Full Speed Ahead

We've built this fortress on sandstone
in good and
dry times,

a castle
out of paper in summer
strong enough.

Now the rains that would normally grow
everything in sight
are washing away all under cloud.

There are great times
when we can have so much
but if we've paid no attention to the ground below us
we will become one with it.

I can see doctors,
read good magazines,
books cover to end,

and still
my house sits
on the foundation that it sits upon,
barely settled
at best.

Where is my purchase,
pill, test,
diagnosis, bid,
or any some resolution or another,
there has to be something to buy to fold all this into
and hide it away.

I am not sure who are the lucky ones,
those starting to wake,
or those still dreaming.

We have great bridges
attached to poor moorings on mountains
doing what they always do over time.

Old ones wearing away,
new ones going up,
none staying where we thought we had them pinned down.

Our eyes see so little of year after year
and so much of just today
a gift with its own curse,
like every finger on my hands
and the touch I can put on your back to make you forget
for tonight
at least.

We've built this castle
on the poorest shore
moving in wind alone
and now uneven
all our tables pour left,
don't drop anything round.

If we've paid no attention to the ground below us
we will become one with it.

And here we come,
still
mostly unaware,
but full speed ahead.

The House I Have

The house I have
could be taken
in hours of flames.

Yet has stood the decades gone,
storms past
and blown by.

The security it stands for in mind
ill placed.

Just the right wind or shake of earth
could send the permanence it is has
to flight, and off into the air,
as the wood and brick wrestles on the ground
never to reform.

It would be that easy,
and that hard.

That hard to build
decades of memories

see the walls stand through heat
and cold and wind
and rain and hail

and to then
fall in just a day.

just that sort sequence
that harms us so
that we are forced to grow
in ways never chosen.

Harder Love

 
How long,
long do you help others?

How long
before you are no help,
how long before the cost to you outweighs you?

Love,
family bonds,
just because we should.

All good reasons
but not to lose two.

Not to lose two.

Sometimes those we owe
still need to follow their own anchor,

once you've given all the help you could,
once you've given decades,
lifetimes,
all of a parent's heart,

or all a brother can do
to stay indifferent over hate
even if that felt like, to both, to be a lifetime of avoidance, all no better.

There is love and there is keeping the cycle,
going round and round.

There is love and there is making no difference.
There is love and there is hurting through letting be.
There is love and then there is always love,

but how long
before the boat in use is a nod to swiss cheese.

How long before,
if it is ever going to float,
the owner needs to turn on the pumps
and plug the leaks.

How long before,
even if they and you and those you already know can't,
does one go before getting more help?

Too long.

Almost always we all go too long,
far too long,
a too usual too long.

A too long watching other lives live less.
Too long dancing poorly around a problem,

when we should be working in a larger group
to choreograph a starred performance,
and all making it into something
somewhere new.

Something somewhere
somehow altogether new.

No work is without its cost.
No work is not without a chip in the comfort of now,
but living a slow heart-grating peace for sake of not risking worse
is to ensure nothing better ever comes.

But how,
how to find the shoulders
needed to lean upon?

Remember living the what is
is to ensure nothing better.

To live for a nothing better
should be only for the best of times,
if even there.
Everything else is a process
and processes and people die
when they aren't moving.

Love,
live,
but keep
it growing.
Keep it growing
or it ends in regret and despair

keep the love
but make it grow
before it burns out.

Make it
grow.

Winter rains, welcome home

It is a sunny
warm early fall morning,
the aftertaste of summer.

By noon
the clouds large
tall and slow
come to clean it away

filling in with white cotton
all along the ocean coast
sparing the sun still on the land and to the east

The ocean falls to the advance
then by the time I could start to imagine the smell of dinner
they took on grey,
a dirtiness kin to the mud they'll leave in their tracks onshore.

telling in the walk quietly with a big stick way
of the weight they're carrying
carrying to us
to us and our dry land.

They come
snuff out the sun

They climb
they stall
stall going over
hitting land after a long low ocean cruise.

Climbing over
over the mountains

Stalled and squeezed for us
sending new blood down

new blood down the streams
down the streams towards the ocean
towards the oceans and down around the land

around and through the land
and the roots of all the dry summer trees
the dry summer trees waiting for another spring
waiting for another spring of quenched thirst and sun
sun warm and alive

content and full of purpose
full of purpose and means
purpose and means to make it to their goal
to their goal and growth well spent
growth well spent
spent in warm sun
sun warm and alive

so much nicer to make any mistakes while well fed
while well fed you can still learn
still learn the difference
different between a day thriving
and a life surviving

Welcome
welcome home
winter rains
welcome home and lay down
lay down the first blocks of our coming spring
our coming spring in sun warm
sun warm and alive.

Believe

It is so easy to
believe
in an idea.

The actual things
are imperfect
and actual

cracks obvious
beginnings and endings defined,

but an idea

an idea
can mean just enough more.

Can blend over into all that matters to you
and still fill different hopes for me.

But the actual thing
is always less,

always a compromise
between how good it could
and how much we really needed
or could spare for something new
spare to make something new real.

An idea still holds all your expectations potential
potentially fulfilled
considered and intact

but the actual things that come home
are only what they are.

How to live
in and for
part
and fed of

alive
by an idea
an idea more
than I.

So easy
to believe

and so easy
to forget to.

So easy
to lose that state
where we live happier
than in our actual lives.

So easy to forget
to live like we mean to be,

to live like where we are going
and not where we are
or have been.

So easy to believe
so easy
easy to
forget.

My Own Cement

If my own cement
is fluid enough
yet thick enough
sufficient enough
but stable enough
I can avoid.

Avoid all
avoid the problems that will out live me.
I can stay stuck in this mud
wallowing through all this
all this that will never leave my head.

All this that is
that is tugging at my socks
making me add extra lift to every step

work like an unoiled machine
pitting metal against metal and forcing it
forcing it to find its own way to smooth.

I can avoid
avoid all
avoid the problems that will out live me

no wonder we fall easily to religion
and belief in the afterlife,
it makes all this individualism work

allows me to stick here in my own mud
and dwell on small things
small things that cloud only my own eyes

the best in me or worst in me
may hurt a few around me
but really not to the equal of so much
much more left undone in this world

to be able to believe
we'll count
count beyond the time in these bones
that the the space we fill
is only building

only building
a more

a more
to come

to believe

to believe spending so much
time in my own self sarrow, insecurities and improvements
instead of feeding a few of the hungry
is worth it, or worth something

to believe it
that it is worth
worth it.

If my own cement
is fluid enough,
yet thick enough
sufficient enough
I can avoid,

avoid the problems that will out live mestay stuck in this mud,

to believe
we'll count beyond the time in these bones

only building
a more
a more to come

to believe I
I am even the hungry.

Instead of creating a great statue to make another dozen fall in love with art
or a painting for the same

no instead I spend years
writing self pity down.
Or is it up?

To believe
we'll count beyond the time in these bones
in this flesh
that the the space we fill
is only building.

Instead of what I'm doing
this adding of steal rebar to my cement
ever adding weight unneeded.

To get from my current ignoring
ignorance
to working
to believing.

The believing few of any flock
really get to,

to the pursuit
to a goal
the hope
that one day
I'll be a better person
solve a perfect puzzle

some permanence or assurance
like so many search.

Perfect puzzle of words in me
or someone else's book
that will turn it all around

instead of pushing along the whole
instead of pushing on that which only so few really do
and lead others to more.

To do the kind of things
that would actually really boost me out of my lackings
and into feeling productive and wonderful.

I've had days of this
but barely years and certainly no where near
no where near the lifetime
lifetime I have already half lived.

I hope to find a way
under my feet
these feet
that is not just a thousand years in the making or repeating
but true
and willing to be current,

want of feeling worthwhile.
I want of feeling worthwhile
I want everyone to feel a beingness of worthwhile
worthwhile

what a difference
a difference
that makes.

Can't get it without being outside myself
not stuck in my cement
but out in in others.

Feeling worthwhile
what a difference
that makes
if everyone
could feel so important,

what a difference that makes.