Contrasts

CONTRASTS

The contrasts you see in me
Are the marks of a spirit trying to be free

Free to think
Free to feel
Free to laugh
Free to heal the wounds that our sheltered hearts inflict on one another

I can say I love you as easily as I can say I don't know what love is

I love you

And through the winds of change
Time...
  Change...
    Time...
      Change...
I still love you

Time is what we use to lose what we know to begin with
Fractured egos destroy the myth
But something still exists beyond the confusion

Beyond loves illusion a tattered sail still rides the storm
And the ship
Broken
Or whole
Still
Eventually
Meets the shore

THE TRAIN

Winter Sunset
Air heavy with stagnation
There is green among the dead things
It does not color me
The mist feels lonely

I had a dream that my dream died

I wish I was coming home with the sunrise/springtime

I'm going home
With sky dark

I remember watercolor valentines ...

It's December
Still is the Bird-Park
Colors Fade

Green; color it growth; is hard to find among the dead things

Is it warm where you are; where I will soon be when this railcar quits its clicks and clacks

Life/wheel stills rolls on
A spoke or two gone
Left somewhere down the track

Do you still love me
Can you help me to be green again?

Night time rolls in
The sky becomes a starry bride
Wonder stands by her side ready to slip the ring of life around the finger of another day

Children go to bed

Adults go out to play

Taverns and bars and bedrooms

Scars of recollection my life has lately been

Covered with streetlights; the unseen starry bride

Will you still love me
Can you still reach the sky

The moon appears as a sliver
This train will carry me back the same way it came

Uncaring

Gliding along a steady course back and forth along the coastline
Trying to stay on time

If I had time on my hands perhaps they'd be pressed to the rails
On would go the train
Unaware of my pain

I hope that life has treated you well
Will I be happy to see you again

City lights
Split-second moments of others lives flip by my window
Slower and slower
Entering their time-space
Click and clack on coffee break

Alone at the depot
I Forgot to call you

It's better this way

Young girl in a corner cafe
Singing
Angel From Montgomery
She touched me
Shades of Joni
A little green

CURVES

There's a new curve in this body I love
A new life has begun
Your chemistry is changing
Life's rearranging all that you've been used to
Turning it into something new
Expanding the walls inside of you
And tearing them down
Between me
And you

There's love growing there

I can't help but stare as you lie here
Naked
In the moonlight
Quietly sleeping
Soon, there will be two hearts beating
And I'll be sharing your breasts with someone new
I guess that's why God gave you two

I love to watch them rise and fall
As each new breath you take reminds me;
This is all that really matters

There's love growing there

Love of Love
Love of Life
Love
Glowing gently
In the moonlight

Love
once hot
Love
once wild
Love that
now
makes me feel a bit meek
and mild
To take a back seat

For the greatest love
is that
of new mother
With child

DEPTHS

I looked for you
in the depths of my self
somewhere where the colors blend

somewhere
where love etches a reason for believing
where truth finds itself
in feeling
without the need of explaining the world/wheel
of me
and you

where it all runs together
without sound
without motion

void of lust

silence in a world of trust
sans the horror of misconception

where fears of the season
do not become reason to bind ourselves in clerical treason

beyond the impatience of youth
where illusions of truth do not mark a path to deception

where love does not take itself for granted

ZAC

I'm glad I never tried to use any of those trite old things on you;
"Don't talk unless you're spoken to"
"Do as you're told"
"Because I said so"
If I had, I would have had to set an example
Somewhat infallible

I was never that egotistical to think that I was smarter than you
You probably wouldn't have gone for it anyway

Besides
Friends don't tell each other what to do
They ask

Friends share

Friends even share their faults

I'm glad we're friends
I never did fit well into the role of God
Besides
You already knew I had one up on you;
I already had some experience at being a kid

You showed me a new trick or two
You learned them all on your own
It wasn't anything I did
I gave you the freedom to learn
The rest you handled alone

A few years have gone by since you first came around
And I can't help but be amazed
We've covered a lot of ground
We've both grown up
Me a little
You a lot

I'll always be one step ahead in life when it comes to experience
But always remember this;
Experience is handed to you
It can shape you
Or it can break you
It is there to do with as you wish
But wisdom...
Wisdom must be earned

I'll give you all the tips I can
But only time will tell who will be the wiser man

JEREMY

Hey little boy
You've got to know
Your Daddy loves you

Your mind is young
Your heart is truth
Keep them near to one another, and they'll be sure to carry you through
Your Daddy loves you

Lord knows I'm not the strongest man
But I'll do everything I can to help you through
I'm a helping hand
Your Daddy loves you

You are so young
Unaware
Of all that hurts and brings despair
The pain that sometimes strips you bare of feeling

If you take it to heart it'll tear you apart

Little boy
You're best off just as you are
In this world you're my shining star

Your Daddy loves you

THE SURFACE

Sometimes it's hard to find the line between ecstasy and despair

As I lie here
filled with emotion
looking at you
brushstrokes on the balcony
trying to capture an ocean of dreams and visions

You see the sun, the birds, the sea
You mingle with the swells

I look off in the distance
and see a shipwrecked sailor
crying for help

stranded
on the surface


Sometimes it's hard to draw the line between love and lust

More strokes on the canvas

The sun warms the surface
but the sea only hugs the shore in poets dreams
and fantasies

It gropes
and clings for but a moment
only to fall back unto itself

And the sun dries the shore

You stand with your feet in the sand
and cry for more

Sometimes I give too much

Sometimes
not enough

THE PATH

With spoonfuls of practical philosophy I hedge through this snowstorm

The first of winter comes to bleach the world with temporary illusion
As I struggle to keep warm in a world full of misconception

Love; Friendship melt away in mock honesty
As each new season comes to wash away another part of me

I wear the philosophers coat

Tattered

And full of holes

As winds of change chill me to the soul

I pull the scarf of fate tight around my neck
And tie a knot of fear
As my footprints are covered by new-fallen snow

There's no going back

The journey's end is a long-distant place I call home

There's no one before me
And no one behind
The path is my own
The path is my goal

Lust
Love
Make paths of their own

And it's so hard to find again

That path toward home

It lies somewhere beneath all this new-fallen snow

JIMMY AND THE DOG

Jimmy Jones is dead
He didn't have much choice in the matter
He just woke up one morning and
accidentally
went down the stairs a different way than he had before in his seventy years
He got to the first floor a little quicker than usual
and then
he just stepped off to somewhere else

And now there's tears in people's eyes
There's folks to cry
"Oh God!"
"Oh Why"
They'll talk of all the things that he did right
and forget about the wrongs
Why, Jimmy had been trying to get people to do that all his life!
Guess he just never went down the stairs right!

But Jimmy's dead now

So
They all got together and had a funeral
As, of course, proper people do
They paid someone a lot of money to make Jimmy look ...
well ...
kinda funny
But at least he wasn't blue
And they had to get one last look
as proper people do

It wasn't any fancy funeral
But it had flowers
and a minister
Everything went along quite as usual
until that stray dog snuck in behind the back pew
attracted by the music

I've gotta say that dog had style as he ran right up the center isle
He stopped to smell the flowers on the way

I'd swear to God ol' Jimmy smiled
when that dog got up on his hind legs
and, peering in the coffin, licked Jimmy in the face

"What's that dog doing here!" someone cried disparagingly
Scrambling to his defense, I said "Because he is alive!
and you're so hung up on death!"

The dog went out
and people looked at me and frowned
The commotion soon died down
allowing
of course
proper respect for the dead

I could clearly see this was no place for me
so
like Jimmy
and the dog
I just left

CABBAGE DANCE

Last night I saw a cabbage dance

All alone

There was no cabbage patch

Just one little cabbage doin' a dance


I squinted my eyes and took a second glance

Then I laughed so hard I peed my pants

I'd never seen a cabbage dance


It twirled and bobbed and bounced about

It straightened up

Then flattened out


It turned itself clean inside out


And I pinched myself and begin to doubt

I looked around and gave a shout

"WHO'S PLAYING TRICKS?" I said aloud

Then through the air with one big bound

The cabbage headed into town


It went past houses, shops, and cars

And landed right in my back yard


"ALRIGHT", I said, "I'VE HAD ENOUGH!"

"WHO'S GAME IS THIS! I'LL CALL YOUR BLUFF!"


"The game is life", the cabbage said

"You've got to dance or you'll lose your head!"

LINDA

The most I can be
Is what you gave to me without expectation