I Am the Dance (2008)

A hollowness inside. It shakes and cracks my guts and innards, rotting and putrid.
Self-inflicted, self-drowned in alcohol and house music.

I am the bass drum. I am the high-hat.

The rhythm in my bones pops and jumbles my scattered frame with sass and insecurity.
My feet are fixed and rigid until a familiar chorus charms my lips. An invisible lover’s hands arrive on my own skin and in my hair. The wave articulates down my spine and opens my hips as it’s all forgotten and someone else comes calling out of me.

I am a drunken hot mess on the dance floor. On the stage.

I conduct the now synchronized crowd.
My arms swing high and low as I become their unified beat. Their energy and mine vibrate higher and feed each other and we swell together. In this moment we become a common destiny. Eyes close, the beat is inside and out. Bodies become superfluous and faces dissipate. The swell becomes a flight, an ascension through layers of space.

We fly.

We fly because we know how. We fly because we can. We fly against the tyranny of gravity.

In this flight we encounter ourselves.
In this flight we triumph.

We drown witches and face demonic nymph twin murderers. In these battles we see the enemy as our brother, thank him for releasing us, show no fear against his juggernaut of blades flashing into our flesh. The flight returns to earth with an impact that puts us abreast and between our enemy, sharing the colour field that we breathe in and build.

We save the moaning flock who cry and tie their shoelaces together into webs, shackled in their shared sorrow for the lost.

In this flight I am alone and together, hot and cold, the light and the dark.

I am free.

I am the dance.

Here I Love Him (2008)

Morning awakens and shaken within,
Shadows of dreams all come rumbling in.

Under the windows a grey light comes crawling.
Inside the warmth of my bedclothes I’m sprawling.

Into myself, I draw into a curl,
Letting my guarded desires unfurl.

Stop playing tricks on my joys and my sorrows.
Stop letting go of past days and tomorrows.

‘Scape into fantasy, run into light,
Put down excuses and throw away fright.

Stop with the calculus, drop-kick all reason.
Shower myself with the promise of seasons.

In this sweet place where I know no one knows,
No one can see what my face surely shows;

In this sweet time of unmasked devastation,
Time-polished fears cry the need for salvation;

In this sweet moment when no one can tell
My heart’s a thirsty and cavernous well;

Here I’m allowed to be heedlessly happy
Here I’m allowed to be chronically sappy

Here no one tells me to put down the phone.
Here no one tells me I’m better alone.

Here I’m allowed to give over to hoping,
Easiest done between sleeping and doping.

Here there’s no question, no games and no sin.
Here he just loves me, and here I love him.

Strength (2005)

The moment when my self- effacing peaked,
My ragged, wretched soul near fossilized,
Of resignation through I must have reaked,
For gifts of strength bled forth from his frail eyes.

So sure was I of what he was to say,
I played semantic games with pride and mirth.
But better things he wished for me today
Than will I understand 'til my child's birth.

Prophetic he was not, nor absolute,
And I resisted, lashed out violently.
Tempered, like a hand that holds trump suit,
Benevolence and calmness marked his plea.

The moment when I knew his words would fail,
The strength in all of us he did exhale.

One Small Person (2008)

Do I ever catch you mind?
Do I ever hold your thoughts?
Do I ever tie your consciousness in never ending knots?

Do I ever make you smile?
Do I wake your sleeping heart?
Could I bring you quiet respite when your world is blown apart?

Can you see the world around me?
Do you see how much I ache?
Can you show me what is real and what is true and what is fake?

I am just this one small person.
It is all that I can be.
And all this one small person wants is you to be with me.

Untitled (2008)

Not the high of first encounter, with the magnitude of stars;
Not the giants in the sky adorning Jupiter and Mars;

Not the effortful surrender of anticipated dance,
As the charging in my veins gives way to readiness and chance;

Not the galloping beneath me, the bright rhythm in my bones;
Not the flying over water or the scramble over stones;

Not the fleetingness of victory, or linger of defeat;
Not the reins soft in my fingers, or the stirrups on my feet;

Not the bittersweet returning to a place that knows me well,
With the glory shone from heaven and uncertainty from hell;

Not the blind and foolish passion, not the sacrifice of youth;
Only in the depth of your sweet face did I discover truth.

Jealousy (2007)

The greenness in your eyes that wasn’t mine;
Your honest laughter, that was not for me;
My never-uttered promise you’d decline;
Your sweet skin’s curves and marks I’ll never see;

These tokens were not tokens, they were gifts,
And though you found me wanting of their worth,
Yet something through the heaviness still lifts
My head, my heart, my chin. For after birth

There are no promises. No one can say
“Yes, this is my forever” and be sure.
For all that we are promised is today.
Your gaze, your sound, your touch is not so pure

As what may yet come to me, so I wait.
My jealousy's a mix of love and hate.

Unexpected, unexplained (2006)

Like rifle hilts bent sideways overhead the trees grew thick;
The greenness and the redness and my heartbeat coming quick.

The way broke clear, the path awoke, and standing in its wake,
A nymph of premonitions there into my eyes bespake.

Her lids were thickly painted like the secrets of a fox.
Enchantress devastating me with hypnotizing locks.

They flashed and swam and changed their tone forgetting they were hair
And what would happen in that glade would only happen there.

She tempted me, and I did her, and both of us inclined.
I felt her body steam within and left myself behind.

My skin pretended it was stuck to her, I do confess,
For never did it wish to part from her and her caress.

Then overhead the trees grew close and ushered by their plea
I left my nymph, but still I’m followed by her memory.

First post

I've succumbed to being a blogger. The narcissist in me believes people actually care what I have to say, and Facebook just isn't doing it for me anymore. The first posts are going to be love poems and letters, some many years old. I may branch out into art/fashion articles, but for now I'll stick to being a hopeless romantic.

I hope you enjoy. All comments and critiques are welcome. I like pain, so if you hate something, bring it.

-Rohan