Poems in Pieces

(April 23, 2013)

The explosion, the cloud, the light.
Love is an explosion...we are shrapnel.

I am able to see so clearly…

those who drive the cold steel pitons

into the splendid cracks of my being,

so they might safely ascend to realizations

at the summit of my aging symbol. 

Abandoned spikes,

sparkle in the seams of the rock face

to which they clung,

My visage, streaked with chalk

from the clinging hands of … love. 

These are the young, the fickle,

who exalt love into a tyrant…

love’s hand is like that of a hidebound father. 

It whips us into shape, so they say…

Lo, merrily we take its sternness. 

My guilt grows like dandelion

for those whom I embrace –

that they never know when to turn from this lifecycle.

They grasp at rays from heaven,

and oh do they see light everywhere raining down…
it’s all for them. 

Such hope and wonder flourishes,
and I till the soils; in a blind and hazy fury

…and then from the soil,
I bring blades of buttercup
and such a flavor for love gathers.   

They stretch beneath my saffron umbrella
and laugh at the bees,

but for we that shine-out like yellow flowers,

yet never shined upon,

we weary of these morning dandelion parades.