Take Care

I trudged up and down the same hill
several times a day for years
looking for you.

I finally found you,
hidden in your own skin.
You asked me to hold you,
so I did.

My heart was pumping your blood and
your heart was talking too loudly.

I don't know why it needed to shout
if we were so close.

When I woke up the next day
I knew
That I'd only dreamed of finding you.

In the waking world
I wouldn't have known what to look for.

And since when do ghosts have hearts, anyway?

I'm in a box trying to make my way out but my skin is made of velcro and the box is too. I am a baby duck on a loose carousel baby merry go round and round is off the track and there's no turning back cause we've dropped all we had and there's no pick-upskies. Flying man flying man, write me a song. I wish we had a song. I wish our lips had never met cause then they wouldn't be upset.

Partly body, mostly soul

From the cradle to the grave

Every day and every trial
I'll exist within my body
It has been with me a while

The bones within me know no purpose
But to steady this mere frame
And my blood, it swims right through me
But it doesn't know my name

My teeth don't really feed me
Though they take what they can find
And if my eyes could see no longer
Well, I doubt they'd even mind

My lips will work together
In order that you hear
All the thoughts I have within me
That they don't know I hold dear

These other vessels for conversing
Will let me hear when there is rain
And they will let in many words
But they will never feel their pain

My fingers do as I command them
So as to grasp the world at hand

And my legs don't choose my goings,

They just run, walk, kick, and stand

Yes, my skin is back to dust

After it plays its earthly role

So I praise the God who made me

Partly body, mostly soul

Mending

Griping for lack of miracles is erroneous. A demand for tangible promises is foolishness. Training for a softer sooner is ridiculous. Life incognizant of death is recklessness. I am not a body with a soul. I am a soul with a body. No rough-housing, no horse-play says my soul to my skin which is quivering in awe and fear and shame. Such feelings are understandable. My skin's days are numbered, after all.



* Started in Sept. 2008. The idea then turned into "Partly body, mostly soul."
"Mending" was finished, titled, & posted on 2.18.09.