WITHOUT PROVISIONS

Obsessed with love
From opposite poles
You with your redemption of revenge
Running from tri-pronged words
Lovers in your wake,
Leaping into the arms of Brave New Girl,
My own lust for love’s Medusian forms
Disparate, but quite desperate
For any slight permutation
To the point of self-hypnosis
Confusion of what is
And what will never be.
Two delusionists procrastinating their way
Through long, lonely patches
Of sloth-like self-immolation and deception
Missing boats, points, shivering seminal connections
Hanging from the rafters around us
Hungry for a little heartbeat
And slipping past us on the wings
Of my indecision
And your books of rules.

So you seek
Those beneath you
Those you can save
Those you can ache to understand
Hoping
In the race to walk away
That the very thing which attracts you
Will make them easier to leave.
The big boned, the old daddies,
The misfit, artistic, needy and dysfunctional
Who contribute
To your own self-worth
Add texture and drama and inspiration and obstacle
To your daily grind
Some sense of being needed
Some sense of being flawed enough
To allow you to shine.

I seek the illusive beauty
The perfect smile
Round, young ass of a teen
On a full-grown, genius guruette
Someone I can worship
Bend over.
Walking dictionary goddesses
Wanting nothing more than to live their lives to fill my head
My bed
My waking moments with discovery
Sinful fire-breathing naughtiness
Accepting my genuflection
With my dominant stare,
Physical largess matching
Serve for serve
My passionate heart
My servitude
And enveloping embrace
With my self-flagellating doubt.
Iron filaments gather around me
Pulled with me toward the magnetic sphere
Of those not ready
To trust their own ability to love,
Pulled t’ward those damaged by
Fathers, boyfriends
Con men and hypocrites
All unable to hold tightly to their responsibilities
Express their love for anything but their own myopic screeds
Or those who take the first train out of Daddyville
By choice or fate
Leaving their sad, little girls to wonder why
Sitting on steps each night
Waiting for his big hands to sweep them up;
Impaled on the bitterness of cheating lovers
Harsh and ignorant men
Their own spiritless souls seeking
More than is willing to be given
Brothers gone on with life
Boyfriends greedy with lust
Girlfriends neck deep in temptation
Misunderstanding
Insecurity and
All of those mismatched,
Mistakes
Discarded moments
Miscalculated
Maligned
Possibilities
Tossed into the flames
Fear
Laziness
The drive for the perfect
Beast
Love’s precarious reputation
Holding the match.

And there we sit
Needing and wanting
What we cannot accept
What we will not fully give--
Everything.
There are those of us
Who cannot handle the torturous
Self-exposure
Seeking the restitution of revenge
Conscious and unconscious gaming
Positioning
Manipulations
The outward blaming
Replacing the outpouring of love’s unbridled
Flow
And all of us ego-driven
To the brink of self-delusion.

So the thoughtful of us
Hunker down in our solitude
Rolling a fatty
A phalanx of equations, probabilities, deceptions and epiphanies
Around in our heads
Before we touch a match to it
Inhaling its smokescreen with hope
A candy drop you cannot resist biting into too soon.
We fail to be godlike
Use timing as our alibi
Being misunderstood as our cloak
Our cover.
We stand alone
Surrounded by God’s love
The universal bliss of our very existence as proof
Ignored in the cannonball leap
Looking for that big splash
Courting the deep end.
Just not damn sure.
Just wanting more.
Just needing
Our arms
Around the elusive
One
Forever
Loved.

~ for Molly, 1/4/09 Big Bear City
also collected in MOLVESTED.doc
also collected in POETICS 2008/2009.doc
also published at FMBS.C

FAITH IN THE ADORABLES

What is this wealth of riches
Working hard not to sacrifice my deep respect
Striving, polishing my honesty and reflection
For those who give me their cherished moments
Their subdivided hearts willingly;
For those who share their stories
Aches and joyous epiphanies;
For those whose fingertips trace
Epic tales of romance across my furrowed countenance
Lost loves, souls torn with time’s scornful glance
Life’s diverted energies focused
If ever so briefly upon my grizzled grin,
Whose hands hold all of this very moment’s hopefulness
Whose lips whisper the only truths we are sure of
Whose arms comfort and envelop me
In their neediness as well as mine.
I praise the deep longing for what only we can give each other
Whatever is distinct from what the next will give,
The last withheld,
from the dream we all search for
of The One we may never find.

How I cherish their willingness to accept my fragility
My smokescreens, my flailing attempts at flinging myself head on
Into the path of the battering ram of self-reliance --
Oh, how they surround my aging gracelessness with the kindness
Of compassionate longing
And what they find there in the darkness is me.
Simple in the very complexity that I brandish
A credo of web-like stickiness
What is and what should always be
never quite making the grade
That they see in me what I do in them--
Humanity masquerading as something so much grander
Reaching for the ring and reaching yet again
And we hold each others care to our hearts
Defying definition by any previous standards
Because our friendships
Our devotions
Our lusting and loving
Can only be seen as the courting of the impossible
Of the toe-on-the-rail, abyss leaping swan dive
into The Perhaps.

Leap with me, wrap your wings around me
Adorables
Freefall together
Past jealousies, fear, doubt
As lovers, muses, friends,
Believing
In love’s mystery
The heart’s resilience
The soul’s compassionate grace
Believing
In the undiscovered moment.

- For The Adorables: JS, MM, RR, SV - the amazing women in my life...alphabetically, of course ;-)