Devastation

Kills the devil in its soul
Few make it out
Of the home for the insane
Even the sweet smell of jasmine
Can’t coax them out of the waiting room
But you have my love
You arrived

Unlikely to all the doctors
Who said you wouldn’t make it
Whom thought you’d even fake it

Sometimes

When you broom away the debris
The rotted leaves underneath
Still have a bit of red in them
Signs of life like you always had
Have had always

Walking through Venice with
Hallucinations of lost love
It wasn’t always like this
I mean before adulthood set in
Before the stones beneath your
Bare feet felt as cold as they once did
Seethed with a new heat that made you
Dance and also breathe differently

To pacify the acute anxieties
Reading or holding a friendly bird
Companionship comes along
When the garden gates are open
Sitting on the most compassionate
Bench in the grove a smile waiting
To tickle the corners of your mouth
A waxing crescent turned up
Growing wider at the sight
Of true loves wanderings
Down the path of violets
Toward you

My love

The twisted stairways of life that circle up
Aren’t really built for the emotional
Teacup climb that many often fear
Coming back down from
But even the empty drag of a cigarette
Tastes better than walking back down
The spiral steps thirsty
Never having even tasted a drop
Of the tea you went climbing there for

In the first place

The only unbelievable devastation
Is never finding the pathway
Like an atlas on how to be truly capable
Of being grateful for what our ancestors
Discovered before us
The things they tasted for us
That erased them so we wouldn’t make
The same mistakes and throw away
An infallible life chucked
Tossed into the outskirts
Of some back alleyway that
Unloved children end up in
But no

Not you

Venus found the new moon
Outside her Roman goddess window
Second planet from the sun and
Even as the second-brightest
Natural object in the sky
She still casts shadows
A radically different attractiveness
To someone who only wears her
Rollers in her hair in the same way
Every Sunday with the exact same flip

No you

You have a charisma that chooses
To enunciate the strength that is felt
Between two this is also what matters
To you and brings a fragrant flower
Wheel spinning the insights
To remind us that the appearance
Of ourselves in the face of someone
Other than ourselves like a mirror
Rockets a volcanic blastoff

Decidedly

Little inquiries popping up all around
Lovely cut rue herbs pruned into
Hedges that tell the answers
Peeking out of our mental frameworks
Solutions fire-working into
A beautiful bolt of lightening
An aha spark and there
Right there is where I found you
Making a picnic for two in the ashes
Not just for any occasion
But for a delicious buffet of
Unbelievable creation

© GÄ