.

to reach behind me,

without the eyes of the sins,

without the red hues,

and see something there

of the possibility

of no probation,

no more lost feelings,

no more clung-to hopes of chance,

no more search for you.

the tree stands apart

but it won't go to mother,

standing as it should

as the place from which

great things grew from great things loved,

and leaping was right.

Read More

i aim at love

i aim at love, like
the lot of you, which
is glimpsed side-to,
caught in those strange
impulses of light-in-time,
that pierce the eyes in
some moments and bathe
the feet in others. it is not
fully found but fondly,
fiercely pursued.

i don't mean love,
i mean Love: that
silent place that sits
beyond the threshold of
time and nature that
ends at the beginning of things
and begins at the end;
that high and low place at
once, that river within
us that gives us meaning.

i want to know what
i mean, to know
what purpose i have,
to know why i have given what,
to know why my bold breaths
into the wild hold any
importance whatsoever,
to know whether i am merely
a simple cell in the vast
expanse of the stupendous void.

so i aim at Love,
knowing that i will
not catch the uncatchable,
yet pursue it nevertheless,
because it is the chase -
and those golden glimpses
of it that i stitch, that i weave,
into some notion of memory,
some pretense of thought -
that shows me my Reason.

Read More

the walk

nothing so simple as a walk

among these souls, 

towered and adorned with

the shawls of life, 

letting what little sun

bask them and you

in some emergence of truth. 

their edges muted now

by different masks

as they reach up but

look downward upon

you through such

silly gauze, but 

that's the way of things. 

there is solemnity in

the quiet way in which

things change when we

shoulder the precipitations

of worries and evils, 

and just let her do

her alchemic work on us. 

the Bride is going softly, 

you know this;

she has to blood-knuckle mine

for thoughts the way one must

sift the waters to

extract those precious minerals

that are left to keep. 

a walk is a way, an

amble is a soft march

toward those rises 

you keep before you, and

the ice-snap of breaths you

take are reminders to

just keep plodding. 

nothing bad is behind us, 

really; maybe scattered

by breezes, or crushed

underfoot into peaceful particles

that feed our forest bed, 

waiting for the shawls

to be shed finally. 

then comes the fruits of all

that cold waiting and long walkings: 

a bloom, a greening of the eyes, 

a memory deposited as seeds that 

break the surface and the 

Bride is there, in full, one thousand

flowered considerations

Read More

supper is ready

it only takes a second, 

maybe after asking them to

get ready for supper, 

which they'd rather not do, 

and they spike a radio to the

ground and toss their cds

across the room

and kick the table in front

of them and call you an asshole

and tell you to throw their

radio away for good this time

and begin to pound their fists

against their head and you

see in their eyes that they want

to do nothing short of destroy

everything in their path so

you have to act swiftly knowing

that just walking away is tantamount 

to pissing lighter fluid into the mouth

of a volcano and you approach

and have to remember your

training and words like restraint

and control cross your mind and

not wanting them to do something

that will be permanent and as

you approach they swing with an

open palm and catch your glasses

that fly 10 yards and the other

children are scattering to escape

the lightning strike and the 

thunder and you have to subdue

a 300-mile-per-hour hurricane and

in doing so recall how the people

who rushed this into your life 

did so to rush it out of their

caseloads for a reason and 

you've finally got them calm 

and you have a bite mark on your

shin and a pinch scar on your

bicep and you let them up and

they seem contrite until the next

time they hijack normal and toss

your life into a pit of vipers and

you check the mirror an hour 

later when your anxiety attack

is over and you can breathe without 

tasting blood and there on the 

bridge of your nose is a memento

and supper has gone 

cold

Read More

faith outside the faults

i'm not a friend of his language,

although his mother and i

fought for control of the 

tongue of it when he first

came to us;

he knew a few words,

and he looped the lips

to craft something of a

conversation with us and

members of his new family and 

we learned to be interpreters.

he stole people's

keys, poaching them

the way a boy fists

pebbles into pockets;

we scolded him out of it.

he takes a half dozen

medications as a bulwark 

against the onslaught of

invisible enemies 

launched against him at birth.

the names of his meds

are tiresome, long,

and too difficult for 

our own tongues to curl

into any sort of intelligent

noise; we sound stupid.

his mother and i have

had to pin him to the ground,

his arms above his head, his

legs crossed beneath the

weight until he calmed down.

this happens when he is

struck sideways by some

atom-quick crashing of 

competing impulses, the

origin of which we never intuit.

he has flipped me off with a 

deviated finger and told me he hated 

me; he has said i am not his father;

he has thrown a chair at his 

mother and it has ravaged drywall.

he keeps the same song on

repeat and drones the lyrics,

the sound of which is like 

a finger on the record that

drags the music down into a bog.

he clamors to succeed, but crashes

against walls and floors, into

his own fists; he bites his arms

and curses under his breath; his 

chemical imbalances tip over trees.

what he was born into we've gotten

only in meager reports, like a

fitful radio sending us dispatches

of the battlefield casualties

before going silent.

we have been called before juries

to stand and answer questions

by fools wearing the wigs of

remonstrate; our defense falling

as flat as a deflated lung.

we have slept with unease, one

ear cocked to the dead sounds of 

night to hear if the boy is up

and getting into things;

our sleep is trench-warfare sleep.

what we hoped for we dreamed

about, what we dreamed about

we cast out in a net made of

thin glass that shone in a

gorgeous flash before shattering.

we have wanted to give up,

exhausted from the pulse of

the blast that radiated outward

from the detonation of one

hundred thousand collapsing suns.

we have wept into each other's

eyes in anguish over how we failed,

wondering if the hands of the clock

cannot, in fact, be unwound and

take us back to the greenery of

more pleasant fields.

but then he will rejoin us;

but then he will ask for a hug;

but then he will kiss us when

he has never kissed us before;

but then his cloudy eyes will clear

and we will find in them - in him -

what we dreamed of dreaming,

what we dared of daring,

what we hoped to hope for:

some simple light, some affirmation

that he was where he was destined

to be, for the good of what is good,

for a life worth living, for the

purity of excellence that he deserves in the

face of all founded and unfounded obstacles.

we who venture into such denuded

land, deforested by acid chaos,

do so from some calling,

from some urge, knowing not

what is meant to be found.

the creatures discovered here (that they call 

special) dance for us to the rhythms

of deeper wells within the earth,

beneath our feet, and in tune with

lesser graces.

and we - the boy's mother and father - find

faith outside the faults of our visit here,

recognizing the vulnerability of a child's

love and how it comes with the 

expectation that we are there,

regardless of where they are and have been.

regardless.

Read More