I’ll take any excuse to love you
So explain to me that the sky isn’t blue
That this pain I’m feeling isn’t real
Tell me that people don’t really have two hands Tell me we’ll live forever
even though I know someday we all have to go
I’ll take any excuse to love you
Any excuse to believe that this might somehow work Tell me that when you paused
when I asked if you thought we’d be together always
That you really meant yes
words letters
time
to be immortal
memories minds
labyrinths lives
tapestries crimson
yellowed edges
creased wintered
weathered rhyme
this cavern of consciousness repeating
dying- life giving,
grieving, reaching,
ravaged time
fell into muddied waters never to return
delicate indomitable
yearnings of
the human spirit
Home is where the heart is, so they say.
But where is my heart? When the wind blows tumbleweed across the cracks in the sand, they pick up debris as they roll on by. Where is my heart?
“It is not down on any map,” as they say – “true places never are.”
And home isn’t the same anymore; it never was. It can be fleeting
flying
feeling.
We and the river are constant change – ever-evolving, turning a new leaf just as tiny roots stretch their newborn legs into soft, brown soil.
And still we chase, gather, hunt. Nostalgia. Birth. Rebirth. Brown, cracked leaves, brown leaves covered in rain.
(Is home an illusion?)
I reach down, frantically picking up dark brown leaves, shoving them in my pockets – some crack in my hands, some are wet and pliable and I gather them, desperate and hungry – barely noticing the feeling of wet earth between my toes.
“Home.” “Home.” “Home.”
quickly!
gather
…please.
My pockets are full, bulging with dead leaves.
Is it down on any map?
(True places never are)
I just want to feel safe in the constance of your smile.
Something about the dirt between my toes tells me I’ve got nothing to do but be.
Something about the earth beneath my feet tells me I’m here.
Something about the sand inside my pockets tells me it’s now.
Home is where the heart is. But where is my heart?
I stuff my hands in my pockets and squeeze the soft brown leaves. If I close my eyes and breathe in the deep forest air, I know my heart is in the feeling I get when I hear you say,
“One of the happiest moments in my life was watching the sun rise this morning.”
My heart is in your laughter.
My heart is in “I love you.”
It was then that I knew,
Honey, I’m home.
Covered spaces, cracks in the pavement
The way our smiles lit up dusk like twilight
Love me forever
If only for this moment in time
Light up my life my heart like fireworks
Blanket my soul
We didn’t notice the dandelion seeds blowing in
endless roads, distance, causeways for miles and miles
We’ll take these trails hand in hand forever
didn’t notice the foxtails in the distance,
flowers got in the way
sun setting over highway 94
your voice still an echo fading,
distant sunlight
you know i’m driving all the way to chicago,
i don’t know if i’m ever coming back home.
i remember the way you used to look at me
you didn’t know i longed for you the same.
melt my heart into your pillow
don’t you know your smile shoots
darts like sunbeams?
i know the days we walked in darkness
were numbered, so numbered
if these streets could talk they’d tell you
that i still remember
sand dollars, that one day
and i wanted you so badly
i wanted so badly for you to be the one.
salt and snow gravel grind beneath your shadow smile
miles and miles,
left behind the train tracks skidding with the pebbles dancing off the rails as we race on by.
Don’t you know we’re going to Alaska?
you say laughing, throwing your hat into the air
throwing
your
hat
into
the
air
for a moment all i see is your joy
and in that moment i know that nothing else matters
-mh-
Sometimes there is silence and space
reaching across the multitudes of
decades, decades, decades
spent dancing by the kitchen door
spent in that hallway, shone
spent wandering by the bookshelf,
home.
won’t you slide across this empty room
faint hum of music and sparkle in your eyes
won’t you tangle, soft around these limbs
won’t you wrap my heart in sunrise
They say those empty verses left on the register
will come back for you,
but what do they know
about music
the bridge never follows
as you traipse under its arched passageway
they don’t sing about the sparrows once they’ve
flown away for winter.
they don’t tell you when you throw a bottle out to sea
it doesn’t come back – the waves recede gently,
and with the tide’s return
dappled grey bubbles
lap at your toes,
echoes fading crimson sunlight.
wrap my heart in embers
encase my chest in cloth wrap it stop it from breaking
or at least hold its shattered pieces together
wrap it in steel so I can’t feel the quaking
the chasms
roaring rivers running through canyons
filled with lions
cool it with breezes, funnel in light
hold me so hard that it stops hurting
hold me hard and plant flowers in my emptiness
I want to watch them bloom in the springtime
please
remind me that everything dies but that there is new life
stop my heart from beating
where has it all gone
stop
you don’t know how you don’t
read me a story, count all the minutes
between when the doors closed
the sheets, the covers
i told you when these day late hours
rusted over
the only things left would be
that empty blanket and
where she sighed, happily
i told you that i’d always remember
our favorite songs
and gazing up at the ceiling
when you laughed and
thumbed through that magazine mindlessly
cause in those in between hazy daylight hours
was where my heart was
Tell Me Something Beautiful 