Dream Life

                                              I'm not perfect, I'm me. I've made bad decisions and wrong choices, but I'm me. I've said the wrong things, I've said the right things, because I'm me. I don't like everything I've done, but I did it because I'm me. I've loved the wrong people and trusted the wrong people and I'm still me. If I had the chance to start again, I wouldn't change a thing. Why? Because I'm me. There are a lot of good things about me, you just need to look past the imperfections to see what's right. If you can't do that then it's your loss.  I'm the best I can be. I am ME.

                                           First snow! The flakes, So few , so light, Remake the world In solid white. All bundled up, We feel as if We were fat penguins, Warm and stiff. The toy-packed shops Half split their sides, And Mother brings home Things she hides. Old carols peal. The dusk is dense. There is a mood Of sweet suspense. The shepherds wait, The kings, the tree--- All wait for something Yet to be, Some miracle. And then it's here, Wrapped up in hope--- Another year!

                                       This being human is a guesthouse.  Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, Some momentary awareness comes    as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,   who violently sweep your house     empty of its furniture,  still, treat each guest honorably.   He may be clearing you out     for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice,   meet them at the door laughing,       and invite them all in.   Be grateful for whoever comes,     because each has been sent       as a guide from beyond.

                                        I guess you could call me broken, says one. I'm still lonely, says another, but now I can name it with a song. In my poem, says another, I can forget I am forgotten. Now I understand being misunderstood, says another. And another says, in a bold, undeniable voice of power, I won't step down from myself again. And they are beautiful, beautiful, standing one by one at the mic where they have come forth at last from behind the curtain.

                                    like winning the lottery/ or finding God in your sock drawer. I think love is something that happens to other people nebulous, distant, an invention of the movies; I think love is like death/as in, it happens to everyone/ to you, until it happens/ to you, and then where else could you be but in love? Where else could you be but in the belly of the beast, ? that oozing cavern where people go in fairy tales? I think love is a creation. I think maybe you shape it with your hands, I think maybe you find it stuck in your molars, I think maybe it comes to you when you're in the shower, your face tilted towards the water while your mind melts somewhere else, I think maybe we've all been naming it wrong. You know that love? That falling-to your-knees love? That where'd - the water-go love? That hold-me-close-I'll-never-leave-I-know-your-favorite- coffee-creamer love? Tha...

                                       Now I become myself. It's taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people's faces, Run madly, as if Time were there, Terribly old, crying a warning, "Hurry, you will be dead before--" (What? Before you reach the morning? Or the end of the poem is clear? Or love safe in the walled city?) Now to stand still, to be here, Feel my own weight and density! The black shadow on the paper Is my hand; the shadow on the paper As thought shapes the shaper Falls heavy on the pages, is heard. All fuses now, falls into places From wish to action, word to silence, My work, my love, my time, my face Gathered into one intense Gesture oof growing like a plant. As slowly as the ripening fruit Fertile, detached, and always spent, Falls but does not exhaust the root, So all the poem is, can give, Grows in me to become the song, Made s...

                                     The waves have a story to tell me, Ad I lie on the lonely beach; Chanting aloft in the pine-tops, The wind has a lesson to teach; But the stars sing an anthem of glory I cannot put into speech. The waves tell of ocean spaces, Of hearts that are wild and brave,  Of populous city places, Of desolate shores they lave, Of men who sally in quest of gold To sink in an ocean grave. The wind is a mighty roamer; He bids me keep me free, Clean from the taint of the gold-lust, Hardy and pure as he; Cling with my love to nature, As a child to the mother-knee. But the stars throng out in their glory, And they sing of the God in man; They sing of the Mighty Master, Of the loom his fingers span, Where a star or a soul is part of the whole, And weft in the wondrous plan. Here by the camp-fire's flicker, Deep in my blanket curled, I long for the peace of the pine-gloom...