Hey You

There are about a hundred thousand billion things I want to tell you. Always meaning to start right here but starting there and there and there instead, stories I've wanted to tell others who never seemed to really care, stories like the time I saved a pheasant's life, or how I almost fell from a log I was crossing 30 ft in the air, stories that come one after the other, like waves that beat upon the shore, thundering as they break, shattering into a million pieces, that wash back into the sea which after all is endless. I want to tell you three at once, or six, or nine. Starting, wanting to tell you something that always seems to slip from grasp, trying to tell a hundred times the same story and never once telling it, not because it is difficult but because I want to tell you everything at once.

Old Poems

--

Visit Egypt.

Go see the tomato vender.

There’s a highway there, a black tarmac across the blonde desert.

The Bedouins come there to beg, the children with the angry eyes.

"You sir, Englishman, you American, you are rich and I am poor. Come give to me what I deserve, I deserve your wealth"

(Our wealth has corrupted us, given us more power than a man should bear, our wealth has killed us.)

And the women in the background, they dance, they wreathe, they form figures slender and eerie.

They are alluring, they draw you away, they pull you across vats of snakes, they wrap you around…

 

--

 

The tin roofs, the rain in the afternoon, the woman carrying water on the top of her head, her shoeless feet, the log she balances on, the birds, the winds that blow out of the sea, the rain clouds that dance in such perplexing rotations.

An Indian woman sets down her brass decanter of tea. 

Her little finger cymbals clang, they clang as her belly button undulates before your nose.

The spices -the clove oil, the nutmeg tea, the red berries smeared on her lips, the odor of coconut milk, the jingle of her belt of gold coins, her amulets, her necklaces, her sharp teeth, her razor edged words spoken in another language that you do not know but understand, her sisters, her brood, the wax of the candle that burns the flesh of your naked back, the wax that coats, the wax that forms layers that cake, they sell your soul.

 

--

 

The bus rolls across the dust of a thousand miles of desert.

Tires whir on the hot pavement, pavement thick with potholes. 

The ferns, the fronds of palm branches, from days ago are still on your mind. They were where you were and are where you will be, and soon you will be there to bathe in the cinnamon waters, to rub your skin with the oils scented with cardomman, to drink the tea masala, found  

within the whitewashed walls of heaven in the desert.

 

--

 

The trumpets call out in the evening, in the purple light of the orange dying sun.

The floor carpeted with geometric designs - the reds, yellows, and greens; the flowers of Islam, the feet without shoes, the hearts given to the mind; the song, the knees of the man from Mali thick with calluses from praying always towards Mecca on sea or land.

The minarets rising into the TV antennas, the boxes and rectangles of cement walled buildings, the crumbling architecture.

The men in black suits, the silk suits, with the white shirts and red ties drink gin beneath the slow moving teakwood fans, the Aussie’s hat on the knob atop the back of the chair, they look out at the time of afternoon prayer into a nearby mosque.

 

--

 

By the slow trickling waters that wash the pebbles, a dark haired woman sings of her lover, a dark haired woman sings of her man, the man who left long ago, who took her heart with him, the man who was killed in a war, who was surprised by an enemy, who was abandoned on the edge of the desert, whose hat, blowing before a wall of dust, blew all the way back to her, to rest against her legs.

She picked it up and wept.

 

--

 

A dream, a coming to my senses.

 Here I am in a small village, an old shriveled woman squeezing water and lemon juice from a rag into my mouth. 

The corners of my mouth, my eyes, caked with crusted sand.

I spit up, coughing out dust, the dust of centuries.

I remember being alone in the ruins of a lost city with strange writing on the walls,

images of people orgiastic, in some feast, at a table laden with fruits and birds and deer.

 Not even a bone was left, not a tear, no sign of suffering. 

They were gone. 

And I was thrown out. I couldn’t even die there.

I was cast away by the winds.

My notes, my memory, my purpose, eroded away by the blowing, howling, haunting sands.

The woman holds me in her arms.

She hugs me.

 

--

 

So I lament, I weep, I moan, my face in the seat of an old chair, my naked knees upon the cool stone floor.

My heart in my hands, and I can’t hide it from the ravens, the shadows, the darknesses, that circle around me.

I in my white tunic, an American in a foreign land, a man in a burning fire, touched by the cool moist lips of a woman wrapped in cotton, a woman who hid, a woman who touched me, who stole my kingdom.

It toppled, into a tumble of stones.

What had I done? 

Lost.

The winds blew, the dust stirred. 

I could not raise my head. 

She stood behind me watching, coming at last to lay her fingers lightly on my cheek.

 

The Dark Ocean

There is a star outside that burns brighter than any other star and its screaming a name, your name, her name, the names of people you forgot you ever knew.

The sea beneath that star is dark and vast, and endless, and it holds all that was and is and will ever be.

You are naked beneath the star floating on that ocean, and you are all alone. Your eyes are wide, full of the heavens above. A cool breeze blows across the wetness of your skin and you shiver.

Is there an answer? An answer to the question that you haven’t even asked? It’s there, the answer, deeper still. The answer waits. It will come up suddenly out the dark waters and pull you down slowly, swallowing all that you are.

Deeper, deeper, the waters grow colder, darker, and you feel the pressure building. The seaweed, unseen, brushes against your arms and legs as you descend, in the belly of the whale.

Is it time to talk? Is it time to listen to me yet Jonah? Jonah? JONAH! Yes its me, you knew it was going to be me. It had to be me, and it took this didn’t it? There was no way that you would come, and I couldn’t bring you anywhere else. Anywhere else you would have found some way to slip away. Instead I’ve made everything else slip away. Yes I have you, and I have you where I want you, and now you will listen, listen because you have to, because there is nothing else for you to cling to except for my word, the sound of my voice pressing in on your ears, my voice, the voice that makes mountains crumble, waters rumble, and winds roar across the desert places. All the stars I hold in my hands, and hidden amongst them is a stone, a white stone with your name, the only name you ever had, the name I gave you in the beginning that you have always known, but have not heard, the name that you will have at the end, and it will be yours because I, and only I have given it to you. You have not escaped me. How could you? Where could you run to? For how long does a man have to run? A year? 10 years? 50? Even if you had 500 where could you run? So close your eyes, rest, and listen to what I have to tell you. Yes that’s right, You know that we need to talk about it. Afraid you say? Afraid to talk about it? Don’t you trust me even with that? Denial? Yes I know. Betrayal? Yes that too. I know you are angry, I know that you are tired. I know what you want, I’ve always known what you wanted, but the world is bigger than one man. Yes, I see why you are angry, but it’s me that you are talking to, Me, so don’t be angry. I’ve heard every word you’ve ever spoken, and every word that you have yet to speak. Do not believe that you understand all things, do not claim to be righteous when not one is righteous, not one. You have your plans in your heart, but it is I who directs your steps. Do you not know even that? I have even been there and now I have the keys not him. All the locks have been opened. What’s that? Some things are not for you to know, and even the apple could not tell you that. Yes, everyone will be alone, they will have to cross alone one by one just as they came. Yes, go to sleep now, rest, do not be alarmed, you will awaken, surrounded by the light of day, laying on the warm blonde sands, listening to the sound of waves lapping on the shore. Remember this day, and you will do alright. Remember it and do not ever forget.

The Last Path

Heavy Steps across the rainy night. There are some things you can't fight, some fights you can't win, some weights you can't bear.

You are floating far away, in some darkness seeking light, wondering what it was you were trying to fight.

Light.

Strive for the light, at all costs strive for the light.

Though your heart falters, though your flesh fails, though your bones splinter, go onward into the night. It must eventually become day. It must at some point turn into afternoon, and echo with the voices of children as they play their games.

Theirs is the peace. Theirs is the place we long to return to.

To the sunny afternoon and the breezes, that lolling through the tall pines lay at last upon your old and weary face.

Grace will take us to that land, to the afternoon of our youth when all that we saw rose up and out into the vastness of the Infinity that we were a part of.

Grace

The warmth in the thunderstorms of night

In the end it is the only path that is left to a man.

It is the path that we were meant to find.

It is the path we were born to follow.

One foot

and then the next

on and on

building like the start of a thunderstorm.

We will awake one by one and rise into a newness of being.

There is the promise, the hope, and though seemly silent, it sings to the believers, to the seers, to the fools, to those that have given up on every other way.

What is left after all?

Can you carry one photo?

One coin?

One flower?

One petal?

All that you take is all that you are, and ever were.

When did you lift your hand in aid?

When did you answer another's pleading?

Come soul, come oh weary one.

Awake!

Take heed, hold up your head, lift your feet, raise your arms.

Holy, Holy, Holy

Grace

The sound of one man's bare feet padding softly on the warm desert sands.

Why do you search this tomb? He is not there!

He has risen.

How the Old Men Killed the Grizzlies that had Eaten Them

The snow hangs on. Its an onslaught, a blizzard, maybe the last blizzard, trying to reclaim lost territory, it’s territory, northern Michigan, trying to claim it’s own, it’s men, it’s fishermen, ice fishermen, it’s children, it’s rough-shaven smelly old carharts clothed, broken toothed old men that should have fallen through early January’s thin ice long ago; or maybe the stubborn ones who even tried in April, whose shanties went under and had to be salvaged when the ice was only a dull memory of aching fingertips; old men who should have died from cigarettes or liver damage or from the stupidity (or thick-headedness) of driving broken-down rusted-out beaters without brakes; old men who should have died but didn’t, who instead of dying have disappeared, displaced by transplants from Detroit or Flint or Chicago, displaced in their poverty by tourists-turned-locals who believe that they have been assimilated by the old locals who don’t give a damn about the woods and water that have sustained their souls; but the truth is that the transplants have displaced them and they have moved further north and deeper into the dwindling woods, into the U.P. and up into Alaska to die in alien woods; old men that got eaten by grizzlies which they in turn killed by transforming themselves back into the old rusty lumps of iron ore and lead sinkers and tangles of cat gut that they really ever were in the first place, that and the big clots of black gooey chewing tobacco, cigar butts, tar and nicotine, and the sticky residue of evaporated Coca-Cola, and coffee stains that they only ever were. They bled on the land and pissed on it. They and their fathers before them lived off the land, off the fungus and berries and the meat and organs of the creatures that fed off the land, and both the animals and men smelled of the brown swamp water that saturated the black decomposing mud of places only they had tread, the places that were themselves displaced by the blonde sand of fill dirt and developer’s bulldozers (not that the old ones shunned the chainsaws, nor the hammer- many of them walked about like specters, white with spackle and drywall dust, spent by the work- they themselves built the very thing that displaced them even betraying themselves by becoming the same as those that had displaced them). So the old places have vanished, have been stripped away and covered with a new veneer of laws that attempt to preserve the very thing that they have eradicated, to preserve for the elite the very land that they have torn from the hands of the old timers who had abandoned it.

Zanzibar Shores

There was an Island and it was far away from now, and the sky was almost always blue. The city was ancient and you could lose yourself there amongst the jagged narrow streets. I can't speak but for the hundreds of images that I still recall. There was a crack of blue overhead in the streets almost always in shadow- and the scents of coffee, and ginger, and cloves. The ocean broke ever peacefully upon a shore where once Portuguese cannon balls flew, where once great ivory tusks were piled high on limestone floors, where once men were chained and sold and sent away forever in exchange for gold. Every morning, callers greeted the rising sun from minarets. Bright red, purple and yellow fabrics dried above rusted tin roofs. I'd wander aimlessly for hours until my eyes were full. I'd go to a small roofed dock on the Indian Ocean, and fill notebooks that were sent from America. I didn't flirt with tourists, or dive, or go on spice tours. I'd spend nights sleeping buried in labyrinth-like rooms within the heart of stone town. Very often I'd find I was feverish from some illness. Was it typhoid or malaria? I did not know. I was ill three days once, with fevers near 104 and all I did was read William Carlos Williams until my mind was gone. I beat the fevers though, and came out of those dark rooms with new sketches of Muslim tessellations. I sought the sun and the ocean breezes, and the solace of still having nowhere to go for days. I ate for strength and swore off beer. I turned back to my writing. Did my writing have a purpose? I worked things out through writing. Put things in their places, uncovered old wounds and sought to heal them. I explored. I played with ideas. I was never more content than when I was there surrounded by turquoise waters creating my stories. I'd write til afternoon. Some who knew me never understood why I spent the time alone, but I was never alone. I was surrounded by foreigners in a foreign place. How odd it was that I was the true foreigner and felt like I was home. I was the true expatriate then. The exile, self-exiled because I could see my real home more clearly from the great distance I'd put myself in -geologically, culturally, socially, intellectually. But I was close enough to things to splash my feet in the ocean, or draw my finger across some interesting pattern or object. I'd encounter malnourished kittens as they scrounged through trash heaps. Shutters would slowly close, or from three stories up I'd hear giggles. Looking up, I'd see a green colored sleeve disappear into a long narrow window. I'd go to ruins and sit on the grass before some long-ago-collapsed structure and sketch it on the inside cover of my notebook. I was there, and it felt so real, and time- Time, it seemed to stop there. I distanced myself from time too. Always I tried to distance myself from Him, from God. I thought I had, but God is infinite and the further you run away from everything in your life the closer you approach Him, or rather the closer He approaches you.

Ping Test

Hello?

Is there anybody out there?

I'm shamelessly solisting comments.

Does my blog stink?

It's just one of billions Iknow...

a star

...and I am lost in a cranny in the shadows of stone town peering out through interstices of some forgotten geometric pattern upon a lone and twinkling star, knowing, knowing, knowing that the star out there in the vast emptiness, in the long overwhelming silence of space beyond everything, is me.

Entrance

Grandfather Clock

Slow, deliberate, still, quiet, but beginning, just beginning, ever so slowly to take shape, form, motion. A swing, something dangling, my arm, rocking back and forth like the pendulum of a very old grandfather clock sitting in the back of an old man’s living room cluttered with years and years of china and old porcelain and plates and lanterns of brass and silver all very smoothly polished which have not known daylight for a very long time. The grandfather clock ticks sedate and alone, its quiet ticks almost loud because absolutely nothing else in the room is moving or alive to generate sound. When the clock rings, and you happen to find yourself waiting in that room, it jerks you stiff, it startles you so that if you happen to be drinking tea out of one of the fine china tea-cups, the tea spills and burns your fingers. Inside your head you swear, but outside you are a gentleman… a gentleman never swears, never sweats, never gets wet, never forgets for a second that the gentleman is a gentleman no matter what, so the pain only causes an almost indiscernible grimace for a second, the briefest of seconds. You sit tick-tock tick-tock and wait tick-tock waiting for the clock tick-tock to chime tick-tock so you don’t tick-tock burn your fingers tick-tock from spilled tea, because gentlemen don’t spill their tea, they don’t erupt in violent bouts of anger, and don’t let flow a stream of expletives that makes young ladies uncomfortable and old ladies glance at you with eyes full of scorn. Scorn, the fire wielded by the woman of high standing (don’t piss on her shoes for not only won’t she ever forget it but she will remember it in public ways, damn her merry white soul. And the woman, she doesn’t scream, no, for she delights only in your screams. She hopes for your whimpering, but you are already gone, your soul has slipped up away through the opening in the top of your skull that used to be so big. It rises through the ceiling, up through the dark upstairs closet where the old woman’s underwear lays starched, ironed, and folded on shelves arranged by days of the week, and then up through the roof and into the sky like a child’s lost helium balloon during a summer’s day parade, up and over the clouds, the tops of which rise like wizard’s towers and ships sails into the stratosphere, and there your soul plays, flying, soaring and speeding in and around the towers and sails like a butterfly from flower to flower) and now the grandfather clock strikes the hour and you fall back through it all to find yourself spilling more tea, cool now though, and your only concern is that the spilt tea does not leave white spots on the finish of the hand carved oak coffee table covered with ancient jade amulets carved by long dead Mayans for the dead before them. So you wipe it up with your sleeve because a gentleman spills no tea, and doesn’t get wet. The clock still ticks so you set down your tea on a woven yucca leaf coaster and rise, but as you rise you feel the days and weeks and years of your life fall out of your shirt pockets, and you fall to the ground, in pieces, in shards, that splinter and fly into aforgotten place under the couch where a strange Central American spider died, and its dry hollow husk rattles in the breeze. Thousands of miles away a coffee leave falls from a bush, a coffee nut is picked and split with a long dirty fingernail, and the raw sweet aroma of its juice fills the nostrils of a man who knows nothing except the odor of coffee and how to swing a panga. His bare feet pad away down the hard packed African earth, and when he goes home he lifts his son up high to the stars and calls out his name and his name is yours. A dog is lapping at your face, and you find yourself on the hardwood floor. The dog looks at you longingly, expecting something, its thick tail beating the leg of the coffee table, and it reminds you of a deep drum you heard once it the middle of the night in a forest in land many years ago in a distant country. You try to concentrate try to focus on the dog. It’s waiting for you, wanting hell knows what. You stand up brushing the dog’s red hair from your black coat sleeve. It jumps up stretching its front paws on your leg. You stare into it’s fat watery brown eyes remind you of mud, and rain and wet soggy shoes that smelled like mold. For weeks you’d worn soggy clothes, because even when it didn’t rain the clothes you hung out to dry never did, and you slept to the sound of a small brook that flowed around your room. It was the time of year when walking into the village you’d see old men limping or using a stick as a crutch, because their feet or legs were swollen and covered with a dark green fungus. Walking as if they’d accepted the fungus as a continual part of their existence. They never walked towards hospitals, they never looked down, only ahead, as if they would get to where they were going, leg or not, and maybe they were only going somewhere to get out of the rain to sit by a smoky fire of green branches. I walked out of the room. The dog didn’t move. It just watched me leave. I had had enough of waiting. The ticking of the clock still filled the room. The old man was dead after all, and I’d come back to see if I could remember anything from the times long ago when I used to go there to listen to his stories. All the stories I’ve forgotten, and the only thing that came back was the odor his pipe tobacco slowly coiling up from his ivory pipe.

The Gift

It's not that anybody who doesn't accept Christ is going to hell as much as it is that without Christ we are incapable of reaching Heaven. God doesn't want people to go to hell, Satan does. It is Satan who is to blame if anyone goes to hell. He has preyed upon the weaknesses of mankind. It is Satan who deceived Eve and Adam and given us this heritage of death and wickedness. God does not will that any should be lost. It's not that Christianity is superior to other religions. It is just based on the belief that mankind is unable to ever re-pay the debt of our sins. There isn't anything that we can do to escape our nature, that is human nature, the nature that kills, that hates, that covets, that is narcissistic, that wants to exalt itself, that wants it's way when it wants it and wants everything for itself now. That nature that seeks after outward appearances and is steeped with hypocrisy. Many are hypocrites even after they have recognized their need for Christ. Christianity like other religions recognizes that righteousness and Heaven are to be attained, and if you do not attain them you must continue to suffer, it recognizes that ultimately you must choose truth or peace or love or transcendence. It is only Christianity that recognizes the futility of that effort. God doesn't desire that any man fail to attain Heaven, but death begets death. A life for a life for a life for a life... Jesus is the personification of the desire God has that none should perish. Jesus is God's way of achieving what God desires (that none perish - the way of assuring that we can receive what we cannot attain through our own efforts - victory over death!) That is why it is important to recognize the sinlessness of Christ. Christ lived a life that was not offensive to God, a life uncorrupted by the wickedness he lived amongst. Christ the only man who attained righteousness, the only one who could stand before the Law in abeyance, the only life that Satan hadn't won. Yet Christ was killed. He went willingly. He took upon Himself the sin of the whole world, the sin of the whole space-time continuum. He essentially said He took upon Himself the consequences of all sin, the judgment against all men, all who failed, all of who have fallen short, who have missed the mark of Heaven. He became sin who had no sin in Him. He bore all of Satan's hatred of men, all of Satan's hatred of God, all of Satan's hatred of the love of God for men, all of Satan's jealousy, all his rage, all of Satan's legal right to inflict punishment, and it cost Christ everything, even His life. He did this for us, but He is greater than death, and death could not hold him. He gave his life as a gift to us, and offers us this life for eternity. In order that this life to be ours however we must accept the gift. When we accept this gift His life displaces ours. If we but accept, then He lives in us, and we begin to submit our life to His. Christ's victory is ours, a gift given with the greatest of all love.

Roger and Me (actually it was Dave and Me)

How about a bus tour of Flint? Drive past the hollowed out remains of the American Dream. Buick city is rusting out from the inside. The story is long and complex, but there are people there that remember, that love Flint. I am not fooling. There are people that love Flint. People that have dedicated themselves to saving it, or keeping it alive, or reawakening the rusted leviathan. Flint will turn from brown to green. It will be a place where people will be happy to live. While I was there, after seeing that it has as much to do with race as it does with turning bad policy into good, I turned on a movie in my hotel room, an HBO movie that looked to be a spin-off of Hotel Rwanda. Rwanda has suffered something almost incomprehensible to me, except that the movie was close enough to reality to hit me. I knew the Papyrus swamps, the iron gates, the hills, the sky. I knew the churches, and people that could have been the people but were not. I watched individuals try to get a handle on what happened there, to face the reality, to overcome the horror, the lose, the shame. They try--  try to reconcile, and that's it. That's the hope, that out of Horror we all learn something deeper. Hatred will not win. Many may have to suffer much in the face of hatred. Hatred is senseless. It is a cancer that not only eats at the hearts of men, but at the very heart of civilization. In the clutches of hatred civilization becomes degradation. The only thing that can overcome hatred is love, a pained and self-sacrificing love, a greater concern for others than concern of self. There is no neutral party in the face of Hatred. To save the life of another may cost your own. The madness will not cease just because you flee from it. Did anyone think to save the life of another by putting their life in between? Why is it that in Rwanda the people that came to help fled with their pets, while they abandoned their neighbors? Surely they were frightened. Surely they knew they couldn't stay. Where were the heroes? The heroes were those who gave their lives for their families, for their neighbors. The heroes were the Africans; the heroes were the oppressed who knew the only thing they had left to give was their lives. The heroes were those who grew sick of the killing, and tried to stop it. The heroes were the ones that cried "Never again!" and as long as they live vow to see that it never does. The heroes were those that opposed the notion that it was wiser not to get involved.

Flint juxtaposed with Rwanda. I couldn't eat. Was it horror I felt or shame? I wept for Rwanda. Every time I think of Rwanda I weep. Flint will survive. Flint will come back to life. If Rwanda can, Flint can. Do not speak of race. Speak of me and you. I am white you are black. I am 41 you are 20 or 47 or 101. We are different, but both have one life to devote to living. We both have but one life to give or not. We choose to hate or to love, to deride or to encourage, to contend or resolve. We shape our world by what we believe. We can believe what we want, but we bear the consequences of our actions. Understanding is better than believing. Reality is. What we believe does not shape reality. How we respond to reality is shaped by what we believe. What does Hatred solve? Death begets death. We must sometimes give up so much to forgive, but what is the alternative?

When I got home tonight I learned that my father's hunting buddy shot himself in the head. Life is hard but what is the alternative? It is hard to be courageous. I can't accuse anyone of being weak. Each of us makes mistakes, but we must forgive and move on. What is the alternative? We are different but we are the same. We are both alive. Do not waste the only thing you really have.

I found myself on the Internet today

I tried to find myself on the Internet today. Was it odd. I was a musician, a poet, and a dead porn star. I read my poems and I could have written them, and the music I made was heavily influenced by Tangerine Dream. "Optical Race" by Tangerine was the first CD I ever bought. I began to wonder about the pornography thing. I began to wonder if there aren't alternate realities out there, that maybe I was living as multiple people or had a split personality and didn't know it. I wondered how much I really knew about myself, whether I am unique as I thought I was. I have a weird name -I mean how many of me should there have been?

Often I search for people I lost contact with over the Internet. There was a woman I worked with in Africa. A woman who I thought I loved very much - I did love her, but we only had one wonderful night together. We didn't make love. She painted a portrait of my face, and we laughed about the lives we had in America. We talked about Purple and Orange and sunsets, and ate M&M's. She was a Christian when I wasn't and she castigated me about despising the book of Corinthians. She pointed out the amazing love that was spoken of in 1 Corinthians 13. She was right, and what I once loved and grew to hate I love again. Long after that night I bought her books on color. She was fascinated with Colors, and since I taught Physics she asked me if I could teach her all I knew about color. She was an artist and I loved her laugh, I loved her spirit, and I loved the richness of her life. I was a Physics teacher, and a writer, and loved to sketch. None of these held water for me. I am only a vain and selfish man. It was ever about me, and I am so so sick of dwelling on me. I never found her on the Internet.

I have forgotten her voice, her laugh, her eyes, her face. I don't even trust the memories of her. They are probably all wrong, and I'm sure after a space of ten years I have changed things. I never had a picture of her. And I will never see her again I suppose. I keep imagining us meeting, in some unexpected place, but I don't even know where she got off to. She pushed her way into my life, and then flew away. The clouds of Tanzania were wonderful. The white towering cumulous clouds that sat in that blue, blue sky. Cerulean Blue. Azure. She is always the warm sunny afternoon. She was like a dream, and maybe a thousand years from now we will meet in Heaven. She grew angry with me because I was messed up. I've come to realize that I want to draw all my self worth through the acceptance of those I love. I followed her around like a wounded dog. I burdened her with the strength I drew from her. The day at the port, she was cruel behind her sunglasses. That was the day we said goodbye, and though we saw each other after that I never let her in. We had come too close too fast. It was too intense, like a match flaring up full of the fury and energy of fire, and then dying. We argued over stupid things. Words have always got me in trouble. Maybe I am too scary. She said to me once "just tell me, don't write anymore words." The last letter I received from her was a patchwork of crossed out sentences. I don't even have that.

The years have flown away like so many dead leaves in a fall breeze, and I am left with my words and myself.