Morning Pages part I

Morning pages, afternoon pages, pages of my woe, of obstacles designed specifically for me, for a perfectionist like me, who likes to ponder about commas and where to indent the line and fickle or sickle to my wrists, oh ye control freaks, and perfectionists, who like to ponder moments before they arrive and long after they are gone, what little worlds are you and I constructing in the neat gardens of our imagination? What worlds are we conjuring all of us as we sit on the subway in silence, avoiding one another's eyes, looking at everything, posters, bits of rubbish on the floor, old vandals' signatures, and rereading advertisements, all to avoid holding a stranger's gaze? What is it that we are avoiding? What do we have to lose but the little worlds and big thoughts that consume us in transit?
There are 10,000 ways to greet a stranger, and not all of them involve words or speech. And I near my stop, time flies when the pages flow from me, I need this like my body needs exercise and stretching, I am not quite sure what I am stretching when the pages consume me, but it is somewhere inside, maybe my head, maybe even faintly in my hand, but most certainly somewhere inside my gut or chest, is my throat involved at all? Or is that only when I am conversating freely? Is this a form of conversation? Who am I having a dialogue with when I write freely in the pages? Is it me and myself? One part to another? Which parts are involved? If this is truly conversation, does it reflect the same dynamism as the dialogue between two persons? Certainly not, right? I mean, it is much slower to write a word than it is to speak it, for another, you have no idea what could be said next in a conversation, could the same be said of this inner dialogue? Could I really surprise myself? Could I checkmate myself without knowing it if inner dialogue were a game of chess?
I don't think so, but what do I really know without swimming the length and depth of the morning pages? So I will swim, and doggy paddle and pull myself through the sluggish waters of my soul, and commit to the pages every chance I get until I have an answer, or until I start writing poems again.
There are 10,000 ways I could write this; I am lost and I am looking to be found, no I am lost and I am looking for myself, a part of me is in the lost and found, but I can't remember where I lost it so I don't know where to look, or I am blind to parts of me, so I believe parts of me are lost, but really I don't know what I am looking for, I don't know what's lost or found, I am looking for something I cannot name, I am looking for something I am not even sure I can recognize.

Gros Morne

I don't want to leave

This place

Is too beautiful
To put into words

And I am afraid
I will forget this beauty
And how it makes me feel

I am in love and terrified

If I drop, there is nothing to catch me
And yet, a part of me wants to
Cascade down like the falls
There is a lake beneath
I would be at home
Just another ring on a tree trunk

Mountains are the measure of the Earth's age
And these ones are ancient
They are the roots of the previous epoch's Himalayas

I am at one of the world's oldest graveyards
And all around me is a wedding of life

Daily Bread p I

Everywhere, I seek daily bread
In any moment, at any time
I look about for a taste of daily bread
In the conversations of others
In speech, and a stranger's smile
Through a woman's voice
And another's gaze
In the songs of the birds
Over the bridge on the subway
In the middle of empty streets
Along the contours of a foreign tongue
Through all the races and variations
Of the human form
Among tree tops
And the bed of stars
Through the quiet hours of the night
I seek the daily bread
In any shape or form it takes
On giant television screens
On stages
And a multitude of screens
I keep close to me
In the park, at work
In my lover's embrace
My mother's voice
Through particular arrangements of words
Amid tragedies of Greek proportions
And all the triumphs of the human soul
I seek the daily bread apportioned me

Daily Bread p II

I seek the daily bread inherent in memory
Or a recording of your voice
Or a picture of your smile

I seek the daily bread in sharing a cup of tea
Over personal stories that shrink distances
Like a phone call

I seek the daily bread
In the smile of passerby
I seek it in books, in headlines
On screens, and search bars
I seek it on the bus
In the metro
On my way home
And in your arms

I seek it in your eyes
And in your step
I seek it inside you
I seek it outside you
I seek the daily bread in fire
And surrender
I seek it beneath the moon
And over the horizon
I seek it in the stars
And bodies of water
I seek it in the arch of your calves
And in the twitch and tremble of your lips
I seek it in the skip of your pulse
And in the sudden absences of your breath

A Love Story p I

Love is the fire where bread bakes
Fire is the bread of lovers

These words cling to shadows
The fountain is dry
And the eyes don't see
What of bread? What of lovers?
Who am I to speak of faith, of fire?
What do I know of lover's bread?
I am full of wine and smoke and sweets
What does a full belly know of hunger?
Of bread burning under white phosphorus
And depleted uranium?
Of ovens that will never bake another loaf?
Of hearts that will never race again?
And eyes that will never again dance
At the sight of a loved one?

Do not ask me of love
To it, I am a stranger
I have approached the edge of its flames
And imagined the experience of burning
At its center
This imagining, I speak into words
But only fire, and burning can speak love's name

Harbourfront Nap

Oblivious to the movements and happenings of the harbour, they slept side by side, both shirtless, beneath a full and generous summer sky, his shoes turned over, as though kicked off as a last thought before sleep took hold.
When they awoke, she removed his right sock, grasped his foot and picked at it gently as if cleaning a wound, bent with intent, utterly consumed in the task. Afterward, they kissed, for a long time, like it was the first time, or the last, and nothing else existed but the kiss.
They garnered few looks, and spared even less for the people strolling and sitting about. After another kiss, another crossing of the water taxis to the island, he knelt before her, bared his head, and she sat over him, bent with intent again, this time a dry Bic razor in her hand, as she carefully shaved the back of his neck, in a manner approaching ceremony, with the same unwavering focus, as though each stroke of the blade were a brush of the lips.

A seeker's confession p. 1

I am but a poor traveler
In the back alleys
behind dark taverns
after the end of festivities
I kept finding myself asking
What else is there?
And I didn't even know
what I was looking for
No matter how many taverns
I visited
No matter how many nights
of merriment I enjoyed.
I met other travelers
everyone of them a seeker
I watched them awhile
enthralled by the seeking
so I joined awhile
For years
I thought I was inadequate
because I could not name what I sought
When my lover slept
I would scrawl on her back
Are you what I seek?
I asked the same question
of every love I ever had
I asked the sunrise
and the desert moon
I asked the ocean
and the shore
I asked the stars
but they only spoke of the past
I asked the clouds
You who have seen everything
on the face of the Earth
Tell me, have you seen what I seek?
But they kept their lips sealed
When they parted
I asked the rain
You who recede to the lowest points
to quench the thirsty,
have you ever quenched the thirst
of the one I seek?