Shams' Muse

 the train left the station and i am sorry that  well let's face it you never wanted to make the ride

 I made a cake for  A future I hope to have I put only love in it *** The thing about cake Is that making it Should be the best part *** It was your birthday  I will cry when you die Your cruelty hasn't erased  The person I thought you were How lucky to be a better man

I have most conversations in my head I have great adventures with you And I say to you Let us have the greatest love adventure of our lives One that people will write books about long after it ends And you say yes i am in i want to live We will sit atop the highest building in Tokyo and drink pink champagne From a pink bottle and race boats across the China Sea And walk on an ice shelf in Antarctica in oversized winter coats While a guide points to the things that live in such  treacherous places Pine trees for 100 miles  in our picture together in the 100 mile wilderness We smell jungle mist from Incan roads and swim in cenotes clear 100 feet down  Highland sheep watch as we carry our packs  and the warmth of 100 sunny days together and a love that spreads across our lives like a sunrise

There will be a day when I have my cake And eat it too and the crumble will be so Thick that my teeth slide through and bits stick to the sides of my face and on my lap and the plate and the floor and there's so many crumbs that the dog has to lick them up I have a bent fork  

 I still have all the once green branches When we were younger and silly they turned to dust And blew in a west wind My hand is skeleton My heart an empty hall Footsteps none but  What happened here  It was me wasn’t it It was always me  Like a crime scene where I spilled milk A very long time ago 

 He wears a rope around his neck And I want to grab it with both hands and pull Him to my lips And take in his breath from This gap Because in that He knows sailboats and equations And  And I can’t get his attention He’s on a run and his sails Are up and the sky is blue I’m a passenger  With wind whipped hair looking ahead hands on the pulpit rail  To a cloudless horizon 

Shams, to say I am speared is an understatement. I am harpooned, (Unpublished poem files)  

why lie, dearest, when I see exactly what I want. (Old unpublished poem files) 

I love every hair on the top of your head, the color of caramel mud in the Afghani steppes. If I loved you any more, I would have to invent more of you to love. There is no space left for me to fill with my ardor, with my passion, with my admiration and wonder. Ah, but herein the troubles lie. Not that my love will end, for it is far larger than your entity, far larger than everything networked to you in webs across the stars. The more I love you, the more fear that grows that you will leave and I will be left holding a broken string, my boat floating away down the river. **ah, I crack myself up with this stuff. ** (unpublished poem files - who did I write this for????)

what if this is the last one? and what if it is not? every cell in terror for an unpredicated, unprecedented, indeterminate future. He has never l in words (let me be so specific). But in deeds. So they say this matters. I am shaken sickened by this bounty, this windfall, this newfound treasure. Sipping from a well with curled tongue the smallest quantities; it could be poison, which kills the thirsty as well as the half drowned. I cut my swarths out with a careless sword, clumsy hands, run forward with no armor, no real plan, except hope that my bravery and my charms and my wits will protect me from the onslaught of unknowable enemies of unknowable strengths and unknowable outcomes. I may not recover this time if I go down. Have I another choice except to walk with fear, except to know each step is in a new land. (unpublished poem)

sometimes he sleeps on the couch and I think i want to keep you let me keep you i'm so dumb. he's keeping me. (unpublished poem)

not a day goes by when i do not think i would like to die and someone tells me on the radio you need to ask yourself what is saving you right now? and she is saved by Christ. she is saved, but I am not damned, not damned for all the ages, I just meander on through. I am so lost. this life I am living, this life is such a painful thing these days when you are so unkind to me. But I would not lay my head down on some kind of block for you. That is what a younger me would do. Instead I die and kill myself on my feet, and silence my voice, and put my mind in another place. You are so full of hatreds for me. You are so full of some poison. You are poking at me with your fingers and opening spaces on my skin and bleeding your fury on me and into me so I spend my days asleep, my days asleep, killing everything in me, as there is no desire left. No will to do what must be done. I am slow and thick and it is hot and summer. These are the days I have and you rape me for them. I blame him for mak...

Problem is, relationships hurt, trust is hard and comes in spurts.

sun up comes, sun down goes, sometimes I yearn for my toes to sink in sand along the sea, take me away, rescue me (unpublishe dpoem)

The magician could turn wood into a horse, (unpublished poem)

the places I go will pass beneath my feet and I'll walk one step at a time until I find that I never needed to walk any further than the place I already am. (it was your birthday today, and I didn't even wish you a happy one. It was a deliberate choice, because I couldn't bring myself to speak to you. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to. I'll do it here. Not that you read this. Happy birthday, baby.) (unpublished poem)

what does it take? must i ignore you, hate you, spit on you or roll on the ground and kick my feet in the air and cry aloud that I have great needs deep needs and yes, i know where this is going. (old unpublished poem)

i know from your eyes wide, dilated eyes and the way you touch me with your hand and i think but then when i try so hard to (old unpublished poem)

i wrote to you darling on postcards in my old life asking you to appear to me and say i love you i love you i love you. (old unpublished poem)

From the objective, You offer what you don't want to give away. As if hooking me will solve for your unknowns. I'm here, yo, I'm here. Don't try so hard. Don't play it like that. I give it away for free. You are craftier than I with nothing to lose. Dial that down to simple things. I don't want you to die, From the subjective. I am here, yo, I stand for you. Can I? I said so. Throw that log on and watch it smoke. I don't think anything of me gets in You're so crowded in there So many little people pushed into that bus, a woman with a caged chicken on her lap. So much baggage. So many limbs. Miracle these don't fall off the cliffs. (old poem republished)

 I want this. Arms to hold me in the darkness The scent of a man, slightly of earwax, slightly of sweat,  ground down into a pillow a line of drool pooling from his open lips. He wakes, eyes on my eyes,  a smile spread at his good fortune and brushing the hair from my face kisses for these lips, soft, deep, sloppy and moist He hugs me to him tight and I'm too hot, but it's skin on skin and he hums in my ear  I love you, I love you, I love you  more every day

Shams, I have not written anything in a long time I filed chapter 11 on passion I wither on the vine Dried up plumpness gone raisin, leaves brown and curled in on themselves, thin stalks still hanging by tendrils This was once a holy place with a honey sweet temple Doors open wide to let the sun in Crowds came here in droves to see the goddess If she is crone now, can she be a maiden again There are seasons, are there not? Will spring follow winter, or is it just a steady march down

(While memorizing to be or not to be I kind of have been thinking of other ways to say the same thing in my own way) Why do we not lay down the sword when life is so hard We don't get younger The body ages, decays Lovers leave us or don't love us at all We see others succeed where our ambitions taste the bitter dust of failure We are unremarkable Not giants, nor kings, nor queens And each day we grind corn knowing that we do not eat without labor But by eating, we prolong our laboring What is this life for?

 i count time in years shams but lose count numbers are not my thing my dog is nine. he's nine you know which means i lived here for 8 years or is it 7 and we broke up 8 years ago and i still sometimes look at his twitter just to say you were a better man at one time a more interesting man maybe or not and then in the then i loved others and you don't even matter now, old man,  older than me, ten years younger old man with your bad hair and your long fingers and your shake old man outlook, old man habits now i like someone with small hands and perfect feet did you have perfect feet? I can't remember you except in pictures i hope you are gray now and withered and smell bad i hope you are sad you left me that's a terrible thing to want for someone i want you to be happy too i want you to have forgotten me i want to have forgotten you which i have i am onto someone else someone else who  doesn't want me either