Tar Baby

Reach in

deep into the sap of me

until you find a piece of amber

fossilized by the heat seeping off

the magma of unerupted fury

that runs beneath the silent, tectonic pressure

of stress-taut muscles and fear clenched teeth.

Reach in 

until your arms are lost 

up to the elbows

in my darkest self and strangest secrets.

Reach in 

and close your eyes

until you know me without them.

Sight will only blind you 

when you're seeking in the dark.

Reach in.

Burn yourself on the worst of me,

then heal,

and never let me go.

Sacrifice

You can have my heart.

I'll give it all away.

You can have your freedom

to wear someone else's chains.

I don't have to have you

to love you like I do.

I will watch as you move on, dear,

if that's the road that calls to you.

I'm the quiet, watching one,

the pillar you can lean on

when the world knocks you off your feet.

And I will be, indefinitely,

a foundation to support you,

but a foundation is hard to see.

I've always been the patient one.

Maybe that's why I'm still waiting,

but I have so much to give someone

who isn't in a hurry.

I'd rather you took the time 

to know my darknesses, dance my light,

waltz around my yin and yang,

and love me for both the black and white.

For once I want to be the chosen.

When it comes time for you to choose

don't leave me the way you always do,

cracked but not quite broken.

For once I want to be the chosen.

When it comes time for you to choose,

choose me for the rooftops, the dreams come true.

Choose me for loving you enough to let you go,

the first time and the second.

Windmill #3: Honesty

Being honest with ourselves may be one of the most difficult tasks we’ll ever face. We shroud the truth in layer after layer of obscuring false trails, afraid to look it in the eye. Our truth is a Gorgon, we fear, and in that fear we are already petrified.

I see it, buried in the spaces between words and lines as a friend spills out line after line of truly personal details. There is an edifice built around everything she is not saying, a vault where the reality of the situation is tucked away. That truth, the one buried, is ultimately empowering, but all the signs on the walls of this monument say, “Here Be Dragons,” “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” The signs are lies penned in fear and the stone walls of this cairn is only a house of cards.

I see it in my own self-reflection. The truth is a mountain, its peak veiled in clouds and I carve passes to either side, so close to reality that it’s hard to say I’m not on the mountain. But I don’t climb. I don’t take pick and piton and rope and set out to surmount my trepidation. How much easier to walk the paths along the gentle slopes at the base.

This mountain isn’t just a metaphor. It is Mount Fuji, the mountain I stared at from my apartment balcony for a year and never ventured to. I was afraid of it. Not the lightning storms that killed four that summer as they attempted what I did not. I was afraid of the aches and pains and too-taut muscles of my body and the strain I might put on them. The same fear I used as an excuse to avoid a military career. The excuse I use to avoid taking up running for exercise. I’ve always been one who claimed I didn’t have fears. It isn’t true. The truth is I have many fears and I’ve been afraid to face them. If I face my fears, I might be ashamed by them. I am afraid I will let myself down.

Fear is exhausting. It’s fatiguing. It wraps us up in a safe little word and we’re so excited to be sheltered that we don’t know that our breath is constricted, that our chest rises and falls, but so, so shallowly.

What amazes me most about this is how much simpler the truth makes things. How unfettered we are when we accept the truth and weed out all the crap that hides it.

What amazes me is that I’ve used so much flowery, vague language and metaphor and kept myself from truly talking about what I actually want to explore. This one’s going to take a while.

The War - M0RG4N

I haven't fallen in love in ages

think it's due to this war that wages

between my too complacent present

and my discontented past.

I've been too caught up in ghosts

with diamonds on their fingers

you'd think they'd start to fade in time

but something lingers, something always lingers.

I never saw myself here

wearing out familiar trails

on a too familiar map

I never saw myself here

walking down these worn out roads

with no company but my own

My heart's all out of shape these days

all hope and good intentions

but no real exercise.

My heart's all out of practice

and I'm too tired to go the distance

to do more than fantasize

I never saw myself here

wearing out familiar trails

on a too familiar map

I never saw myself here

walking down these worn out roads

with no company but my own

I haven't fallen in love in ages

think it's due to this war that wages

on and on and on and on

between my present and my past