You Chose Me
for Russell, a canine friend.
Timid and shy at first, you soon learned
that I, spare human, was a bearer of food
and affection
and adventures.
It wasn’t long before
You chose me.
Soft eyes and gentle tail wags,
Tucking stolen socks and shoes into a cozy bed, your hoarded treasures,
One ear standing at attention, the other flopped over at half-mast.
Wheaten fur and wiry tail,
one front leg lifted to politely request a walk.
Or, when necessity dictated,
a soft but playful growl and said paw grazing my leg.
Persistence, I thought, should be your middle name.
So many congenial days and nights spent in your company;
Covering you with playful kisses,
holding you close during booming thunderclaps and firework echoes,
Standing sentry while you and your brother ate meals so he wouldn’t eat from your bowl,
Reassurring you
that squirrels, joggers, delivery men, carpenters, and cats aren’t our mortal foes.
Napping, curled up together in a sun-drenched spot on the living room floor,
Lounging on deck chairs until a neighborhood cat needed to be told off,
Piling together into the guest bed downstairs at night, your tiny canine brother in tow.
Walking into the kitchen, only to find you and your brother-sidekick already sitting
Expectant, hopeful, always feigning starvation.
Crinkling of plastic could rouse you from the deepest slumber!
I loved to watch you prance up and down your street,
Smiling with your entire being, gait graceful and elegant as a show horse,
Free, save for the leash attached to your collar.
Every time that a dog wags its tail and asks for my attention, I remember:
You chose me.
A shared understanding, how we complemented one another,
Simplicity of your
Pure sweetness, loyalty, and trust clothed in fur.
Serenity in your presence.
Beside you, joy was illuminated when melancholy threatened to return.
I hope that when next we meet,
You’ll choose me again
because
I will absolutely choose you every time.
Insight for Richard Speakes
He looks like a modern day Apostle, a bearded prophet cautiously smoking
away the minutes until doom goes on sale.
The sidewalk struggles to hold the weight of his world-weary heart.
As he leads us in lecture, he carries broken fairy tales and fistfuls of
obscenities in the pockets of his black jeans – Pockets brimming with intrigue
and subtlety, as he explains each point
Pacing the threadbare gray carpet, raking his hands through a shock of brown
hair.
A student of pain, a creator of mystic kingdoms in mud,
He’s just as human as he is ethereal.
He frames every syllable with cries of revolution, keeps us all cupped in his
hands like beloved pebbles while he reorganizes the rise and fall of literary
empires,
paints our cranial walls with liquid nightmares,
dares us to join him as he quietly communes with villages of emotion that we
have yet to name or taste.
Tonight, at last, his words reach my blood, honest and open-faced as the sun.
Tonight, it all becomes so howlingly vivid that even brackish tears can not
bleed the pigment from the images tattooed on the insides of my eyelids.
Tonight, the zookeeper has unleashed a herd of young struggling poets into
the world.
Trust Fall for Robert Ward
Indelible you, salient smart ass clad in black.
Puffing a cigarette on a rickety bench behind the crumbling brick theater, smirking
knowingly into magazine pages.
Sarcasm opened the door as we traded barbs at every rehearsal.
You were the slender, loquacious rabble-rouser who would not be contained by
expectations.
The man who refused to do The Hokey Pokey on the principle that, as you claimed,
“That is NOT what it’s all about”.
As weeks went by, a connection grew.
Suddenly, I wanted to climb inside of your heart and live there:
Curl up in your stories, dance in your brightly colored paintings, embrace your words,
feast on your ideas, sleep in your shadow, be the wellspring of your inspiration.
Your tiny living room became our place to commune with past, present, and future.
A passport to undiscovered realms, guided tours of emotional landscapes I would
not dare to traverse alone.
On those journeys, your hand grasped mine as though we were fused together.
Wounds faded with a balm composed of quiet comfort, shared safety, and loving
acceptance.
Evisceration was a welcomed feeling – revealing all without fear, allowing you to
hold my soul while I unraveled before you.
We succumbed to a shared need; freedom from limits, shared trust, and enjoying
the blurring of lines. You fed me dreams, bathed me in admiration, and swaddled
me in the truth of your love.
The freefall that you prepared me for?
Letting go of your physical presence entirely, admitting that your abrupt silence
meant your life’s end.
My heart remained a fortress until defenses were breached by the grim reaper’s
unyielding scythe.
You exited quietly while a diversion stole my attention, refusing to let me watch
you disappear.
The scene has ended and the lights have gone down,
I’m still holding my breath in the desperate hope that you’ll reemerge for curtain
call, laughing at my reaction before striding out to bow during a wave of applause.
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