Candlelight flickers by my bedside
Casting shadows ‘cross the walls of pearly white
A curious pair of lovers intertwined
They always seem to dance together
The dark and the light
I guess that’s life

But I remember summer days
When I could hardly wait
So full of expectation
I’d lie in bed awake
Praying for the world to arrive on a silver spoon
Before I ever knew there was a dark side of the moon
Now I know the truth

Sometimes I wish I could take all this pain away
Return us to the innocence of those bygone summer days
When we’d look up at the sunny sky
And all we saw was light
Why do we need the darkness of the night
To see the stars?

Candlelight flickers by my bedside
Casting shadows cross the walls of pearly white
A curious pair of lovers intertwined
They always seem to dance together
The dark and the light
I guess that’s life
I guess that’s life
Always darkness and light
Always dark and light

When you feel my breath upon your neck
Affirm the ardor of my existence
Savoring the sacred in each exhale
While lying laced between my limbs
Inhale
Exhale
Inhale
Exhale
My essence condenses on yours
Evidence that, while elusive,
Time is tangible
A gift that cannot be returned
Though it may seem like the sands
Are suspended in the hourglass
Breath tells the truth…
I am one exhale closer to joining the wind
And chose to be here with you
So breathe deeply
Bask in the breeze that we share
And when I place my hand upon your chest
To move with its rise and fall
Turn your face towards mine
And smile

Can’t you see the beauty
That lies behind his eyes?
Can’t you see the spark of soul
That we dehumanize?
Can’t you see a man
That had a mother and a life?
How do you think your God feels
Watching you snuff out his light?

Can’t you see that blackness
Is the world’s amazing way
To boast how many colors
That a rainbow can display?
Would you want to go and murder
The blueness in the sky?
Perhaps the greenest grass
Should all be left to die?
Or maybe yellow hair
No longer seems to fit
Within our painter’s palette,
So let’s get rid of it

You see we made a choice
To label blackness as a sin
To use our every weapon
To make this lie sink in
To let the stink of history
Build up and sit it rot
Until our nose went blind
To all the crimes that we forgot

And every day that we refuse
To recognize these wrongs
We choke another bird
And we silence sacred songs
For if we preach that every life
Was sewn by holy twine
How can it be that this man’s voice
Matters less than mine?
How can we be a moral country
And laud our bill of rights
If rights only mean something
For those of us born white?
Can’t you see that freedom
Can never truly be
If we allow one people
To decide what color means?

Oh as I watched him dying
I couldn’t help but see
The future of our nation screaming
“Help me, I can’t breathe!”

What if when we spoke of the wild woman
She was beautiful?

What if when we spoke of the wild woman
She held sunsets in her eyes
And a breeze in her arms
That could settle the jangling of bones?

What if her song was stillness
And her brew wasn’t newt’s tail and snake’s tongue
But flower petals and raindrops
That gave name to the restlessness of soul?

What if instead of baking children in her oven
She made smores by the fire
And taught them to search for their dreams
By tracing the delicate lines of their palms
Straight to the throbbing in their hearts?

What if the wild woman wasn’t crazy
Out of control, alone in the wood?
What if she weren’t old and haggard
With whiskers and beard hair
Hunched over a cauldron
Alone in a cave?
What if she weren’t a witch, a crone, a spinster
Something to be feared, choked off and removed from society?
What if she weren’t the evil temptress, the succubus, the fall of all humanity?
Burned at the stake, cast from the garden
Covered from head to toe.

What if when we spoke of the wild woman
She was kind and loved, happy and wise?
What if she were curious and content, revered and requested
Celebrated even for her inherent connection to the body and the blood.

Perhaps then more women would seek out their wild nature
That yearns to feel and to play
They may trust their intuition
Recognize their power
Is worth more than the circumference of their thigh

But that would be too dangerous
That would disrupt the world
That would set women free
And keep them from serving the needs of men
Before bowing to the needs of their soul.

Every morning I am Genesis
Playing God with a cup of Joe
Inventing tiny miracles
I’ll create as the day unfolds

Every morning I am Springtime
Buds ready to explode
Teasing seductive fragrances
Flirting coyly with my nose

Oh wondrous anticipation
Such promise in the unknown
Each day I am a newborn babe
Expecting milk and ripened fruits

Every sunset I’m in mourning
Hosting funerals for my dreams
All the springtime flowers wilting
’Neath the heat of missed opportunities

Yes, every evening I am dying
With the sun that bleeds across the sky
But though salt may stain my pillow
Tomorrow I will rise

Consider this the return of pen to paper
For I wrote it with my own two hands
Connecting with the paltry pain of the page against my palm
As my pen made its pilgrimage to poetry

Do you remember how it feels to use your hands,
To place your thoughts like strands of pearls
Onto something tangible?

When was the last time you faced the fear
Of making a mark so plain and clear
It could not be erased?

I know you can scratch it out or strike it through
Cover it up with black or blue,
But underneath those words persist
Like proof that we must coexist
With what we deem unpresentable.

Sometimes I feel unpresentable,
Like initial iterations imprinted in ink

So many missteps, redirects
A thousand threads that don’t connect.
I’m circumspect to recollect mistakes I’ve made
That still reflect my imperfections
Despite all my attempts to deflect them.

Consider this my return to art in it’s messiest form,
For I made it the long way
Tracking every thought through the thicket
On its mission from seed to flower.

Do you remember what it’s like to plant a seed?
The amount of faith a person needs
To see a petal in a tiny speck?

Have you considered what it takes to grow,
The distance that a seed must go
To rise with pride above the dirt,
To assert its worthiness to flirt with the sun?

It sits for months in dark and worms
A thousand things that take their turn
At rooting it out, as if to say,
”Your dream to grace a bright bouquet
Is nothing but naïveté.”

Sometimes I feel naive
Like a seed looking up at a flower…
Summoning every ounce of power
To birth a bloom so shamanistic
Some will call it unrealistic,
Or at best just optimistic
To insist this dirt’s complicit in
Propelling me upwards towards the sun.
And through an other-worldly love,
Will be what turns me inside out
To reveal that life’s about expression,
The perception that as messy as it seems,
Through transformation we redeem
Mistakes we’ve made that still reflect our imperfections.
And one of the best ways to correct them,
Is to harvest their lesson
Then replant our intentions.

For even scorched earth can sprout a tree
If below it holds a seed
That still believes that it can reach
The promise of it’s destiny.
Just like the pilgrimage of my pen reached poetry

God, sometimes I feel like poetry

We have returned together
To the place where you were raised
And everything that made you
Clothes me in your fabric

I think I may know you now
Not with the mind, not even with the heart
But with all of my senses

The way your five-year old tongue wrapped around it's first tomato
Learning that there could be an eruption of sweet and sour at once
I have discovered your fingers sticky with gelato
And wind-whipped hair that’s been tossed in the salt of the sea

Yes, here I know you more fully
Because I taste what you tasted,
Consume what lured you from your morning slumber
And finally see the way pink light bounces off ancient stone
It is here where I get a glimpse of the horizon from beneath your olive skin
Here where I find your propensity for perfection
In the patterns of every perfectly tailored suit
Here where all of the space between my cells
Gets saturated in the honey of your poetry

For I can smell your youth in the scent of the pine
And hear those things that would have melted into the distance of familiarity
Like the sound of tires crossing cobblestone streets

And with every sip of rustic red wine
I get drunk on your secret recipe
I get drunk on your history
I get utterly intoxicated by you

My feet are sure upon the earth
Advance despite unease
Made to move, to cross, to search
They’ve forced my eyes to see

On a quest I met a room
Locked ‘hind a wooden door
It seemed a jail, perhaps a tomb
Where someone’s dark was stored

On the ground I saw a key
T’was golden like the day
But if I use it, then I’ll see
Whatever’s locked away

Should I stop and turn around?
Trace steps that lead back home?
To the comfort of the ground
That I have always known?

For a moment I stay frozen
But my feet are far too bold
Their path already chosen
That key placed in its hole

The heavy door swings open wide
So dark, I grab my light
To reveal what lies inside
A grotesque, crushing sight

There before me lay my shadow
A shamed, dismembered thing
That I’d left rotting in the bedclothes
To fester, mold and stink

The pain of seeing what I killed
Was much for me to bear
The mangled heart left unfulfilled
Though lifeless, was still there

My feet like magnets for the wild
Stepped in and brought me straight
To wrap my shadow like a child
To hold her still and wait

The seconds felt like winter days
The hours passed like years
Standing with the dead decay
Now soaking with my tears

But soon I saw the room was lit
No shadows anymore
And with my tears and with my spit
I cleaned that blood-stained floor

Then built an altar for my sin
To ne’r forget her name
For though her guts once touched my skin
I’ve washed away the blame

Here in this once darkened room
I place a chair and sit
To write new songs, let flowers bloom
For shame has lost its grip

I’ve met him plainly, know his face
His nature left a mark
And I learned how to offer grace
When meeting in the dark

This is why I trust my feet
More than I trust my head
For they have taken narrow streets
That I’ve been taught to dread

They have chosen creeping
Over steep and hard terrain
They have been truth-seeking
Through rough winds and acid rain

My feet have often recognized
That foul as they may be
Demons must be baptized
If I’m ever to walk free

Because of them I stand intact
In the fullness that is me
For I have been to hell and back
To love the girl you see