White

A friend once told me she liked to paint herself each morning,

a colour for a mood.

Red was porous and bleeding out.

Purple was energizing; good for what she knew would be a hell of a day.

Yellow was for cheerful and happy, like dandelions or buttercups.

Green was for sex, feeling fecund, wanting to grow something inside.

Orange was for formal, evoking good taste.

Brown was for earth, getting soiled inside, letting the hubris compost,

a time for waiting, a time for caring for everything.

Black was her favorite, a time for nothing at all.

I liked to drink vodka most of the time.

She liked to paint as you know.

I took to dropping acid so I could see colours.

And then when I became too paranoid the vodka would help.

That's why I found her.

I was afraid of my colours.

I did not like threatening my world.

But when I finally gave up I found white was my best,

the colour of explosion,

the colour that breaks things apart

when the atom lets go.

When I admitted you were right.

I had done all those things,

things became white.

Over time I allowed the other colours to bleed in.

Red became the suffering I caused.

Blue became the sea that swallowed what was lost.

Black I avoided and avoid still, at all cost.

Definitions

There is no quiet

but an absence of sound.

There is no dark

but an absence of light.

There is no turmoil

but an absence of peace.

There is no hatred

but an absence of love.

There is no sickness

but the absence of health.

There is no hell

but the absence of God.

There is no me

but the absence of you.

Food Court Patrons

Waiting for my friend,

while sitting in the food court

at a round green table

with steel chairs attatched.

An old man reading a free newspaper,

Lifting colorful pages against the air

and they fold peacefully into place.

Groups of Greek elders,

Socrates and Plato

scraping caked ink 

off the lottery game cards

and blowing chaff with weak lungs.

Thick glassed eyes

telling tales of old,

of events that happened to them,

free of the editors mind,

the splendid ego

on a rampage.

A pretty Asian girl in slim slacks,

and fine ruby red sweater

and stiletto boots,

walking, texting, talking.

Old women,

complain about hospitals

and nurses while sipping

from coffee time and shaking their heads 

in disbelief.

I am 

waiting for my friend

in whom schizophrenia

has reigned  for many years.

I see

him walk in from the opposite side,

furtively glancing,

until I walk over.

His smile is an awakening

at first,

but then his countenance lowers 

onto his face like wrinkled wax paper,

red and welted with bloodshot eyes 

and half his smile knocked out.

He tells me gambling stories

and of women who are burning to have sex.

How he won two thousand dollars

then gave it all to a friend

week by week

until it was spent.

because she needed food for the kids.

"Do you have the Holy Spirit?"

he says.

"I can't tell anyone

but I can tell you

the secrets of the kingdom."

He rubs his palms,

"I know something I can't tell,

I'm going to change into a baby."

I look

At infants in strollers

with so many mothers,

and believe him.

Grief

Still shadow in the grey mist

Crystal sounds of clear springs over pebbles

Odor of cedar acrid herb

Contemplation of emptiness a cold fear

Gnawing at my mind replaying the voice

forgotten its timbre the heightened laugh

Anxious scoldings almost but still a construction

Not an authentic memory

What was the last thing she said

It felt so good to vanish with her

All of my emotions resonated with the songs

Of her arrivals and departures

I am dissolving because of the loss of her

How Can You?

How can you be so happy

after telling me those words

and laying your burden on me

while you dance away gleefully.

Could you not see it in my eyes,

the gnawing fatigue of loving,

with a fragile conscience,

those who cannot be trusted.

I decided today that I've

given up being the strong one,

the reliable stalwart pillar;

because I have deteriorated my core.

And the roof is not certain any more.

So please let me go to drift

into the river of randomness,

where lives are like flotsam carried

by any eddy and flow into

pools of events where

eventually they become water-logged and sink.

Just let me be that, once.

Love

Is love anything but attatchments and habits

and remedy for alone?

Am I so drawn out of myself that I can never

find my way back in?

God help me that pathetic.

I should infuriate at waste.

I am!

Jehovah called David his beloved while David took Bathsheba.

Solomon was the greatest king but had more concubines 

than chariots and horses.

I take pride in monogamy.

Shoulders like granite bearing.

I was.

I am confusion left on it's own to bury deep

in a hill of stale dry crumbs,

trails of ants leading down into busy mines.

I lunged ahead for the best.

I fell, alone for the empty.

I sing.

Many come and go but I am one who is fearless.

Not for courage but for weariness and discovery.

You cannot hold me anyway.

You spoke too often to hear.

I end. 

Love Fear

I was afraid to love

for so many years,

as I was afraid to hate.

But one comes 

with it's mate;

another poison

for they both will kill you.

The Buddhas and the Christs,

the Gurus and the Sufi s,

they do not love,

not like that.

They detach and

float off

and then holler back

for you to come along.