To Confess My Loneliness

To Confess My Loneliness

(“The priest shall burn all of it on the altar, for a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, of a pleasant aroma to Yahweh.” Leviticus 1:9b)

I’m so tired of confusing every emboldened cryptic answer
to the questions I send by test balloon. I’ve kept my eyes open.
I’ve even shut my mouth.
I’ve waited for the reply that would set all my doubts aside,
but all I remember is the smell of grilling from next door.
I had hoped the breeze would bring more voices,
would open up the choices I had that could make the day
feel sooner that later. I’ve been told it’s nothing personal
when I get no answer,
it's just the delivery system that is broken. I do not believe
that silly response no matter how well it is spoken.
I’ve been taught that loneliness is not a big enough
reason to cry.
“Isn’t God enough?” they ask. They walk on down the road
while I scratch my head about what they said.

I used to be embarrassed to confess my loneliness,
the result of silence I never asked for. Everyone had
an opinion;
everyone laid down their advice like directives from a
commandant. I was born in a room full of noise,
of laughter and crying. I live in a room of silence so
I turn the music up loud. I could relax so much better with
someone to talk to who didn’t have the answers full of
conclusions. They want me to put it all on the altar,
to let it burn up every part of me. They do not understand that
I have so little left to offer that the smoke from my altar
would barely be seen.

I’ve walked this pathway before. I’ve humbled myself in words
full of self-loathing. I’ve let it burn until there was nothing left of me
except bones blackened by the flame. I left one ceremony early
because my baby was tired and getting restless and others
shot their eyes at me like I was a heretic or transgressor,
when I was just a father with an exhausted toddler.

I wish someone would draw different conclusions. I wish
they would sacrifice for me the way they think I should sacrifice.
I wish I had something left to burn. Maybe it’s because I’m old now,
maybe it’s because I remember for so long the screeching sounds
of cars suddenly breaking outside at midnight. Maybe it’s simply
me who has been wrong, maybe I spent too much time in the moonlight.

Maybe I need one person holding back their well-intentioned advice
and revising their presumptions about me. Maybe a single voice,
quietly whispering its way into my heart would inject something new
into the dreams that cause my heart to ache in the middle of the night.

My Broken Casements

My Broken Casements

When electricity burns through you nerves like
the hum of a dozen engines,
and your head is encased in wasted dreams
you would rather not remember,
days shake you like a rug and heap more reasons
to close your eyes than stay awake watching
for something meaningful to happen.

I cannot confess enough; my confessions are meaningless.
And yet there are more sins I’ve committed than sins I’ve
admitted. The numbers do not matter. My broken casements
would still let in the cold though I was young and innocent.

I barely have to look past my window to know
that life is better than I perceive it. And yet
tears are my food,
heartache is my refreshment,
boredom is my religion, and
loneliness the name I call nearly everything.

I rarely create. My mind watches the calendar for
the next date that I’ll miss, or sit silent among people
I know, unloading my defenses privately at home.

I would board a train to yesterday if I knew when it
departed. I would post my arrival to be sure someone
would show up for me with my heart in hand.

Today I’ll blame the pain, tomorrow the people who
promised to refrain from warfare. Next week I’ll accuse
the loosened nuts and bolts for not keeping me together.
Everything is out of joint; everything is knotted tightly.
I’d tell you all my stories, but I know it would not end well.

So, I hide myself within myself. I confide only in the rain.
Inside this jar of clay I see only through the cracks
inches away. Outside I might look in. Outside I might
laugh that a silly man can find so little joy in an hour
of neighbors and celebration.

But the electricity still runs, sending my mind a thousand
times around the same stories that never did end well.

Loneliness Begins

 Loneliness Begins

(“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain.” Hebrews 6:19)

Loneliness begins like bees in your head
while you long for one friendly word
to mute their buzzing. The longer the day,
the more the noise, and the sickness grows to
an ache that weighs

Like lead in your chest. You would fall over with
the sickness, faint front first, if not for the last time
you broke your nose that way. A phone call would
be the alchemy that turned the weight around. And then,
into the night the illness fills
your legs’ hollowed

Bones. And now standing has locked the door behind itself.
The couch does not speak, but it knows your form. You beg
for sleep, and when you waken, you beg for sleep again,

Except your dreams leave you feeling you’ll never please those
half a dozen friends that haunt you nights. And then you
beg in postcards, texts, emails and anonymous social posts,
for one who used to hear your words
and sing them back to you

To return and heal this sickness before the bees’ stings
remind you that you caught your loneliness

From failing far too often.

Today I wait for one, maybe two, who know me
in, out, through, trash, and unholy scan
and simply want to keep me company, dry
my tears,
and remind me they have anchored me (sickened
by the sea) and that
I sometimes was less than lonesome,
and often more than dead.

Would You Remember?

Would You Remember?

I would like to write you a letter,
though my friends will tell you the theme
has become my common refrain;
I would like to tell you our childhood days
are where I spend the most of my lonely time.

Do you remember nights rolling down
the Story Park hill or the raw egg fights
armed with dozens and dozens, a free for all,
no enemies or allies?

I mention these because they are what I miss,
I’m a pain-a-day decade afraid I’ll never
wake up smiling again. Remember my
darkened thinking, my tears nearly every day
just because my mind drew a blank and could not see
light everyone else felt without trying? A few pills cut
them back
to once or twice a week; the secret tears
I wish I could share with someone who knew
exactly the color of blue I was singing.

But, doubled now, the pain became
the poor-man’s cul-de-sac,
the dead end with a corrugated sign of steel
stopping my thoughts from plunging into the irrigation ditch.
We called it the Los Angeles River. Some-
times
crawdads lived there.

I bet you wondered where I ended up. Or
do you remember me at all? You were the
girl in Eighth grade English with silky brown hair,
cut straight across the back.
You were the Seventh grade buddy who had
a tree house as large as a lake cabin; we ate
deer jerky after your dad went hunting, and
slept between the branches of the giant tree.

Do you remember me?

See, I’m writing you because back then we knew,
friendships should never be broken.
But now I’ve roamed so far, at least two habitats
for each decade’s passing, I have friends scattered
like bird crumbs from Oklahoma to North Dakota,
from Los Angeles through Oakland and barely
north of Portland. Farmers and technicians,
models and mothers, bike riders and Porsche drivers;
all are points on a spectrum, except

I am not part of the separated light splashed across the world;
I sit outside and observe every circle I enjoyed;
drama students, a passing stab at modern dance,
a band or two, a coffee-shop in Oakland reading poetry
freestyle on Friday nights. And, the brightest and best,
there is no guessing, the small gathering of budding
young followers of Jesus; we loved well and knew little.

I’d like to address this from my heart, rather than my home,
I’m so afraid, with the way each decade has passed, you may
not find me at my current address.

I am sad. The dreams had nearly drifted, but still within my grasp,
until failure chased them further from my reach, and pain,
--I swear I hate this constant refrain--

Has left me listless upon the ocean’s final ebb. Friend,
I hope this finds you,
happy and bright, and fully filled, within/without,
of seen/unseen spectrum’s light.

All is Colored

All is Colored

(“Sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.” Ecclesiastes 2:21)

He is swimming in his loneliness,
drowning like ducks on the desert,
trying to space his words just far enough apart
to not run out before the breathing is done.

He started the tailspin, he began the helicline fall
with very little effort at all. Admitting so, he hoped
everyone connected also remembered his cry for help
before the spiral began.

The hair he let grow longer than before now
lay in a kiss-curl on his forehead
easily mistaken for a misplaced tear.

He is drowning in his loneliness,
swimming on the backdraft of yesterday’s success;
goals set and exceeded, awards granted unexpected,
applause and overflow, ovations and the high plateau
of questions about how to do it all over again.

Like a magician who whose props are burned to ash,
he tries to recreate the love and fire that took him
two steps a time up stairs and down. He limps
behind the smell of summer’s rain, never needing
to look behind…
except for those who have lapped his pace
and may pass him again in gray drizzle.

He is swimming in dreams unmet,
visions laid down flat on the concrete of cold memory;

All is colored by pain, the music is interruption,
sunrise a shame to miss, and tear-wells full
and ready to flow

At the least hint of another joy evaporating with time.

Days of Dawn

Days of Dawn

The lonely poet who sought with words to
sift truth through images waits for the ice like dust
to dissolve as the days plays on.

Some days, like Hugo described, are dawn from
beginning to end. Others, though, long past noon,
begin with the setting sun and end just the same.

He used to write profusely with pen, never scratching out a word,
never editing his thoughts for fear of discovery. He wrote to
be discovered;
he wrote to mine hopeful treasures and hold them to the light.

He wrote with broken emotion, he wrote of the night light
reflecting the silky hair of his brunette first love. He wrote
of death, “an ode to Jimi and Janis”, before he had lost even
a relative or close friend. He thought he knew, or could uncover,
what the rivers meant that ran just below the surface of reflection.

He composed unrhymed verse and rhythmic prose, twenty or so
stapled and offered to aunts and uncles Christmas and birthdays. His
critics never breathed.

And then he was silent for two decades or more, busy, it seemed,
with speaking the lines others suggested would pay better than poetry.
He liked Berkeley, college and town, but spent his life on prairies and
rivers learning rural winds. Buildings and pavement were the wind-rows
of his youth and air like asphalt.

He took the pen again midlife, excuse the metaphor; for he clicked the
letters processed into words, leaving the pen behind. Lines were neater,
and words more legible this time.

He writes alone, and wishes his topics were more bouquets and wine;
but this is his cheap therapy, the unedited motions of hurts over time.
He writes alone, and yet is loved more than he knows…and he knows
he is loved; but that river still flows under the sound of words he
was taught were proper. He still wants to discover

Who the writer is within, and why the river is so quiet this time of life.

If a Field

If a Field

(“When the ground soaks up the falling rain and bears a good crop for the farmer, it has God’s blessing.” Hebrews 6:7)

“…but if a field bears thorns and thistles, it is useless. The farmer will soon condemn that field and burn it.”

And the day I started remains exactly where I left it
the. And the day I am playing out seems only so much
greasepaint covering how little progress has been made.

And the rain falls violently outside my patio window,
the wind fiercely tears the wind chimes off their

Nails in the wood.

I want to text the world to ask where my dreams disappeared,
I want an answer to my letters, I swear I would leave those days
behind
for just one word, or tear, or admission of the omissions that
send the bucket into the well behind my eyes, never returning dry.

I have all the rain I need, and dry, I remain the same
as the day I started. Like the expanding universe, stars
flying light-years further each second,
I discover the friends that once were my milky way
are beyond my ability to see; their appearance reaching me
20 years after the fact.

I have all the rain I need, and burned, I am on the outside,
a dry asteroid at the outer limits of light’s furthest spectrum.

Memory the Book

Memory the Book

(“Meanwhile the earth fills up with awareness of God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:14 [The Message])

To walk alone, the woods, the foothills,
and see the nodding leaves left on the barefoot floor
is less inspired than to be tethered to another soul
who sees the beams between the trees while you
feel the cold shade of winter’s shadow underneath them.

Though full of lessons around every bend, solitary
bests my attempts to take it all in.

So I wrote a good initial stanza, the words are lazily out of reach
for the rest. I think I gave my heart to more than one friend who
took it with them and moved out of town.

Pieces scattered, old cinder block ash, across the map,
an x and y axis of time and place. I spend too many days alone
to write well anymore.

I make up forests from my memory, old trees waking
I once tried to photograph trunk to canopy before my father told me
it would never work, taking pictures that way. I never tried again.

I’ve made too many mistakes to trust myself
to write from my heart anymore. Laughter forsook me
with the last piece of trust placed in the hands of a man
who cried with me at lunch. His wife of youth gone
too soon cancer. Owing to my weaknesses shared
(too soon as well) the friend couldn’t help but
clumsy my soul. It wasn’t his fault, we mostly
trample like fall our opportunities.

To walk alone in the woods, the foothills
unshared with another, soul to soul, is an
ingrown blindness; though swimming in
a Sea of Glory, we depart and dry.
Divide the ramble, eyes doubled four,
is a holy panorama; sloshing in the
Sea of Glory, more wet and head to toe,

Whether smile or cry, the day is meaning
and memory the book to read happiness by.