My Heart Has Had a Change of Address, Or, The Blood Letter

Send my love letters away
to reaches far enough that
the emotion is lost even to me.

When the pen hits paper,
may the ink transubstantiate my blood
and let me of this ill--
flow out as my heart in place of me
and send with a stamp of grief,
to reaches I've not seen.

Better yet-
as the plume carves characters on parchment,
may it carve the damned thing out
of its fixed post in the cavity, better hollow anyhow.
Fill it with something else...
Fill it with air-- I don't care! Just get it out,
this thing that won't let me be--
this big, bleeding mass is the bane of me.
I am as a prisoner in the cage
of my own ribs--
send them back to Adam!
Better yet--
kill two birds and mail them with my blood letter
(just leave off the return address).

And if none of this can be done today,
just tell me-- what's the cure for pain?

You Were Always Me

Under the weighted blanket of stars,

feeling heavy with living,

I posed to God the most frequently-asked, the most human of questions:

"Why am I here?"

God said:

"Because I wanted a friend."

    "But why, then, didn't you just keep me there with you,

instead of in this prison of a half-life?" 

God replied:

     "Because I wanted you to be empathetic to my suffering."  

Ok, then, I thought... What else is there to do?

"Plus," God said, "I have given you the whole world."

I looked at Ursa Major. 

"I made that bear to dance across the sky for you in starry

formation.  Do you ever wonder if night will fall?  Do you ever doubt

there will be some light in it?"

So the world was mine--

it always has been--

and why not take it? 

When I recited to God Say I Am You,

God said:

"Just look at your hands and feet

and use them to be a friend to all.

And you were always me."  

Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim. 

Her Heart Was Caged in Spruce and Pine

Leave the woodpile to rest,
latch up the duck house to keep them from the foxes.
Walk slow up the waning sunlight hill,
grass cool and dry still
under lazy, ascending feet.

She goes about the evening routine,
feeding the animals and drinking in the splendor
of berries growing wild in the bush,
a night about to fall.
Throat cool and quenched from the
early summer air, infused with some magic
of ardor and imagination,
an invitation
to be vacant,
unnoticed
for a little while,
to meet quietly with her loyal love-
always faithful is the night.

So in this blissful cool of dusk,
she looked up to the sky and thought,
"I want to be free but I want to be loved."
She wondered if nature could afford her
all the affection she needed.
After all, the hammock was gently rocking her
as if a child,
and the sparrows and swallows offered their songs
as lullabies.
Nature was free but it was always with her,
the most loyal of lovers indeed.

You see, her heart was caged in spruce and pine,
latticed birch and cedar.
A jealous partner is the summer night
of wood, and sky and freedom.