Monday, April 28, 2008

Out

I have spent hours
maybe days
definitely nights
curled up tight
protecting you.

The irony
How many times
have I heard
Let me in?
And I did.

Too far, too deep
buried something(s).

Tight little fists
enmeshed in battle
can't stop
endless bloodshed.

Tomorrow out.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Solace

The words of Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, describing a long march in the dead of winter through the death camps of Auschwitz:

'A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.'

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Unmoored

Today I want something different
maybe really good pizza
or a very deep sleep
or a warm rushing water walk.
I am unmoored
searching the horizon
but the horizon is busy, overpopulated.

From the assinine sterile beeping bed
she searches my eyes
looking for an anchor
afraid she is making waves.
Afraid she is painting
a picture of pain
that I will buy.

I want to tell her: Don't think.
just breathe, breathe deep
there is nothing else to do.
You can't protect me from reality
I'm already here, by choice
by habit.

Close your eyes, just breathe
and feel
You've always been good
at not denying pain.
Our roles are reversed again
I'll navigate and steer
over the waves of fear and pain
while you absorb the quiet.