I'm alive. I'm in love with a strong woman that loves me. I have friends that I can call friends and who call me friend. I have my health for the most part. I have my mind for now. I discovered that I have a dollar still in my pocket. I have cigs and coffee for the day. I have my education and skills and experience that I know set me a notch above many that are as stuck as I am. I have a heart. I have passion. I have a sense of humor even in the blackest times. I have my memories back and the perspective that losing them for a Summer gave me. I have a craft for words and a vision for images. I have 37 years of piano and songs in my head. I have a sense of justice and a sense of mercy and a sense of forgiveness. I have a sense that there might be a God and that he has a shit sense of wicked humor that I have no choice but to tip my hat to if he'd only allow me to get rich enough to afford a hat. I gave a homeless man all my change even though I'm homeless, too. I gave a man a cig even though I am counting how many I have left. I told a woman to smile as I passed by and she called from the end of the street, "Hey! Thank you! That just made my day." I can speak more than one language and I was able to smile at jokes told on a bus in Spanish. I have been blessed with beautiful people in my life from all over the world. Perri, Lucyna, Andrea, Burckaan, Ana Kamiar, Deepak, Josh Yaphe, Stephanie Grant, Elzbeta, Crystal, Mustafah, Creature (who has taken on a life of his own), Tony (who has given me my second chance at life even as he questions the need for his own), Trinity, Laura Duffy, Michele, Cindy Williams (who's cutting words often keep me real), Maria Sibiriak who humbled me and taught me shame, Brian (my brother who is perfectly real all the time), My father whose advice is invaluable even though he never followed any of it and whom I buried, Lisa (my step-sister who taught me that I could be accepted on my own terms and not to compromise and who taught me how to respect a woman and what a woman was, anyway).

I turn 41 and I have many things to be thankful for even as my life is at its darkest and also at its most brilliant. Kelsey has taught me a depth of love that I could have only dreamed existed. I hoped even as I dared not hope that a Kelsey could maybe exist in the world.

Today, a woman slept with her head in my lap and I dared not move but that I would destroy the moment. Today, a woman's arms held me close and my heat warmed her. Today, love was made long before the sun would rise. Today, I was kissed by a woman as she left. Today, I drank coffee. Today, I found Cohen's "Here It Is" and listened to it. Today, I got a web site finished. Today, I saw the sun rise after all of this.

Happy Birthday to me.

____________________

Stephanie dared me to try to write a poem without rhyme.

____________________

The wind in the willows were what woke me from my dreams
I couldn't figure out how they could still be screaming
with the voices of women and children and men
when they had been chopped down years ago
The thud as they landed went right through me
and the leaves in the street blowing past?
How could those damn trees still have leaves?
So I woke and listened to the rain with a cig in my hand

_____________

meh...

___________________


Look at this room that you wake in
and look at it hard through the smoke of the cig
that wafts up to paint the walls in yellow tar
The mattress on the floor and the chair of dirty laundry
The laptop fan whirs on the tv table you use as a desk
and sunlight streams in to show you how it is
Good Morning!
How you gonna get out of this?

Green flem hacked up from the depths of blackened lungs
the vestiges of a cold in a cold room warmed only by coffee
one cup at a time
It's time to empty the trash when the Ramon noodle wrappers
won't stay in, anymore
It's time to do laundry when you've decided to match the last clean sock with a dirty one.
It's time to rethink life when you have to choose between bus fare and a black and mild
because the Mavericks are just too expensive in this part of town

Lunch is.... lunch is... oh! Wait! I still have that half a sandwich in my bag.
Lunch is solved.
Thirty more letters go out begging for work in the guise of confidence
thirty more cigs are smoked waiting for a reply
thirty more days have gone buy without rent being paid
thirty more dollars I'll have to borrow for the chance to get out of this
thirty more kisses give me hope that I exist

Look at this room you wake in
look hard through the fog of your mind
as it paints a past and plans a future yet again:
Don't you ever learn, Sean?
Isn't the definition of insanity the expectation of different results
doing exactly what you're doing, now?

Look at this room you wake in.
Happy Birthday to me.

Tags: blessings, essay, poem, poetry
Current Location: Richmond
Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Dark Alan by Capercaillie

Leviathon and stonehenge dreams
by Sean Rice

There's a power in the tower newly crowned and robed in gray.
There's a flower growing upside down. it's petals have all blown away.
A teardrop sinks forgotten, now, in soil parched and starved.
The footsteps in the garden from a ghost that cannot say

Why you dream in color when your world is black and white?
Why your love has endings with the Summer's fading light?
When you hold a hand... do you feel lonely in the night?
It is only morning yet and evenings are still bright!

Leviathon and stonehenge dreams and murals on a church wall.
"what is love?" is written in a notebook where you stall
the question will be answered when you dare to fear the fall
Your questions will be answered when you dare not fear to fall

Tags: poem
Current Mood: enthralled

The wire barbed across
Sean Rice

Suddenly it was, the wire barbed across
teeth bared, silent as snow
bringing every traveller low
The journey beyond a loss
for around I could not go
Such a rusted snake was this!
Such a treachery!
Such a beast in its intent!

Tags: poem
Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: Requiem

You cannot remember when
the summer nights that wouldn't end
and the leaves of autumn falling
like gold from the trees that the soft wind would rend
never would mean that the Winter was calling
you close to it's empty embrace.
You cannot think of a time
when the laughter of a man over sweet cups of wine
and a touch did not come at the cost
of your smile -- lost 'cause you thought that you might have been blind
to the pain that would follow; to which you'd be tossed --
your pleasures gone without a trace.

How much you fear to be forgotten
neglected on the shoals and rocks of shifting alliances
remembered only as a dalliance
an infatuation; love misbegotten...
are you only to be one's misspent youth?

You ponder the road that lays before you
but look only at it's many branching paths for a clue
to the one that will bring you -- not a warmth to your heart --
(no, you cannot hope for that, for what would ensue
but the misery of broken promises that always seem to fall apart?)
only for less pain do you plead your case
You walk in circles and dream your many dreams of tomorrow
tending your spot in a clearing long grown fallow
for even nothing at all can be too much to lose
and when you 'think it through' you'll stop; your reasons shallow
even to your own ears (but how can you choose?)
"I cannot," you'll say and bittersweet is your sorrow laced.

Will young men someday walk past you
talking of Michaelangelo?

The wind blows it's hatred outside my window as I write,
but it's bellowing is impotent and portends no change
whimpering, finally it turns in utter defeat to range
beyond the hills... I'm saddened at it's loss of fight
and wish upon it more patience.

Your eyes are often a barely-flickering flame of hungry consideration:
blazing, beautiful ice, too, quickly extinguished in reconsideration.
They shine in the light of any future that should dare to take you away
until you turn - burned - remembering once again to shun
even that appreciation of your worth -- even that will seem to play
against hints of deep desires you will not face
You cannot bear it, not to hide.
Not the casual touch, nor compliments, nor depth, for fear you'll fly
away to somewhere far away in sudden chatter, eyes hidden.
You are a wild doe desperate to avoid the outstretched hand, shy
to the intimacy imposed upon you; relentless and unbidden...
You'll say, for feelings such as these you have no taste.

Cannot these words touch you? Even with no one there to see?
Can you not hear the voice in your head speaking insistently?

Men: you'll watch them come and go
talking of Michaelangelo...

Tags: poem
Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Pachelbel's Canon