The Skies Call Me Their Own

When you marked my beauty,

was your reflection

what you gazed at in my eyes?

You tried to shake down

my lively fist in the air

when you professed your "love"

to my shivering body.

You managed the art

of pleading to silence

when I look at you with

a face that said:

you used me, you abused me, you stole my wits about me.

How dare you use THAT word

when your eyes never bothered to meet mine

except in the management

of your own ego, your own press, your own stand.

None of which mattered to me.

Well maybe a little.

How dare I try to believe in you

to practice the art of believing in me.

You always told me what I should want,

but you never listened when I tried to tell you.

It wasn't you and it wasn't me when I was with you.

All I see are the pictures we didn't take,

the families we never soldered together,

the trips we never took

the scars we never healed

but only the bruises that marked the skin

from a "love" that braised too thin.

You taught me to choose myself for a change,

but I wouldn't hand you that victory.

The "you" that you chose

still has no leg to stand.

It drowns in your sin.

You saw me wearing a Queen’s hand me downs that I guess in your mind was ill fitting.

You failed to see that I stitched my royal dress by hand,

with careful attention to the nuance of every closed seam,

not aiming for the kind of outer perfection that distracts others from the stillness inside of me.

Yet, it meant nothing to you,

almost as if they were screaming to be ripped off by your sweaty entitled hands.

Those hands. Let’s talk about those hands.

The unsophisticated language those hands spoke.

With a grunting charge of rebellion against my humanity,

reduced to an object,

a tattered worm rescinding

from every pleasure you were ever imagined to bring.

I thought it was my fault,

until my auto pilot footsteps and wild screams about you to the pig’s den. . .

almost felt like an act of valor and strength.

Until the echos of your influence didn’t make me feel that way anymore.

So it’s an inch by inch cessation from your heartless, sledgehammer, brickstone manhood.

It’s true.

Once upon a time, I wanted you for myself,

to change you,

to teach you,

to quelch the fire in your liturgy cocked eyes.

But I took on too much,

more than I could handle,

more than I wanted,

more than I asked for.

And then some.

When I crossed your path,

you didn’t care to know where I came from.

Out of the arms of one man who ran the meter just to talk to me

to another who used me for my body.

Who were you in this spectrum?

Some able body who could cook your body “dinner” after a long hard day?

With my words often ignored,

I had to start drawing parallels with expression of the superficial,

abstract and mundane,

with in depth profundity of honesty and transparency.

I was afraid of the pirouetting ballerinas you clung to,

who stroked your thighs

as they pointed machine guns in the air

in defiance of what I would say or do to dethrone their man

or were you MY man?

It doesn’t matter.

My overjoyed castle for two is now a palace for one.

Stuck in your house of things

for so long.

But I know what his sun brings.

In the January storm,

I heard him blow.

But near him, my heart grew warm.

You pulled out only blue

from a bright colored sky.

So I soaked in his hue.

A traction of smoke

trailed in your bed.

In his arms, I woke.

A sea of tears

run from your clenched hands.

He vanquishes my fears.

He could not intertwine

on the blood soiled ground.

Yet he filled my soft spine.

My heart lay still

through your falling dreams.

All he fulfills.

The shadows behind his back

dim the light of your days.

He brings my voice to the right track.

What you doesn't know

you will never mind.

Love is what I sow.

My life sets launch to the air

when you linger at my feet

to wipe the tears

that I drop unto the crevices

of your warm bodied soul.

But I must confess,

I weep from joy.

When you think I am alone,

just know that the skies are my home.

They call me their own.

I want you to bathe in the light that surrounds me.

Have no fear,

the beauty that is witnessed

between you and me

is permanently etched into the

sand dunes of the bright omnipresent moon,

even as I crawl to the space of another king.

I know you are trying to draw

hard earned lines on my face

to justify why it should hurt

for me to live without you.

But these track lines appear

when I smile

as if to mark the miles it

took for me to finally rest in the glory of infinity.

Love is much sweeter now.

I don't remember the joys of life

before I was kicked to the ground.

But I know the naturally tuned

melodies that find empty spaces to

echo in my heart's spiritual chamber.

The burns in my heart

are permanent scars,

but it's all that's needed

to shed old skin.

For the first time in my life

I sleep,

with the lives of the saints

that center my stand.

And one day, they may even hold your hand.

Hold the line

Sifting through the love you know

Over time

Breathing is the place to grow

Overhead is the run

to the time it all had begun

Did our wheels get spun

when the rage broke free from the sun?

With freedom loving eyes, we’re praying for our shining light to come

Standing in the dark, we’re aching for lives that bring us mercy and love.

It seems like when we can own our souls

If we can have our day

It feels like it’s so close to home

And this should be our say

No one’s blind

when a heart turns to stone

They pay no mind

when our love is steeped in the know

We’re not here chasing time

We just hate wasting body and mind

We were born first in line

So take back your payment in kind

Chasing fast and fury

Dealing quick and dirty

But I will not get lost when its done.