November 5, 2019

• like rice

  

   

  there are so many steps to heaven.  i know this
  because so many times i have climbed
  up and down the steps of my heart, searching
  for your name and a home
  i can call my own.

  there are mountains there, and every mountain
  has a shrine, and every shrine has a cloud above it,
  a crane beside it,  and below it there are valleys
  ragged with fallen stars.

  these days, a lost soul hangs over my sleep
  mumbling behind a screen of dreams.
  it is his signature that scratches across
  my waking days,

  his promises that once stamped my midnights
  with the seal of the moon.  why are you ignoring me?
  i can give you songs of loss and sorrow, faith
  and devotion; while the liars tell you
  that the past is over and unimportant,
  a story best told in a fairy tale,

  i will give you a story that is true.

  but the truth is often partly bitter:
  the truth is a man and woman who
  lost their hearts to each other
  in a time that was inauspicious.

  i will tell you the truth:  no one knows
  how this fairytale will end because
  there are two halves to this history

  and no matter how many times
  i paint a pretty ending
  on long, loose-folded scrolls,  the happy
  ending requires co-operation.

  on these lost days in the massachusetts autumn
  when the leaves shuffle across my heart
  i listen to the mountains sigh and shrug their shoulders

  as the wind sweeps the yellow dust from
  the red cloisters of my heart and my passions.

  meanwhile the moonlight bleeds through
  the windows in the kitchen, where it falls
  at my feet, spilled and scattered like rice

  • 5:33 am
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