The Baptism

    


The winds have licked the flames from underneath me,
 sending me crashing towards the earth, 
free falling and tumbling sideways.  Oh Lord, shall I be baptized?

Just as gravity holds the Earth in place, there was nothing 
 inside of me that was the center of my universe.
 The object of my deepest affections shrunk the view of everything that surrounded her. 
The delusion was that time stood still, the reality however, was that I had stopped progressing.

Understand that all joy is no mystery. The discovery for you is the misery of another. 
The space between a smile and a frown, is a day. Gladness of heart is not a remedy for sorrow.
 It has no remedy. It mourns beneath your temporal joy and sleeps during moments of laughter. 

What can the heart give in exchange for its sorrow? To eyes, tears.
 To the lips, a quiver. When the heart dies the spirit mourns. This is sorrow. 
Oh Lord, shall I be baptized?

I fell backwards into you.
free-falling sideways into a destructive bliss
as the sky fell from before me and the ocean moved underneath

to receive this shell.

The weight of your presence added momentum to my fall.
any moment now and I shall be baptized.
Maybe in a lucid dream the world ends. 
The sea spins and clouds are chased away by air that's thin. Angel's sing "smile in your sleep.
Dance in your madness.
Cry in your joy. 
When morning dawns, misery begins".

We were an augmented melody with confusing lyrics.
you made me so damn dizzy, intoxicated.  

Unpredictable, laughter and tears.
Fingers pricked by thorns, blood on the petals.
I knew the risk, a flower never meant to be handled so foolishly.

You were my breath and I held you until I could breathe
no more. I died in you yet you could not live inside me.

I lick my lips tasting your last kiss a new.
Closed my tear stained eyes as the smell of the sea
danced under my nose. I whispered a prayer and 

as I stood on the cliff.   I fell.

The fall was exquisite, the anticipated crash will be beautiful.

God forgive, that I cannot forgive.
Forgive what is most unforgivable.

Receive what is left of me o great sea.
Wash my remains upon the shores of time,
bring with me my wayward footprints left in the sand.
One last look at the sun.  One last wish from my lips.

Fall unto me my salvation.

Falling faster still and then....
baptism. I

 was cleansed by the truth of you.  

The parable of us, 
"And when all is said of love and dreams, the dream it's self arouses from sleep.

The bliss we imagined for self will teach,
That nothing in life is truly pure or sweet". 

I have been baptized..

   

Last 'Hello'

    We'll pretend that by strange coincidence, we have arrived at this familiar place once again.
We'll pretend that sadness is truly joy and that this unexpected meeting is 'good'.   This is the circle we have come together briefly to complete.  What began, now ends.

We'll discuss the small, the trivial.  Avoiding like sickness the more relevant, detailed morsels of our forward singular progression without the other.  We'll pretend that a familiar smile now offers nothing more, than a casual 'welcome'.  Un-chained from our dialogue are the words that pulled and pushed us together, then apart.  I'll even foolishly pretend that my heart is un-chained from yours.  But inside, the links cannot be broken.

We'll pretend that life is normal.  With a kind smile we'll separate, honoring the space we have reserved for another.  As I slowly turn to walk away I'll lie.  Telling myself that it wasn't as difficult as I had assumed it would be.  However strange, yet stranger still, I will be convinced that you felt the same.  We'll walk away, maybe to never see the face of the other again.  I won't look back.  Because I'll know, you won't look back.

Somewhere I'll get lost in the crowd.  Lost inside of me once again, the question of you.  The pendulum has swung, forever are we lost in the tension of it's silence.  I'll take with me all that you were, yet sadden that I will never have the chance to embrace, all that you'll be.  However I'm sure as we disappear into the business of life, we'll pretend not to remember us or moments etched in our hearts.  Your warm smile, your gentle laugh.  The beauty of the ocean that day and our foot prints we left behind in the sand.  As I turn the corner in the brisk air, I'll only be reminded that winter, is coming soon.  But winter, is here.

'At first sight'.

We see what we want to see.  A desire reflected back onto ourselves.
A beautiful woman.  A desirable vixen.  An honest heart.  We are conditioned to
 be swayed by the totality of a simple glance.  We imagine that nothing as fragile as beauty
can bring us any harm.  We imagine that the petals of all delicate flowers are the envy of our hands.
We are eager to kiss lips whether they fashion lies or spit into the face of others.

We long to search eyes that are short of sight and void of vision.  However, the most sinister
of us all hide behind the beauty of opulence and majesty.  The greatest evil is the death
that hides in a kiss.  The most poisonous venom is in kind words that renders us helpless,
unable to fight off the jaws that open wide to consume us.  A willing prey requires little effort
for a cunning predator.  We are willing to ignore the fangs concealed by a smile.

The devil isn't a monster.  No, but a wonderful tree with pleasurable fruit hanging from its limbs.
A rotten tree with rotten fruit is the home of flies, not beautiful creatures.
What resides within the heart, attracts what rests outside of it.


 The prize of the eyes are the reward of the heart.
 What the eyes drink in, the heart shall have its fill.  Pay homage to vanity and grasp the air. Pay homage to modesty and the wind of grace shall dance underneath your wings.
Lifting you to heights were passion cannot.  Inspiring the heart to compose lyrics that kisses
cannot.  

We see what we want to see, until it is too late.  A broken heart is the result of careless eyes.
Drinking in much, but understanding little.  We attribute no crimes to beauty.  Her alibi is the
innocence we give to it.  We attribute to it truth, honesty and grace.  Beauty isn't in the eye
of the beholder but in the heart, of the fool.   We see a beautiful woman, but in reality, a murderer who happens to be, beautiful.  We see soft loving eyes, but in truth, they mask a harsh unforgiving heart.
We see wonderful full lips, but honesty is not the language they speak.

If the eyes sail upon many waters, it shall return to the heart empty treasures.  May your heart set
a course for singleness of sight.

'Evelyn'

I wanted to make you beautiful.  Not the superficial stuff of models and horny teenage boys wet dreams.  But a small ray of sun light peeking through a gloomy sky.  But the 'pen' was mightier than me.  I imagined that as a child you weren't loved much, if at all.   Nothing fancy about the plain way you were your hair in high school or the thrift store clothes you were unmercifully teased for wearing.  You came from very little and was given only an ounce of that for yourself.

I wanted you to be my pain and anguish personified.  Perhaps you could represent what I have always so desperately tried to conceal about myself.  I made you a woman who bore the physical description of the ugliness I carried around in myself.  The self loathing of wasted opportunities, the stress of that appearing as a 'scowl' etched upon your face.  That scowl, I carried in my heart.  I gave that to you so that I no longer would have to carry it.  Was it fair?  Maybe.

I gave you a husband that made you his shadow.  Maybe it was wrong of me to allow you to become content with this rather pathetic arrangement.  But it was an arrangement I was most familiar with.  Loving from underneath the shadows of others.  However you took it a step further.  Further than even what I had anticipated.  You became his slave, his maid.  All the while, I was hoping that you would break free and leave with your dignity intact.  I was hoping you would prevail where I had not.  That you would reach deep inside of yourself and pull what was most important to your own personal survival.

However you allowed the bitterness and pain gut the inside of an otherwise kind and generous heart.  And then, she appeared.  She was everything that you weren't and never could be, Evelyn.  She was, beautiful.  But on the inside, she was a rotten bitch.  And you saw that, Evelyn.   The consequences of it all I was hoping you would avoid.  Maybe, I was very naive to assume that what took place came without consequences.  Maybe somewhere deep down, I was hoping that like me, you would just swallow that huge ball of pain and hide it in your heart.  The only consequences suffered, would be to your own self-esteem.  But I was wrong.  Sorry isn't enough.  However, know this Evelyn Thayer.  I never intended for you to be what you became.  I only wanted to make you truly, beautiful.