WEIGHT
So I weigh more now. The years have weighed So much more upon me, ballast to all My assayed and clumsy launches into the sky Only to land by face-planting Into ungiving rock and the insult of Earth in each wound I open with Every hard landing when trying to fly.
I do this every day. Every minute I can dream Of touching heaven’s floor With an impudent fingertip. I don’t stop, no matter What weight I carry today, Now, a minute ago.
It is the weight of all my life Of noes and maybes and could haves; The weight of all my what ifs And what would have beens, All the dreams stillborn No matter my work to bring them To life, to breathe into them, To be them. To have them for mine own.
There are always dreams. I will keep welcoming them No matter the hurt they bring When they die as they die: Drowned in my tears, Deafened by my fury, Bruised by my fingers’ Unrelenting visegrip.
They only die when they are pried From my hands and my strength is Outmatched by the universe refusing me. I pit myself not against the mortal.
Perhaps that is my flaw: I would challenge the gods For all that I desire. So what if I am mortal and to wish, To dream, to act on the wishing dream Is beyond me or my means? I won’t know until I find out. The hard way. The painful way. Yet, still, I dream.
My wings are not broken, My broom sits by the door. I will fly to scout the firmament, To chart its stars and touch the face Of the Force that made me.
Exhausted. Battered. Torn to shreds In heartbreak and sorrow, I dream. I dream. I dream. I breathe deeply now and begin to run: I launch myself into space Again, again and yet again.
I will have flight. I will. I breathe. I think. I will. I will fly.
One way, or another. Broken or not, here I come.
DARK CHOCOLATE LOVE
For Trixie, who loves dark chocolate
Your love for me is dark As chocolate from the Devil’s own hand: Bitter shot through all the sweet, Impenetrable as your eyes Full of all things unmentionable In polite society; All those things that thrive In the absence of light And refuse to die when They surface into the sun.
Your love for me melts All over my hands In my mouth, On the skin and within; In the cracks of my spirit Where the world has forced its way in; There to become the putty Holding the me of mes in.
Your love for me is the dark In my holy of holies (my holiest holes?) From which my voice broadcasts To all and sundry, Or not. Usually not. There it is, Where I need it most, The dark that loves All that has abandoned The lightness of me.
There it is, The honest sin, The bare-naked skin, The passion without filter.
There it is, my dearest, How you take all that is Umber and shadowed, How you reply in kind With no judgments, No platitudes, No whitewashing To make it easy. Easy is not my way.
That’s just the way I love to get it: Dark as coffee, Deep as the nighttime sea, Slightly acrid, slightly acid, All so very me.
So I can lounge with it, Take my time to savor The heart of your unfettered flavor Given openly, without reserve.
I need no filters, Not too much sweetness, No purity, Not any form of restraint, No blunting this keen edge Biting into me as much as I Bite into it: Deeply.
I don’t need perfection, Just this moment of ars penumbra.
Yes, give it to me. Hold nothing back.
I like my love Dark as chocolate.
