Fishing

"If the wrong person catches you, you have to tear the hook out of your lip.  Bite it off if you have to... and struggle like hell to make it back to the water".

Words of wisdom from  good friend, given awhile ago.

I have been pondering the subject lately, given my current state of dating.  Dating is weird.  It is nice to have people interested.  Flattering, you know?  This doesn't mean that I am obligated to everyone who takes an interest in me -- or that anyone who I take an interest in is obligated to me. I don't want to catch or be caught.  I want to swim free and invite others to join me.  Sometimes I want to swim off in my own direction, free, unencumbered, playing with the waves and light all on my own. Sometimes I want a playmate to swim beside me.  I want sunlight and laughter and companionship and, yeah, relationships of all kinds take compromise and work.  I like that part.  The part I don't like is where I stop being me or someone sees me as someone to change or mold or subsume or as something to use to make their life better at my expense.  I am ripping the hook out at the first sign of that shit.  For serious!

Beautiful Nightmare

I redid a poem.

A lot of it is the same - but the tone is entirely different, and I tweaked it to go with a series of carvings I am making... and it finally feels finished.  

Cardinal Summer (Contortionist)

I swear I expelled you from my heart.

            Willed you out,

            folded close the bomb-shelter door;

            wrapped chains around it -- and locked it tight.

Yet.

In my retreating dream

it is you who call the Cardinal.

Your laughter-tinged
red-winged mating song
unrolls the moss underfoot;
calls spring leaves from bud --

The stirring and the first rays,

the feel of my sleep-heavy arm

around the warm contour of your body;
eyelids fluttering toward open. Soft.

Soft, I rise
to this traitorous new day’s

bird-twitter commentary

on the rising of the sun.