CROSSCURRENTS OF LOVE
You Got To Be Madly In Love With My Soul
Loneliness Does Strange Things To Love
I realize
I’m standing on the earth
I realize
I’m listening to the sea
I realize
it’s not just in my mind
Something’s going on
between you and me
And it might be love
It might even be love
Two swans swimming side by side
like writing on the lake
Two geese flying side by side
like writing in the sky
God’s pen is busy
telling us who we are
Lonely’s got to believe it
Tiger and Tiger
Bird and Bird
Life speaks in
Pairs
it’s the language
even hermits understand
The proudly isolated
drift in broken ships
towards land
We’re together without a vow
or expectation
it just happened
below the surface
of our solitude
And I can’t go away
even though I’m not there
When I said I’d leave,
it meant I’d stay
I realize
I’m standing on the earth
I realize
I’m listening to the sea
I realize
it’s not just in my mind
Something’s going on
between you and me
And it might be love
It might even be love
Sappho,
how beautiful you are.
I’m sorry my body’s
so coarse
so strange
so dangerous
so odd,
like clothing
that doesn’t fit
your heart.
If I could,
I’d be a girl
for you.
To be with you
I’d be a white flower
in the breeze,
you could be the one
who said,
"Come through the door,
I’m ready now."
I’d lie down
on the bed of
you having the power,
I’d be safe,
you could be the storm.
To be with you
I’d become
your shadow
or soft skin,
give up
the threat,
to be with you
I’d be as gentle
as the door
I have to come through,
and gentler when I arrived.
I’d bring more than
all the chariots of Lydia
in my soul
to your loneliness
and surrender them
to your horses.
I’d stretch my power
beneath you
like the sea
you threw yourself into.
I’d put the dark cliff
you leapt from
back into the sheath
of your solitude.
I’d come softly
but with worthiness,
like thunder rumbling
on the horizon.
I’d lay down beside you
and wait for you
to need me.
Sappho, dear Sappho,
if you’d let me,
if the Gods would let me,
I’d come
bearing your greatness,
not mine,
except as a form
of yours.
I’d leave behind the army,
menacing with plumes
of thinning populations
scheming to perpetuate
their weapons,
I’d bring flowers
to your moist citadel
and kneel
in gentle supplication
to the two moons
of life
that your mind
cannot hide,
I’d come to worship,
not to steal.
I’d whisper
and converse
in the cradle of fire,
be as quiet as your own thoughts,
be the sheet
you covered yourself with
or kicked off
in the night.
And like that sheet,
I wouldn’t hide you,
when you wanted to
cover yourself with me,
the beauty of your form
would still shine through,
like the moon glowing
through clouds.
Sappho, dear Sappho,
I’d wear flowers
in the fierce hair
of my soul
till the lions slept,
I’d wear a dress,
put down the spear
of my pride
and bathe with you,
white and tender
in the river of sisters,
I’d hold a golden mirror
up to your face
by the angry sea
until its waves laid down
at your feet,
I’d touch you with hands
guided by your
wounds,
I’d be you loving yourself
with another mind.
Sappho, dear Sappho,
I’d be what I’m not
to be with you.
Sappho, dear Sappho,
let me be
what I’m not
to be with you.
When you make a road of pain
to your door,
don’t you understand,
most people will just
go away?
They won’t
take the test,
they won’t go
on the knight’s brave
quest,
fight dragons,
seek Grails
for a whip.
You wanted true love
so badly,
you dug a moat
deeper than any heart.
You want love that would walk over fire,
but first you have to be loved.
When thorns
hide the rose,
no one knows
what they’re bleeding for;
and heroes
don’t come to life
for nothing.
Your fierce net
makes no distinction between
impostors and champions,
between abusers in sheepskins
and souls
sent by your angels,
it sweeps them all up
out of the sea
of coming to you.
You are alone,
alone,
surrounded by graves,
graves of love
that never had a chance.
Because no one
could ever pass your test.
You pulled
the rug out from
under my feet,
then expected
Hercules.
The only way
to be strong enough
to stay
was not
to love you.
The only hero who
could win you
was the one
who’d already
stopped trying.
She warded you off
with her sword,
my love who’s not
yet dead.
Still she hides
in places she broke;
she wouldn’t be the one,
but she wouldn’t
ever let herself be impossible.
She said no
but wouldn’t
give me back.
She wouldn’t let
the sun rise
in your eyes.
She’s still got the wound
in her hands
and knows how to use it
to keep me
on the island
of her prisoners,
the ones she won’t ever let
start over.
When you come to me
is when she comes.
To put out
the rebellion
of me loving
someone else.
It’s not that she means to do it.
She just comes.
Like a nightmare,
like wine.
Out of seas deeper
than you and I have ever swum.
But her savage possession
is the only proof I have
that I’m not worthless;
and my inability
to impress you
is a small price to pay,
I let her ride me away
from meeting your eyes
with my whole soul.
I surrender to the loyalty
that destroys me
whenever you’re close.
The sword point
of her
ancient love
pierces me
whenever I have a chance
to love again.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
Is it over?
Jungle night,
noise stilled
in the quiet of his hunting heart,
neon lights unveiling
prey
of
dreams,
the deer want
his tiger claws,
his tiger power
in their heart.
But he’s become soft with love,
he’s not a tiger anymore.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
Yesterday’s night taunts
his victories with now,
who he was limps
from the wound
of being who he is.
His eyes can’t stop shining
in the dark,
he can’t help bounding
after
humiliations,
he leaps at ghosts
and lands alone.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
The thrill of stalking
incites his dream world,
his killing
that gives birth to beauty,
his harmless
yet terrible way of killing,
but the memory
of blood
stops him
before he can
save those
whose life
comes from dying,
he can’t do it
like he used to.
An angel stowaway
in the dark center of his
instinct
disrupts
the power
of his rush
with thoughts
on how it used
to bring pain.
Joy,
wearing the skin
of pain.
It’s too personal.
He can’t
do it like he used to,
rainy nights of tears
have taken off
the edge.
Philosophers
have invaded
his mighty
thoughtlessness,
turned his wild leap
into
the folly of
meditation.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
It’s not the same.
His stealth
has grown,
how he wears the forest
until he’s there!
But he comes
with nothing!
Only love
that kills those
who want to be
ripped to pieces.
It’s too similar -
the gentleness
that came
from those he hurt
averts
its eyes,
how could God
hide life
in the form of
violence,
it’s too similar!
Saving and destroying!
It turns off the switch
that ignites the blind attack,
the longed-for attack,
all the sparks are swallowed up
by the fool of Conscience
who wanders in by mistake,
confidence dies at the hands of
Compassion,
it’s too similar,
the cry of pain,
the cry of joy,
the peak of life,
the valley of death.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
Perfect master
until it’s time to kill,
half-tiger,
faded tiger,
tiger
with all his colors
washed out
by tears
he imagined
they were going to cry,
when all they wanted to do
was die;
by victims
it is finally time to pay for,
hallucinations of damage,
overreactions
to his own
sensitivity.
Sensitive beings
should never be strong,
never:
for their strength
only breaks them.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
She wanted to die
tonight,
instead you came reformed,
emaciated
with kindness,
you made her cry
because you
didn’t hurt her.
Your power
has scared you
into the confusion
of trying to understand things
that you can only understand
by ignoring.
Now the whole world
is illegible,
and the jungle
is wet with
the weeping
of those you loved.
Tiger without teeth,
prowling for what?
Only one
aged in her soul
and broken like him
could ever see
the tiger
in his shadow,
believe in
the beast who was,
and love his pitiful
wreckage
wounded by his mercy,
until the mask of friendship
fell off the face of weakness,
enlightening him
with things he
had grown beyond,
to nurture him back
to savagery.
Calling all centaurs
and satyrs,
go to where the angel
goes not,
to the dark wild place
where she wants
to be raped.
It’s her choice,
like Socrates choosing
hemlock
over exile.
She’s tired of being
listened to,
revered.
She wants to be
thrown down,
hurt,
ancient defeats
are a part
of her blood, now,
safety comes from
being broken.
Survival instinct knows
her life depends on killers:
the one who wants
to conquer the next valley
won’t let
her children be covered
with shadows;
and he announces himself
by the way he
takes her,
turns her into the valley
of his enemies.
Ladders of genes
have left the gentle ones
behind,
as Mankind climbed
upwards to a bloody sun.
His way of making love
is proof of life,
she tests him by being pillaged,
watches him kill
the neighbor
with her body,
take the fruit-filled vines
her children need
from her helplessness.
She takes his fury for a test drive,
and knows from her aching,
discarded body, that she has a bright future.
Calling all centaurs
and satyrs,
hairy beasts
dancing with wine
and arrows.
Come and please her,
save her from
my deadly thoughtfulness.
She longs
to take cover in biology,
the ones not like her were left alone;
the proud are dead.
She feels history
in her wetness
and is already protecting
the children
she does not have.
And I don’t blame her.
Time has proven her right;
my ideals
are only a desperate mating strategy,
and she’s no fool:
she can see
which stag has the sharpest horns:
which one will stand on the peak
above the rest,
and which one will crawl back
into the woods of beautiful hunger.
Her weakness has strength,
it won’t give in to a soul.
Calling all centaurs
and satyrs,
she’s a good woman
wise in the ways of reality;
come and save her
from the sin of my
impracticality.
I have nothing to give her
but love.
What the dead did not learn
has made her long
for wild arms
to destroy her.
Life comes from the will
of those who use
everything,
and it begins
with her.
Calling all centaurs.
Love has made me dizzy, and
I’m falling off the ladder
of time,
with the sons and daughters
she wouldn’t let me have.
Calling all centaurs.
It’s what she’s wise enough to want.
Break her, break us;
you’ll go on,
I won’t.
You Got To Be Madly In Love With My Soul
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
I’m not your ordinary
candle,
I don’t burn
when it’s dark for you,
I burn when
the sun’s got
something in its eye.
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
I’m not the genie
in the bottle
coming out when the sun
of your three wishes rises.
Sometimes I stay inside.
Light can’t be premature.
Sometimes sorrow’s
not to be healed,
it’s the healer.
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
I’m not the driver
of the chariot
that crosses between the day
and night,
not the lion who’ll
make you feel all right
while Rome burns.
Sometimes, I got to sing to the wall,
turn my back on your fall.
There would be many arms to catch you
if you weren’t so proud.
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
I’m not the flower you can pick,
I’ve got to stay in the field.
Glass vase, water, and your table?
I’ve got to say no.
But I’ll be waiting for you
in the mountain meadow
when the stars are breaking the night.
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
I can’t give you gold
like they can,
can’t carry you all night
in a storm above your gaping wound,
can’t gently infuriate your ice
into melting,
or crush you back to life.
Can’t mine your need to forget
and send it
in treasure ships
back to my pleasure,
can’t be so cold,
so heartlessly life-giving,
can’t be so strong:
I need my strength elsewhere,
can’t throw it into
the chasms of love.
I can’t love you
apart from them,
only as a part of them.
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
When love asked for the ocean,
the ocean said
I must water every shore.
When love asked for the sky,
the sky said
I must carry the stars
to strangers.
When love told the wind
You are cold,
the wind said
I am the one
who unites
all human beings
through their vulnerability.
My dream is too large to be a home,
which means I must be alone.
My dream is not a roof,
it is a sky,
which means I cannot be your man.
Only one who knows this
in herself
can be with me.
This is not a call,
but a warning.
Not a boast,
but a regret.
Trying is my religion,
but I may never get there.
I may be nothing more
than a way to die.
You got to be madly
in love with my soul,
or don’t even try.
The fierce
don’t bring back
the dead
unless their sword
attacks the traitor,
while they kiss
the blood.
Water and a candle
from a gentle soul
could end an exile
of a thousand years.
The ocean
measures time
in centuries
of shoreline,
dancers
can arouse souls
with the curves
of their wisdom.
Beautiful hearts
could launch
the thousand ships
inside:
beautiful bodies
are made ugly
by impatience.
Doesn’t water flow
according to the shape
of the land?
The sea is there
waiting
for the adaptability
of its lost waters.
Rivers that want to go home
will always find a way.
What doesn’t come back to it,
the sea doesn’t need.
Sometimes,
the door stays closed
to test the one
who wants to
get in.
The worthy wait.
The mistakes
vanish
like bees
alighting
on an empty
flower,
moving on
to simpler colors
they understand.
Shallow bees
do not feed on
deep nectar.
But insecurity
does not need
a counterattack.
The failed alchemist
hates the lead,
but why
should the lead
be gold,
for his sake?
There is no up or down,
only what is,
and what belongs
together.
Starting again
is the definitive disaster.
"You never fail
until you stop trying."
Trying to hold on to the country
that already has
another flag flying over it…
Guerrilla of the memory
strikes at now
out of the past.
Wielding nostalgia
against everything that went
wrong.
The present must die.
You can fight the battle
over and over again,
a thousand times,
change the order of the troops,
strike an hour sooner,
but the world will no longer react
to your improvements.
Soldiers in their graves
can’t get it right.
But it doesn’t matter.
Fighting
is a way of healing.
War is a drug.
The pain is shaped into strategy
and can no longer
recognize itself.
When you are hurt enough
the past can blot out the present,
you can lose track
of where you are.
You can hallucinate victories
from the bottom
of a mass grave.
Starting over
is the definitive disaster.
It’s like signing the peace treaty
that says "I lost."
Opening your eyes to her
is a way of awakening to the fact that
it’s no longer your earth.
She wasn’t the one.
She’s only a shadow
of your days of glory,
because you are no longer you.
Joy will come again
when you let
it say good-bye.
Yesterday’s joy,
when it becomes a religion,
saves pain’s soul:
you burn in Hell
forever.
Joy will come again
when you let
it say good-bye.
Let the sweet nights go,
the marathons
of being alive,
stop trying to hear
the echoes.
Silence is the Messiah.
Let the cup of joy be empty.
Until it is,
the angel with the pitcher
will keep
passing your table by.
Pain is beautiful
as the first movement
of the symphony of your new life.
The pain
of "good-bye",
not the pain
of "why?"
Joy will come again
when you let
it say good-bye.
Let emptiness reign.
Don’t keep standing
by the place
where you died,
bury yourself
and be done with it.
Live for the heart
you left behind
inside yourself.
It’s day will come,
when you let joy
go back to its home,
to yesterday.
Joy will come again
when you let
it say good-bye.
You are my infatuation
and my nemesis.
The door
and the wall.
The Lovers
and the Tower.
You and I
are poets:
something happens
when we are together,
that needs words
to protect us.
I crawl towards you
with my heart
in my hands
but I know I can’t give it to you.
It’s like in the story,
where the hero twin’s severed head
is replaced with a squash.
I give you poems,
not me.
I can’t.
I’m not good enough for you,
because only the overreaction
of being divine
could save you
from what they did.
You are the air
that feeds my fire
of singing,
my only defense;
I am the earth
that puts out your fire
of hating,
your only answer.
That still only brings us
halfway
Rage is sacred
until it flows out of the banks
of setting the world right.
Loneliness is holy,
until it becomes a faith.
Words have made us possible,
as meditation makes
flaws possible.
And words have kept "us"
from being born:
for still, there is only
"you" and "me."
You are my infatuation
and my nemesis,
for one year
the Queen of my Songs.
Something happens
when we are together,
which is
not together.
Poems.
Poems,
not "us."
An evasion,
or all that could ever be?
Autumn.
I had second thoughts
when I saw the leaves
fall.
I couldn’t stand to see
you
falling from my heart
in that way.
I tried one last time,
disbelieved the summer
that was empty;
but you
wouldn’t change.
My pain,
which was your beauty’s
eyes closed
to itself,
wasn’t enough
to make you change.
Nothing changed,
the trees
just became
bare.
I can’t live
with pieces of a fallen star
I can’t live
with glimpses of a world
behind a half-open door.
My love needs air.
Some of the most beautiful
planets
have no atmosphere.
How bewitching is their
inhabitability!
A traveler came to one
and prayed to die
so he could stay,
till life grabbed him by the arm
and tore him away:
cowardice saved Eden,
which can never be more than
a story.
And so, as the gauge told him
it must end, he took
one last look at the crystal mountains
and hypnotic scars,
the star-filled captured skies,
and the broken love nests
of the Gods who’d left.
He must give it all back to the
hugeness of the night,
for on this world,
beauty was the same as death.
He cursed himself for needing to breathe
and leaving such a vision to
another.
Hurling jealousy at the rocks that remained,
he fled back to the homesick flame
that bore him home,
after he broke these words,
like glass upon a barren stone:
My love needs air.
I can’t live
with pieces of a fallen star
I can’t live
with glimpses of a world
behind a half-open door.
All the instruments
of what went wrong
are making a concert
of loneliness
that could make the sun
burning out
seem like a child’s song.
It’s called "The Symphony of Love’s Mistakes",
or
"What Love Could Have Been"
in the key of
wasn’t.
All night long
it’s going through my
head, over and over again,
this most beautiful
music of regrets,
and losing sleep
is in the audience,
applauding with the rest
of them:
the Fool, the Hanged
Man, and the Emperor,
who kept her
for himself.
I want to
fade out,
I want to fade out
so I can face the day,
but I don’t want to miss the
performance
of what I missed,
because what I
missed is in it
in the only form
I can ever have it:
painful sounds
of sleeplessness
that make
sleep seem
disrespectful,
exhaustion and dying
irrelevant.
A concert’s
playing in my
mind,
all night long,
my mind
using my heart,
and her distance…
The sea between us
was in her heart,
all the time
it was in her heart,
the waves were
only sentinels
of her eternal
withdrawal from love,
her escape
from the tyrants
who disfigured me
by wanting only
what was obvious.
And the concert
goes on and on,
the clock
crawls slowly
towards the dawn,
in a few hours
my uselessness
will have
to stand
without her,
I’ll have no illusions to
help me bear the
weight of my
self-destruction.
But tonight I have
this music,
sublime,
relentless,
so much more important
than my
preparation to die.
I’ll listen.
I’ll listen
till the hands of the clock
spare me
with the cold dawn,
let me back into
the world of ghosts,
feeling nothing,
not her,
not me,
not us,
not the jagged
remnants of
beautiful dreams
I dreamt by mistake.
Cue ball woman:
passing on
the hit,
knocking me
right into
the pocket
of not
loving you
anymore.
There are those who
break the chains
and those who
pass it on.
Is the old running the new?
Did the pool stick
tell you what to do?
Cue ball woman:
passing on
the hit,
knocking me
right into
the pocket
of not
loving you
anymore.
Why do you let them
come between us
with yesterday’s hurt?
Why do you let
the night stay out
all day
on the earth?
The green table
of what we wanted
needs a little justice,
not another crime.
There are those who
break the chains,
and those who
pass it on.
Is the old
running the new?
Did the pool stick
tell you what to do?
Cue ball woman:
passing on
the hit,
knocking me
right into
the pocket
of not
loving you
anymore.
In the middle of the night,
with sirens flashing,
they came:
after we did it to ourselves.
The ambulance
just carried our love
away.
It won’t be back.
Down the dark road
where it will never be seen again
they took the remains
of tomorrow.
The ambulance
just carried our love
away.
Sometimes there’s hope.
Sometimes there’s a second chance.
Sometimes,
reality
bows down to dreams.
But not this time.
The radio said:
"Dead at the scene."
The ambulance
just carried our love
away.
The night of love that
was only beginning
ended up being just a
gauntlet for
insomniacs.
Faults wouldn’t go to sleep,
windows wouldn’t shut out the mistakes.
Some car far away couldn’t get by
unheard.
Shot and killed for pride’s pocket
change, something like that:
that absurd.
And now they’re taking all the furniture
out of paradise.
Cleaning it up
so someone else can live there.
Chalk lines of
poems about us
left behind
on empty floors.
The ambulance
just carried our love
away.
World will get used to it.
To living without us holding
hands.
The ambulance
just carried our love
away.
Unilateral wise woman,
how do you know
what’s right for me?
You know
what I need
is more important
than what I want,
but I know what
I want,
and you don’t know
what I need.
And now,
you’ve imposed yourself
over me
as my guardian angel,
you’ve decided to save me
from myself
by not allowing me
to destroy my heart
by loving you;
you’ve taken the hard line
of love,
by saying no.
But what if your vision
isn’t coming from a higher place,
what if it’s only coming from
your fear
of being loved?
What if you’re only killing
two birds with one stone,
you and me?
What if you’re only dragging
me down with your
self-destructive chastity,
hidden behind flirting,
protected by lines
you plagiarized from
an angel?
Birds don’t only fly
to be beautiful,
sometimes their wings
are liars, singing praises
to the sky
because they fear the earth.
Are you really so wise,
or just too proud
to break into a run?
Unilateral wise woman.
We could have talked.
When two hearts are involved,
decrees seem unjust,
no mountain peak
is high enough
to discount the feelings of the earth,
to outrank love.
You decided for both of us,
but you are only
one of us.
I don’t believe in your serenity.
I don’t believe in your vision.
I believe in your fear
and the ingenuity of your fear,
I believe in disasters
controlled by your masochism.
I believe in the terror
that is in your light,
like blood in urine,
and in the catacombs
where your soul prays
below streets
it cannot walk on.
Other women want,
and pay the price of wanting;
you wanted
and then you fled.
You slew the dragon of
me coming to you with love;
you rose above us both.
You saved your sorrow,
and made me wear your chains.
Unilateral wise woman.
You are not wise,
only afraid
to see the damage
that you’ve left
between your two selves.
You are not wise,
it’s just another road
on the way to somebody else’s
broken heart;
it’s just another way
of trying on a life
that doesn’t fit.
Unilateral wise woman.
No, I won’t understand
some day,
I won’t wake up
to thank you.
Your wisdom’s
fallen short,
the verdict’s "Guilty"
in the court of coldness.
You got in over
your head
and pardoned yourself
with a halo
you made from my hours.
You’ve driven me out
to live on the street
below dreams you fed,
it wasn’t just in my mind.
Like a child
you played
far away from where
you could really go.
How could I know
till the loser
of your inner war
killed me?
Unilateral wise woman.
I’m the enlightened one,
not you.
You could have stayed.
You could have talked.
But the orders
just came down
from above,
from the mountain
of you not deserving
me.
Unilateral wise woman.
I’m the enlightened one,
not you.
I knew I was human;
when I told you that I loved you,
I used the map of the earth.
You crashlanded
where the night
of not knowing yourself
meets the desert
of what you’ve done to others.
You need to learn
how to be alone.
Unilateral wise woman,
you taught me something after all,
hollow things speak loudly
with what they’re missing.
As all Mankind learned from Judas,
so I learned from you.
You taught me with the blunt object
of your pilgrimage
to sorrow:
to never again follow a stranger’s dark eyes,
when I know the way.
I let your eyes become
the windows of my soul.
I sold myself
for the gold
of your body,
and the mystery of your art.
Unilateral wise woman.
She sent me away,
her pain was about to die,
it needed another broken heart
to survive the danger
of hope.
Unilateral wise woman:
Guru of her own
destruction.
Through me.
It wasn’t fair.
And she wasn’t wise.
That’s going to help:
to know I wasn’t the beast.
Unilateral wise woman.
Today we died.
I can find my way back
to life.
What about you?
Can you see where you’re going
in all that light?
Unilateral Wise Woman,
listen to the wise one
who didn’t try to be
more than he was:
Galileo went blind staring at the sun,
until he couldn’t see the face of
the one who loved him.
An angel before her time
falls through the cracks
between Heaven and Earth:
her wings aren’t strong enough
to lift her into the sky,
they just get in the way of walking.
Men who are dying in the desert
don’t need a diamond,
they need a cup of water.
Unilateral Wise Woman,
you’re not yet ready to wield the light
among men.
Angels are born
in the arms of life.
Put away the weapon of your wisdom,
and love.
It won’t be me.
I’m dead.
But if you’re true to the beauty
you have when the lights are out,
you’ll finally feel
what God never asked you
to leave behind.
It’s easier
to break
than to stay.
It’s easier
to remain the same height
than to grow.
It’s easier to be offended
than to see.
It’s easier for it
to be me
than you.
I can’t be a horse
to pull a shattered ego.
I can’t be your
accomplishment.
I can’t be the legs
of your pride
that let you walk
in the world.
I can’t be chandeliers
on your ceiling
to turn your room
of being a shadow
into a place of worship.
Armor that has a
mind of its own
is dangerous,
it may leave a hole
when the arrow of the past
returns.
You have to win your battle
before me.
I come after.
Don’t count on my love
to convince you of something
you don’t believe in.
You have to prove it to yourself.
My life
is nobody’s shield,
it’s God’s ego
using my humility
to do something
that might not have
to do with you.
You’re not an ingredient
of every pie
that’s made in my kitchen.
While I’m defending my castle,
yours could be stormed.
You need your own defenders.
Don’t count on me.
Don’t count on me.
I would die for you
on a dark street;
but I might not die for you
on a street that was dark
only in your mind.
I can’t be a horse
to pull a shattered ego.
I’ve got to run faster.
E tu, Brute?
If someone else had said it.
If someone else had done it.
Some voices are like a gun
in your own heart,
you pull the trigger
when they cry.
And when they look at you
like you’d raped a child,
you shoot yourself inside.
E tu, Brute?
If someone else had said it.
If someone else had done it.
How could you lower me
from your mountain of love?
You looked at the
butterfly who landed on you
like it was
pigeon crap
that just fell from a roof.
Romeo and Juliet come
from different truths.
But "love is always the best way
to die."
Who said that?
Nothing gets the job done
like love.
E tu, Brute?
If someone else had said it.
If someone else had done it.
Trojan horse
is everywhere like rain,
every gift comes with a
secret load of pain.
Soldiers of trust
will come out in the night
and burn your city down.
There’s always someone you won’t
lock the gates against.
But you’ll have to find out
for yourself:
Love was never a defense.
E tu, Brute?
E tu, Brute?
Strike me down,
I won’t fight back
against something I gave
my whole life to.
I could have stood up
to iron,
I could have stood up
to stone.
But I couldn’t stand up to love.
Was I always alone,
even when I was in love?
E tu, Brute?
If someone else had said it.
If someone else had done it.
Some knives
you can’t say no to.
E tu, Brute?
If someone else had said it.
If someone else had done it.
I’m not a bad person,
really I’m not.
I think I could have a
meaningful relationship
with myself.
Match.com, here I come:
to me.
I’m nice, I’m smart,
look, I even write poems,
and I don’t look that bad,
not for me.
I like the
Celtic-wounded-wise
look,
my dawn-by-the-stones soul
and a heart of secret love
that’s like a bag full
of magic spells
seeking out the blind who think
they see,
and the orphans who
know that something’s wrong.
I love,
that must absolve me
of my obsolescence.
I like me.
Yes, I do,
I think I do,
why do I need her
to love myself
through her love?
I’m more
than my usefulness to her,
I’m a piece of ocean
visiting the land,
a horse’s mane, flag of the free,
I’m cursed by knowing things I shouldn’t,
but beautiful for it,
wounded by witchcraft
on behalf of what matters;
broken
by the jealous sisters
of the deep,