gauntlet

a towel thrown in
or is it running
zigzagging away from my 
truths are supposed to be 
self-evident
what about self?
accountable to what
the feelings welling or 
emotions derailing the simplest
joys can be had

lost and found again

but you have to look

where is most likely

inside or out

there is a scary imagining

life unattached from anything

but my internal compass

the needle spinning as if

peace in the eye of the 

storms hidden from all 

but the most perceptive

hearts can feel it 

can't ever really be 

hidden fears and hopes

I've so many of each

time I'm at the threshold

transforming into 

an impassable dark forest

explored from the safety 

this worn out perspective

doesn't develop with age

clarifies nothing more than

a light shone on the breadth

of what this experience grows

where the fuck is this going

i am lost and on a path

eventually ending in a lost city

a gold tinted and fuzzy remembering

even the worst times

present always playing second 

choices to move from and toward

what focus is drawing in

close your ranks and 

close your eyes and 

prepare

to run

the future

is always

a gauntlet 

coming out the other

sides aren't chosen

they just are

an endless rolling tide

of whatever happens next

must be next 

corners and we choose 

left or right

the Tetris of life

block by block 

it builds up, they fall

into place

some more elegantly

i stumble, but

always forward

thinking; there's always the reset

but, how many do-overs do we

get some new batteries

all sold out, but 

maybe we find a way

recharging and charging

again

headlong into 

whatever around the corner

is ever

only

the next gauntlet

what have i

is this already done
and dusted a patina covering
what began so shiny and 
new love is always perfect love

lasts as long 
as breath continues filling
a balloon bursting inside
my chest alternating between
fluttering and an 
ache of the first morning’s dawn

at the time so many
our small steps and tentatively 
believing the unbelievable

a Universe aligning 
the light pouring through the most
perfectly straight lines 

an infinity between the 
deepest blood red of 
histories unknown, but sympathetic 

a harmony of hurt
suddenly salved under that
cautious plague sky

Crisp blue and perfect 
we’ve been here before

you and he and she and i 
and each i, in each 
memories live forever

to be forgotten is 
an impossible past 
improbably but precisely
could have been no other

Life led but this 
determination an incalculable product of
choices &
chance;

Is there a difference?

Between you&i
there is no space for (Us)
realizing
the creature in the mirror
is the same as when we 
close your eyes and imagine

it’s the easiest thing in the world
apart we lived the alternate version 
of the other
the same

i spelled backwards is still i 

bearing, carrying the
black and blue and red of our own 
souls straining against this
life, offering nothing
more than
choices

once more

 into the breach I 
throw myself down the stairs
 & knowing that to ascend
a building momentum 
impelled by an unknown
(is it really though?)

we know exactly how most
stories you grab hold of
those dreaming alone times
remembering and realizing
only after they’re gone 
how close to fairy tales
you might’ve lived

if all life was just living
and loving
and free
(i have never been free)
chasing, being chased, trapped, 
by nothing more than the unasked
unmasked in the worst of times
energy within that drives
this whole life

to what end though
there is only ever one
inevitably 
to say things fall apart
of me wants absolution
I am not the bad guy
there is neither
all regrets are avoidable
choices are made even
unable to choose
life runs on and then, 
out

no matter if 
then what, always
needing to know 
what are the contingencies
there’s no safety in it
ever, because ever eventually
is forever
the sun sets on these
too

i am trembling

at the though of it
either/or

maybe I should wait and see

until a hundred more 

sleep on it 

this life is daydreaming

fugue of in between and 

torn in two

halves of the same million 

pieces making all of us 

something more than meeting the 

eyes, impossible to read

though utterly beautiful

i have no truth 

aside from the heart

a clarifying ache impossible 

to reconcile

how to walk away

intact

an emotional amputee

looking for some quiet safe place

somewhere I have felt peace

what kind lasts?

more than those minutes 

moving from one memory to the next

stepping stones chosen 

my feet are my own

whatever choice arises must be

making a path of my own design

has never been a strength

in only surviving 

life as it passes by

chance playing its role

and recognizing my own

i am trembling.

no answers

are given, nor expected
the ache within realizing 
bottomless capacity for enduring
hope for the intervention
of a universe at best
allowing us to stumble along 
what path we've lost ourselves
on our way, a clearing

the fog lifting 

on a tableau impossibly 

understood as a heartbeat

just there

neither beginning nor end

a cascade of moments

propelled by some molecular, 

some visceral

stardust passing through 

from origin to destination

both unknown, unseen

despair crowding out the 

possibility for joy

must not lose sight

of that horizon

where unknown maybes

still reside and 

parables inscrutable

until time is too short

another little pinch 

in my heart at the

realizing, i 

am only i,

& I is nothing more than

a memory projected into 

a space never occupied

is past & future

all one

moments, 

all we know

we have

no answers.

Surrender

I've been preparing for this
days an unbroken chain
wrapped up in the rising
& falling
Forever until ever arrives
sooner than my blood has 
prepared
for me only stop motion
snapshotting past lives
shared and lost

Recognize these days as
presents bound together
through an understanding
few are aware enough to know
there's so many different
inflections through this in and out
breathing life
into the ether I'm slingshot
and slipshod
but seeing how this curve
diverges and vanishes at some 
alternate point beyond seeing
from one sunsetting
in presence of each
streaming consciousness shared
with the other
inevitably to become an other
lives past led
and surrendered

I can see him standing there

Sill resting so often

needing neither light nor dark

a permanent memory

written in the physical world

grooves worn so deep into the flesh

of experiences; narrow;

but alive even after 

Death.

The soundtrack of 
those past lives
alight and breathing sweet tobacco
air held cloying on the skin
reminding you of exactly
from whence and wherefore 
You exist.
the product of memories
Once (and again) visceral.

Staccato cobblestone thrum
as an anxious heart
beating now and only
because their’s did so
first
at last we find the bottom
of things so easily seen
from such a distance
but never giving the 
attention to the truth of 
this family, an afterlife for
40 years
days and nights passing
shuffled from the same deck
And along the same narrow path as 
His father.

All things gathered
eventually, inevitably dispersed 
Out of entropy arises from
intentions waning and 
following the path cleared 
momentum’s own gravity
holds order until
the scales tip and kinetic is less than
potential
finds it’s zenith in the depth
of the heart’s chaos

Here, it is from which
we grab the compass’s waypoint
and go
building a new momentum
and the gravity of each movement
Spilling life into itself
the heart beats still
impelled by
the perfect 
combination
of
kinetic and potential

Our energies 
in constant balance
never all or nothing
even if memory’s only marker
is one never again seen
because it once was
it will
Ever be.

10.20.2021

You've no idea how

    sharp the sounds approaching

my heart from your

    feeling are true and

escaping your mouth to batter

    the tenuous bonds of our

time together is waning and

    that's no tragedy

would've been to not try

        to let each other drift apart

as if those cosmic months

    never happened

would my life be better

    or worse it doesn't 

        really matter

we're here now and doing

    what we can to stay

        afloat and together

but...

10.17.2021 #4

I don't know what I believe anymore

    an empty vessel drifting 

unmoored from the earth that

            restrained by reassured

nothing more than a disoriented mass

    of synaptic maybes and

the constant pit in my stomach

    the heaviness of chest holding

    back a beating heart

    running, racing from fear

from the fear of knowing 

that there are only so many

    more of these beats to give

Take me as I take you

            give unto the other with

            complete trust nothing more

        than the self imposed maybes you

            can't ever fucking square.

We're all just so many hoping

        creating knowing that we

            don't, won't, can't

bear to face each other in the 

            clarity of that light allowing

        forcing a choice to move one

            way and not the other 

                seconds to waste belong

            to a past where this

                kind of shit was novel.

10.17.2021 #3

What are these weapons we

            carry with us the inconceivable 

death accompanying life

    our weapons pointed directly

at hearts stabbing in the dark

    and bleeding on one another

because we know we can

            because we know we must

                        because we know that

times cares not for how much

            we know or love or 

                        hope.

I love unreservedly

            but I live cloistered 

in a cage of my own design

    to be at odds with each moment

        of each breath, I am

against it all and myself

            most of all

Is there peace to be had in this

            lifetime 

Can balance be found before

    acceptance can be catalyst

Can be perfect; a broken

    heart hopefully not ossified

    frozen in between beats

and unable to pump this

    life into warmth and 

sunrising moments where

feeling isn't just first but is

    only and completely and 

    trusted as I do the next 

breath will fill lungs and heart

and brain firing, mis-wired

    though it may be at times

Resonance with the abstract

    made real and running because

it is alien and unknown and 

the mis-wiring keeps clarity at

    bay keeps understanding the other

        nothing more than a wish

a hope that one day the 

    churning maybes against which 

I strain to breath may

    finally relent finally

an understanding and more

    why can't we accept ourselves

and the other's    

            expectations unmet

and the overwhelming sense 

    of nothing more than disappointment 

nothing more or less than balloon 

    bursting and kid's dreams failing

to become reality because

we live too much apart

from what actually is and 

    is not this enough to

try, to love

            may not be enough.