Elsa

the little girl dancing 
in red rain boots is beautiful. 
her blonde hair 
bounces with her feral foot steps 
and she giggles like she knows god. 

she offers me a french fry, 
and when i chomp down 
like some savage, 
she completely loses control. 
she cannot have more than two years, 
and yet she and I 
have been running in a field called playful 
for centuries, and all morning. 
her nanny speaks spanish. 
we have the same level. 
cual es tu color favorito?
and she tells me. 
(if the world spoke as children; 
the only thing we'd be lacking in the lives we lived 
would be theories on how to do so). 

she is unpredictable. 
her mind is mapless. 
she slides, 
hands first, 
up and down the cafe stairs like fingers on a piano. 
the entire room is resounding in the melody of her exultation. 
i am singing along. 
she is back for more. 

she launches 
onto the booth seat next to her mother. 
her father, reaches a hand to catch a potential tumble backwards, 
but only instinctually. 
they continue speaking. 
she is on parade. 
she tramples my books and things. 
her destruction is unwavering, (as are pardons to the joyfully accidental). 
i speak quietly to the apologetic mother.
there are countless pens, journals and rucksacks in Germany. 
there is only one radiant - red rain boot dancing Elsa. 
thank you.

............

a solitary coffee is, at times, like a companionship eviction notice. 
when i finished this one, this morning, 
i saw god in the dregs. 
he doesn't always look like the paintings, but he does look like we need him to.

some day, 
Elsa will organize her dancing. 
always, 
Munich will smile 
from march winter and thursday morning;
at least at me anyway. 

were i a hummingbird

were i a hummingbird 

i’d hover,

over earth until guilty verdicts 

reverberated from the laws of gravity; 

(i were sentenced to freedom 
from the day i learned to fly).

were i a hummingbird 

i’d make home 
of your garden, 

(the green and golds of living room, 
steeped in afternoon and iridescence, 

percolating through the trellis 
to the terrace where you bathed),

were i a hummingbird 

i’d live 
swiftly, 

so swiftly you did hear my colors 

writing songs through your lantana. 

were i a hummingbird 
i'd flicker,
into summer and through asia,
like the interweaving lines of your left palm 
re(a)d,
and out from every single one of your fingertips. 

were i a hummingbird 

i’d return, 

today, and every today after.

were i a hummingbird 

i'd hope, 

she were hearing,

i'd hope she were seeing

she were smiling ,

i'd hope that she were nearing

i'd hope she were

were i a hummingbird,

(and she would be).

castles and archers

let me start this over 
my hands are flailing dangerously
you know how terribly i want to be somebody else 
convince me that it's worth it to remain exactly who i am;
i saw a movie once, where a boy loved a girl before leaving on a journey 
and i thought to be a movie scene, 
without letting myself believe that reality doesn’t fit so comfortably into the back seat;
break the merits 
i am holding myself up against 
cut them, like ribbons and sheets
with kisses to my cheeks  
a thousand plus a thousand, 
please,
these medals do break apart 
and i will, let my stars down, 
lord knows i need a hand from time to time 
in mine, without letting go 
when stumbling how are you’s 
and questions that I shouldn’t,
can you blame me 
have you seen how beautiful you are;
trust me 
i never intended to let my confidence of its leash; 
out the window and down alley ways,
it is more stubborn than you are, 
and it doesn’t listen to my reasons anymore; 
only to the queen it made of you the first night we walked alone,
speak to me 
tell me a story 
i know it’s cold outside
but theres a fire building inside my chest 
and i’m only away collecting sticks to burn

when god made you, he put strength, 
like castles and archers, behind your eyes;
he put oceans behind mine, 
and you said you loved the way my insides flow, 
but they didn’t support you tip-toes when you tried to step into my soul
good thing its spring, she said
i hope the waters warm

the next ten thousand sunsets

the sunset is god’s way to whisper that he loves her in my ear, 
a smile is her way of showing that she feels much more than she knows how to say, 
and i think forever is for discovering what built the walls around your heart; 

i saw the next ten thousand sunsets behind my eyelids when i closed them to kiss the gaps made with the corners of your lips; or was that my imagination, i could have sworn i heard the ocean. 

you said that your soul felt as a cave, while mine, like desperate miners, explored the crevices and crags for unreached tunnels and precious metals, but some days you just wanted centuries and emptiness to make crystals. 

“don’t be angry.” 

the strength of a woman that loves truly is a wonder i’ll never comprehend and never grow tired of being wounded by; i used to think you meant to scar my lips with all the cuts and scrapes that came from kissing my apologies back over concrete, into the cracks where you guarded your eternal stores of forgiveness; in silences that told the story of springtime, that made time stand still and stars dance in place; that made me feel like bursting open; silences you bathed in, like perfume, and wore as diamonds on your ears; that made you woman, that made you fragile, that made every word you spoke build temples of my hands and wings of my feet. 

i never knew what you were afraid of until the day i felt your gone-ness, gone beyond the reaches of my love songs, gone beyond flowers taped against your window panes, gone beyond kaleidoscopes and letters bathed in anxiousness, do you love me? beyond sunsets and whispers. 

i heard them tonight, and wondered if you were watching

there she'll be

there she was,
a quarter century ahead and a half hour behind,
not concentrating, then again neither could i
i thought, there's enough cigarette for two here
but instead i smoked alone;
if silence is golden
i've got wheat fields till closing time,
i tilted my head
just enough to catch her silhouette,
carved into air by dimness,
while judging by her stillness
she hadn't seen me wondering,
(why god buried all his treasure so far beneath the surface);
sometime before the lovers,
and after their exits,
she hid within a cave so bottomless she couldn't catch
even the shadows she read about in books she'd taken with;
so let me kiss the light toward you
inching slowly in the tracks
you left behind you with the pieces
like you wanted to be found,
i saw your eyes
peeking through the pages of your finger tips
faking blindfolds;
you are no more darkness than i am clean,
so i'll come closer where you still can't see my scars,
and together with your boots and mine, like stars
we'll make our way across the heavens until morning,
where we will see, (although now dimly),
that we are free to dance in dining halls, abandoned into ballrooms,
with no music but our toes we laughed to keep inside the cracks,
down rail-less stairways, and uphill till sundown,
because it rises after all;
like a promise made and kept,
like then as we know fully;
there she'll be
and i'll be watching from my seat just down the table;
there she'll be.

Rembihnutur

"The Lord upholds all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down"
Psalm 145: 14

unfatherful

i had never seen a mirror
til’ i carried twenty and some years, 
but when i did she whispered back that i was beautiful,

that i was terrible, 
                               a mirage discerned,  
her lover and her father,
                               like water in the desert,
and all fathers being unfatherful,
                               only hoped for after all  

..... (
eyes will show you the world if you let them, 
she will say yours are magnificent if you only permit her take her time, 
and together you will know the face of God and eternity

...... )

so with both hands at her side, 
like bayonet and white flag, 
she said, i really hope some day you find what you’re looking for