"Fall" - 8/28/16

I get the sense you're a very private person
I leave leaves on the ground that fall from fragile branches
Relics of what is or even omens of what's possible
You gather yours up quickly push them into paper bags
Surreptitiously they fall again and again in place, invisibly

Everyone presumes you keep your most precious secrets
In cupboards behind hoards of glistening antiques
So invaluable it would be madness to lock them up miserly
You can't possibly be showing us everything in this museum
Or is it an arboretum every time I catch a glimpse

Of your sideways smile as minimalistic as you appear to be
I hear a train whistling so loudly it's almost deafening a kettle
Boiling over so recklessly it shatters any temporary illusions
Regarding your subtlety a jacket you wear so proudly
Privacy protests prophesy I never knew how noisy trees could be

"August" - 8/13/16

wtf is going on? I haven't had this many friends tell me
they were depressed and contemplating suicide since college.
I thought the older we got the more secure we were supposed to feel?
I want to think this is mental illness rearing its ugly head
that statistically some of my friends are bound to go through it
but the fact that they are all LGBT artists and generally alienated
from family makes that unlikely. I was always unconditionally
loved, if not altogether accepted for the free spirited anomaly
I was - a battle which still continues in its way, every time I have to
explain my life's "mistakes" away - but always there has been
appreciation, understanding, attention, curiosity. I get the distinct
sense that the friends I'm witnessing suffering in a decade when
they should be more than thriving is no different than I might be
in their collective shoes, had I not been told I'd always have
a place to come home to and a cheering section for my wildest
ambitions even if overbearingly high-pressured at times.

wtf is going on? I haven't seen this many - count them three, in one
week - good friends tell me they were depressed contemplating
giving up hope completely since I was in my 20's. I thought the older
we got the less we were supposed to care what other people think?
I vacillate daily between utter insecurity and boundless confidence
but never am I for one second unaware of this precious gift - to love,
to live, to hope, to dream and I want to scream on behalf of sensitivity,
soulfulness, inevitable self-doubt when self has not be nurtured and
doubt hasn't been dissuaded it feels sometimes like there's nothing
I can do to comfort more than this few and seemingly ever increasing
number of beautiful empaths overlapping in so many ways with my
own path yet here I am, once again, pleading for other people's lives.

wtf is going on? I am a planner and I over-think nearly everything and
in some ways I suppose that tendency saves one from living so in the
moment that when the moment fails you miserably you can't see past
it. I always think "it could be me" and I know this with certainty: it has
only been music, recurrently, that has saved me. I wish with all my
might everyone had this Muse maybe then these emotions could
diffuse more easily and I wouldn't be sitting here wondering what I
could do, more concretely, to convince individuals I love
it gets better even though I know that it does.

"Passenger" - 8/06/16

From the atmosphere it may seem
That I'm all head and soul
While you're all hands and heart

The way you bend the world to
Your touch is the way I
Strategize too much for my
Own good from the atmosphere

It may seem that I'm all
Concrete crystalline while you're
All shimmering lakes shameless bare-feet

A subtle smile on your familiar face
Giving away only so much
While I open my book as easily
As dragonfly wings crush

So many secrets wiped clean
With an insider's silence
Quiet insight tempting
Flash's flamenco dances

I've never been the kind
To wait around knowingly I
Sift for sounds that
Resonate enough to halt me

In my tracks a train
Too fast to see by day
The misty out of focus way
I feel your heartbeat fast

Is what will whisper racing past

A subtle smile on your familiar face
Giving only so much away
While I open my eyes as eagerly
As the break of day