Maybe I’ll Stop Writing In The Spring

Maybe I’ll stop writing in the spring.

Maybe by that time my heart will be completely healed.

The words that flow like blood from an open wound will be clotted and begin the process by which new life will begin.

I can take my aching fingers, massage the pain they have suffered from writing so many times about her silky hair, her fathomless eyes, her tender skin, her magical body, all of which have given me endless wonderful memories and, simultaneously, given painful nightmares of memory for losing her… and they will never pick up pen to write of her from that day forward.

To rest my mind of superlatives and synonyms, describing what she encases as if a Pandora’s Box that begs opening yet threatens cataclysms to surely end all things once it is done… what hallelujahs will be sung in joy at that moment.

And then to open my eyes anew, as if seeing the sky for the very first time in all its swirling menagerie of colors, whereas she was my sky; to breathe in the fresh open meadows and beautiful spring flowers and crisp clean air as if breathing my first, whereas she was my breath.

To be released from this prison of paper and prose; never again to suffer the ignobility of having died a million deaths – never small but guttural and harsh in their finality, flesh rent and stripped away clean, my heart beating its last inky thrum so as to surrender words to her cause….

And yet here I am… writing of her again.

Begging her touch one last time.

Seeking her peace in my soul once more.

Trying and failing to explain in a few fumbling, foolish phrases and similes what she means to me.

It’s never any use. She never reads me. She has a life which begs other things of her.

I understand. I really do.

Just don’t ask me to like it.

Because my withered soul will ache forever, then beyond forever, and a few days beyond that.

Maybe I’ll stop writing in the spring.

Then again, maybe I won’t.

Yet I may still.

It depends on how much blood is left to write in my heart. Or how little.

Or the trickling stream may become a raging ocean yet again, coursing as a nor’easter to her waiting shore.

My god, why do I write so passionately for a woman who will never see my words, who will never know my heart?

Maybe I’ll stop writing in the spring.

Maybe it’s for the best.

Maybe I should have stopped a long time ago.

Maybe I’ll close my eyes and dream of her again.

Maybe in my dreams I’ll hear her whisper, “Please, my poet, write for me again….”

Then, without a thought, I will.

Because I have before.

And will again.

I am such a fool.

Which is why the cell will remain opened, but I will stay here, imprisoned forever.

Shackled, bleeding, writing still.

Maybe I’ll stop writing in the spring.

But we both know I won’t.

And so does she.

Tell Me

Tell me about your day

Tell me what you did

Tell me how your work was

Tell me how people treated you

Tell me how you treated them

Tell me when your sunshine was the brightest in the sky

Tell me about every time you could see the clouds make funny shapes in the afternoon sky when you took your lunch

Tell me if anybody or anything upset you

Tell me about the times when you breathed deeply and found your inner peace

Tell me every time you looked at the clock

Tell me about the earworm song stuck in your head all day long

Tell me which movie is your favorite today

Tell me what show you’re binge-watching now

Tell me again about that time we went out to dinner and we laughed so hard they almost threw us out

Tell me how your heart feels when we’re together

Tell me how your heart feels when we’re apart

Tell me about the puppy you had growing up

Tell me why you think it’s so cute when I wrinkle my nose up when I grin at you

Tell me the shade of later afternoon when you made your way home

Tell me how I can feel so at home no matter where I am as long as I feel your arms around me.

Tell me what you love about me

Tell me how I ever got so lucky as to find you

Tell me why it is that snuggling you in this bed sends electricity through my body like nothing else in the world

Tell me your secrets

Tell me in whispers

Tell me with your lips to my ear

Tell me quick because I’m falling asleep in your embrace; the most powerful sedative in the world

Tell me again… out of all the people in the world… why you chose me

Tell me again

Just tell me

Nothing

No pictures can convey the darkness within tonight

No loneliness will exemplify what has come to pass

No emotions shall equal the tears that flow as hidden rivers in mossy woods

It’s nothing

It’s just the remains of what used to be

Don’t read into it as anything more

It isn’t you

Don’t flatter yourself

It isn’t always about you

It’s nothing

Just let it alone

Just let ME alone

Feels

The days glare down in painful ache
Like endless ripples in an outsize lake
For pain is real and peace is fake
And none are safe for safety’s sake

Sometimes happiness rains in showers
Growing faith in delicate flowers
A deluge great or hours and hours
To praise upon the highest towers

Maybe fear is an ultimate bane
To stab the body in fervent pain
To weep and moan from every vein
For reasons none can hope to explain

Often times we sadly bemoan
This horrid existence we call our own
In tears and sobs down to the bone
So often because we feel so alone

Perhaps anxiety or jealousy’s wrath
Takes you down the primrose path
In boiling anger, drowned in this bath
For fury such no other hath

So many days so many nights
Our passions are our many plights
There are no wrong, and so few rights
To set us on the better sights

But there are days, not now but soon
When peace set on, to glow as runes
Like wind that blows o’er hill and dune
That casts such pains away, a-strewn

It all aches now, I have no doubt
For sorrows take the quickest route
And while we suffer, lips to pout
We have the strength to cast them out

Remember this: I’ve suffered too
Though feels like mine aren’t feel like you
I have no doubt you suffer true
So here is all that you must do:

Be the one you always were
Bleed your soul with shout and stir

Play the games you used to play
Before your childlike soul goes away

Play in the rain, laugh in the sun
Live the day before it’s begun

Fill your head with love for all
Allow the bad like leaves to fall

None live the life the way you’ve been
Even the demons deep within
They gnash and howl, again and again
So now you rise above the din

Live and love, you marvelous one
This soul you house shines like sun
This life of yours is just begun
It should not hurt, it should not stun

And remember this: your feelings true
They are not all that bad to you
As love and hope and joy will do
They give you strength, they see you through

Be strong and live, be great and be
The one who lives full symmetry
The feels you feel, your face you see
Your heart will guide, your soul the key

You’ll rise above. You’ll live. You’ll see.