A Week of Rain

You found love in the rain one Monday morning,
As you laughed beneath the warm spring storm
And your love stood by, in awe of you.

Tuesdays have never treated you well
As you fell out of love, vowing never to repeat it.
So you dried your hair and closed the door and that was that.

On Wednesday you longed for a place unseen by man
But grew worried that it would no longer matter it if you found it
So you found yourself haunting the same old streets at night.

Thursday was when your heart skipped a beat,
That brief second when you had slipped and lowered your shield.
You made a note not to let that happen again.

Friday found the rain carrying on and carrying over its business as usual
But now it lacked its warmth and sympathy as it leaned on your shoulders,
Just tears falling in time to burden your back.

Saturday struck you in a most unexpected way.
As you ambled around the house you found yourself breathing,
You had no recollection of having started or how long this had been occurring.

Sunday you tore out of the house, you had been pent up too long anyway.
The rain was still outside the house, waiting on you
To laugh and dance and love and fight for yourself once again.

And you did.

Fan Your Flames

You were born among blood and smoke and sparks and glory.
As your mother wept in awe at your arrival
Your family fell to reverence at her prayers over you.

You're a spark of fire, a spark of life;
Fan your flames for us now and hold us close
For we all grow colder when we're apart.

You took your fire in hand, cupping it around its glow.
You left and at night we could see your fire off in the distance,
We knew you had to leave but you let us know all was well.

You have grown old now,
Your proud embers have burned low but not out,
Signs of a life well lived and a fire well tended.

From your ashes rose a new fire, a new flame well tended.
It burns with your hue and burns with your intensity,
From fire to ashes and soon a fire rises again.

Dancer in the Woods

I've never seen someone dance across the snow as she did.
Despite the weight of the act, as she moved as though to save a life,
No prints were left on ground, no one but me will ever know she danced here.
With arms raised as the silence fell around her,
She turned with the earth and beauty unfolded around her.
Snow like sand slipped through her outstretched fingers.
She spun at the center of everything, every movement made with purpose.
We might as well have been a world apart as she glided before me.
Her laughter bloomed and rose and was swallowed by the trees
With her tears falling and freezing on their journey to the ground.
She was the land, the weather, the storm; everything mysterious and pristine.
She was a force of nature and all I could do was feel guilty for being there.
She dances for these woods, these ghosts, for me.
She dances knowing it will all end, that she may well be the last dancer in the woods.
Soon she finishes, smiles, and bows to me; her lasting gift an only memory.
She is gone and the world has become poorer for it.

Long Road Up

Every kid growing up wants to be the hero,
Few are ever taught how.
We're handed visions of battle and change
And are told that we just have to show up.
No one ever tells you how you'll get your faced shoved in the dirt,
That the princess doesn't always want to be saved, that she will choose the dragon.
So where do you go from there, retreat and lock yourself in your castle?
If so, then soon the fog will spread, leaving you alone in it,
With only echoes and shadows left among the ruins.

This should not be your end.

So be strong and loyal and hold fast
Whether you must dig a grave or simply walk away.
You must rise, grit your teeth and hate yourself if you have to, but you must.
You will at times be bloodied and battered, lost and alone.
You will at times be burned and bruised, scarred and abandoned.
Still your steel, inlay it upon your bones and bind it around your knuckles.
Raise your fists and laugh when you stand;
This life looks to kill you kid, let it know you mean to endure.

Significance

I found myself afraid to die one night,

Terrified I'd choke on my reheated pad thai.

Does anyone grasp the scope of it all?

Shouldn't the fact we're on a floating rock hurtling through the dark

Scare you down to your core?

I hope there's an encore, because I blinked

And you're gone again.

So here we are, all clothed in faded glory,

From the freckles of your nose and the apple green of your eyes

To the dirt on my hands and heart taken down off my sleeves. 

You whispered a resolution,

Leaning in close so every word made it across the void.

The world did not end, 

The world only continued to spin. 

Lost at Sea

The fire took her completely, from bow to stern.
Flames roared along the sails and masts, illuminating the sea for miles.
I know people were screaming and the fire was roaring down into the water
But I never heard any of it.
I felt the heat from the ship and tasted the salt of sea but still I never heard.
I saw the deck burst up into the night and all the splinters turn to ash,
Falling like snow around me, hissing into the water.
The beast slipped below to slumber in the deep, the fire still burning as it fell.
There are faces filling the water, all leaving and going the way of the ship.
I have lashed myself to this wood and it's all that's keeping me above the bottom.
Now I'm alone and adrift and the rain is falling.

Day and night and what does it all matter?
Not much while begrudgingly lashed to this sliver of hope,
My floating cross to bear.
It was days, maybe years, might as well been centuries before I solved it all.
This is a joke, everything in the cosmos has built toward this,
And I get to be the punchline.
The joke is that there is no joke.
And I never got the punchline.

Nobody expects miracles here in this hellish watery desert, I never did.
My body may have resided on the surface, my soul had long been drowned.
Yet hope still floated with me, whether I wanted her company or not.
It was the other beasts of the deep that brought her.
They lumbered and groaned out of the abyss, these guardians of the sea.
They sang such songs of mystery and majesty before vanishing below.
Now as I clutch the sand and feel it on my face, I realized so much.
We were never supposed to rule like this, fake kings in a fake empire.
We were made to feel small and helpless,
So we can notice this world and realize just how far we have to go.

Questions and Wind

There is nothing like being alone and feeling the wind,
In your hair and through your fingers.
This silence, it roars around your ears
And the clouds are all ships and oars above your head.
The grass sways in time as its own song swells,
The warm spring air hovers above it all.

How long has it been since you remembered to be still?
Do these breaths surprise you, startling you as you find air filling your lungs?
Now you drift on the breeze and find yourself across new horizons.
This journey you've undertaken, do you understand your part?
Can you begin to even tell others where you are going?

Recovery Ward

Have you ever been shaken awake by someone you love?
A toss and turn of a body or the weeping of someone unexpected.
A gasp and you're awake, be it innocence or tragedy.
You could have been dreaming; it could have been about love,
But what do you know about what it means to love?
Perhaps love is a couple huddled together for warmth
In the sterile cold of the cancer ward.
It's the same thing when a husband holds his wife,
Watching their kids perform the sounds of Christmas morning.
It's the same thing as a couple swearing in a car,
Too stubborn to leave and too young to know better.
All just different sides to the same coin.
So why limit love to your dreams when it's real?
It's a hard battle and it'll tear you apart to mend your bones at the end of the day.

This Old Forest

Oh you old soul you,
What's it like to lose a part of you when you buried it deep down,
Down inside someone who is long gone from you?
As you sleep at night you pray for that piece to come back to you;
Roots shooting down and heart pushing skyward.
Maybe friendship is being able to let someone walk away
So that they may chase their own dreams,
Dreams that are no longer tied to yours.
So you keep all the ghosts of fellow souls close,
Bringing them out on parade at night.
Why is that we awake from sleep,
Remembering all the unsaid perfect words?
When the mourning breaks and all the ticker tape has been swept away,
Truth will be left and new growth in its wake; be loyal to that.
So stand fast as life shakes you awake,
Be at peace for all your nights asleep.

Fog

You were in love last November,
When the cold rain thundered down on your roof.
A quiet soul you were, with your thoughts of certainty.
So why do you now sail on grief, alone and aloof.
This is not where you started nor where you will end
Or so you hope with no true way of knowing.
You have few constants to mark the voyage:
The waves greeting your oars, drumming a song on your hull.
The freed gull visits you every now and then, never stays long.
Then there's yourself, the most insufferable guest you have.
You have your demons and angels and you fight them all.
What are we to make of you, young boy of a man.
Is there iron enough in your bones to make this choice?
Or will it just bring you closer to the bottom below your boat.
What was better, your endless numbered days
Housing the sun that dances from horizon to horizon?
Or what about the deep dark nights,
When the ocean teems with life glowing in her depths?
Now we are in limbo.
You never did think it would be this heavy did you?
The only directions you recognize are up and down.
North, east, south, west; all lost to the great grey wall.
You know you can't stay anchored like this forever.
You must sail on, little one, you must stay the course.