Let's Be Giants

Let's be giants

we'll take our giant hands

and build giant buildings next to skyscrapers made of wood

 

and we'll wonder why no one sees the toys left around like Lego bricks 

and guy wires made of candy floss

and we'll play giant games

 

our giant feet stomping through the city making valleys where we walk

 

Let's be giants

and build things

with our hands the size of cars

and our laughter loud like thunder

and our hearts beating thick and heavy

full of joy and pain and emotions made ever bigger by our size

 

Let's be giants

and curl up together

our backs against the hills

our faces to the ocean

knowing more adventures await us in the morning

as we leave behind the buildings we made

standing next to skyscrapers

made of wood.

A Place I've Yet To Be And Have Been Before

I smell your smoke

through air thick with ocean

and your wildness drifts in through the open window of my room.

I can't think, if I'm honest, 

of any times I've camped without a fire

but we're not near a campground here 

so I wonder why I smell your smoke,

where your fire is,

and if you're staying warm

on this damp Spring evening

with air so thick with ocean

it carries the scent of your smoke

and the image of your fire

straight through my open window.

Fifth of June

I don't know what to do

I feel helpless

I am so angry

I am so sad

and this isn't about me

I sit in my privilege and I pick at scars others would be glad to have

I am exhausted

exhausted by the anger 

(I don't do anger well)

I have made myself sick from it

(but never have I feared for my life at the hands of police)

I don't know how to help

I can't help

I try to help

I've been told I care too much

(I do.  It just is.)

I tell myself I don't care enough

(I do.)

I want to fix it.  to fix it all.

the inbred hate

the centuries of oppression

the system after system after system of racism meant to hold some up

and others down

I apologize

for my silence

for the sins of those who share my colour of skin

for the things I can not change and can not fix

and for the people who don't quite seem to get it

yet

I don't know what to do

it seems trite to find joy

it seems lame to search for peace

how can I

share beauty

love

art and peace

when my brothers and sisters are dying

killed

murdered

hurt

injured

held down, held back

thought less of

by some

anger on both sides

anger on all sides

and I don't know what to do

I don't know how to be

what to say

how to breathe

(and yet there is no knee on my neck, no gun taking away my life, my lungs have range of motion, my breaths come slow and easy. I can breathe.  I just don't know how anymore.)

Nature's Joy

they tell me it's plum

plum trees 

shooting puffs of pink into the new come Spring

plum trees blossoming early early and letting us see the hope of renewal

of life

of ongoing growth and change and seasons and cycles

they tell me it's plum

but we all say cherry

cherry blossoms - sakura

and they come too

and white apple blossoms on that one tree down the road

and then the snow of Spring - these delicate petals

these blossoms

spin as they are blown

(darling buds)

by winds still couched in Winter's breath

I walked today

past trees heavy with these blossoms 

I felt cool air touch my face,

watched birds fly overhead

nature doesn't know that we all are in pause

nature presses on

Spring blossoms fly through the air and pollen dusts my car

they tell me it's plum

not cherry

not at first

and I would curl up in the softness

pull a blanket made of their lightness up up up until it covered my chin

because

Winter passed

Spring is here

and life goes on

You've Given Me A Lot To Think About

“You’ve Given Me A Lot To Think About”

Sound echoes when the air's this heavy

and they call it "mist"

but I think it's the pain of all our losses

making its way back down to the ground.

Do you ever wonder

about the slow disintegration

the water's making 

one

small

droplet 

at a time?

Because people travel to the Grand Canyon

to marvel at its depth

but they don't sit and stare

at their own backyard

falling away

a nanometer a minute.

I am really tired 

of standing where I do

and being collateral damage

over

and

over

and over

“So MOVE!”

they shout

but I get grabbed

again and again

and eyes and lips

and words beg

beg beg me to stay.

(“Please?”)

I lessen the damage

when you roll a low, low number

and I take the hits

just like you asked

but also the ones 

you seem to ignore.

I am bowled over by the wake

and stuck deep under the wash

and you stand on my back

to get to the air.

Is it a mark of your ignorance

or the bliss you find therein

that you look at me with confusion

as I tell you I trust you not at all

while I carefully tend

to the wound you gave me

which sits next to another

and another

and another

and more?

I am tired of being the ladder you climb

to your own salvation

while saying words

you think

mean more than your actions.

Sound echoes when the air’s this heavy

and the pain of my losses

drips slowly slowly slow

as I make my way

back down to the ground.

I am my own Grand Landscape

carved away 

forever changed

one droplet at a time.

Fragments

My heart has been broken

in so many pieces

so many times

I'm sometimes surprised

there's anything left

but I piece it back together

again and again

with emotional duct tape

and I soldier on

ever onwards

seeking something I'm not sure

even exists

this phantom heart

made

they say

to buoy mine

may turn out to be

the ultimate illusion

the Loch Ness Big Foot Dragon-asaur of my existence 

and I'm starting to wonder

if every time

my heart shatters

I lose

one

more

necessary 

piece

of a soon to be lost entirely

whole

fragments of me

left all over

ground into the finest of dusts

coating everything.

Laisser

pieces of you everywhere

waking me from calm

moments of your presence

filling silences I'd like left empty

a hundred hundreds we share and know

and yours are mine and mine aren't new to you

but how much longer

will this haunting continue

where you and

your memory - 

a word

place

time

photo

whispers in my ear-

catch me blissful

and unaware

reminding me of the pain

the hurt

the missing

that I've tried oh so hard

to put away

people change in increments

when you're watching them day by day

but the leaps and bounds of unknown personalities

will throw you off every time

when you're away

living a life built to bring you back together

stepping over and around

the pieces of you

scattered everywhere

forcing me

to watch my step

lest my cadence be thrown off

yet again

by your ghost