Waltz

Poetry is a wild creature. Like a bird in flight or a beast on the prowl.
It does not answer for its words. Nor does it answer the questions that we pose it.
Poetry simply becomes.

Though a writer may claim it and give to it meaning his soul speaks. We each,
In our hearts claim it to ourselves. Greedy and unknowing of that greed
we simply claim and claim. And love.

This one is about Javier and me.
This one was my first girlfriend.
I remember a trip to the beach that this describes perfectly.
To each we give ourselves. Yet we do not see the gift.
We see ourselves. Like a mirror of our soul.

Our Soul scrawled out on napkins and in ink
bleeding into the warm flesh of our palm when sliced
and beaten trees are in short supply.

Who can say where poetry exists before it is written.
There is spoken tradition. But is that the same? Can it be the same?
After all once spoken, the words are once more intangible.
Here then gone like a whisper in the wind.
Drawing our gaze in a flash of beauty and thundering ecstasy.
A storm in our hearts leading ever closer to what we believe is perfection.

The meshing of word and soul and mind.
The perfect combination. Setting us free from the binds of our work.
Releasing a gag forced onto us by public expectation
Like a safe word to shackles tight on your wrist
In some kinky sexual fantasy gone wrong.
Poetry.
Poetry.

Poetry release me from the glaring lights the cameras.
I am yours if you will take me out of this Pornography of life.
Singing in dance with the script my director gives me.
Show up on time. Do what you’re told.
No. I say let me make a new choice.
A living choice. Or

Let us not make any choice. We can live forever in undetermined life.
Day to day. Minute to minute. Second to second.
Into an infinity of choices and indecision. Don’t look back don’t change a single word on the page. Write your own life’s verse. And sing.

Sing like the world is your stage and Shakespeare is but your bell boy
passing secret love notes to the maid while your back is to them.
Let life be a wondrous explosion in the battlefield.
A rocket to the moon because the moon is where we need to go.
To get away. Away from lies. From breathe, from life.
Go to the moon because of a forgotten memory.

Because in the end the moon shines over a wasteland forgotten by time
By humans long since departed to stars
Far beyond our own sun. Our son. Our children’s children have forgotten Earth and his darkened sky.
But the Moon has not forgotten. She could never forget. She waltzes through the night sky swinging about the earth, Lead in perpetual dance never ceasing because why stop when the song isn’t over.
The song has yet to be written that has met a proper end. So write. Write until the letters don’t come. Until the words jumble in their rush to the paper.
Until you are left void and defeated because the poem is done. Because you are no longer needed. Because someone else
has claimed your poem.
(poems go here)

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