It's not so much the giving. That's living, the burst from your heart that connects to the hive mind; the leaving all the doubt behind.

It's the after. Exhausted and shattered and sweating out all your exposed emotions, and nothing. No word, no glance, as you stuff all your **** back into the red suitcase that contains your world and no one else's.  

There's no expectation for commendation, but you wish someone would attempt some relation as you mop up the ****** mess that once was beautiful, but is now splendorless.

Music is useless for making a statement. The whole world is trying to make you complacent and you'd smash your guitar, but your money's all spent so you cry in your bed wishing you were a poet (or a surgeon or a botanist or at least brilliant) instead.

This night has fallen so must I into the sleep so dear only the the singing birds slinging their melodies hear the last dying crickets in the gray glow of the first hint of the sunrisen day.

Catlike and furtive, creeping toward the last of this or that odd prey, these words unwind till the thread runs out.

All heart within but stark without.

The monsters don't hide in the closet, or under the bed, or in your head all full of juice. They roost. It's not their fault, following through with some innate longing they're called to.

It's a simple, impish existence, these monsters, who might prefer to be doctors or lawyers or sound designers for Alice Cooper or Rob Zombie or Blondie; alas they burrow and nest inside my ***** laundry.

A wise person might have said, "Take care, kiddo, and guard your head against the evil that so easily nestles there." I reflect on this through the cloudy density of my beer an wonder, could he have been right? Might I fallen intrigued, ensnared, by the casual taunt of an apple's dare?  

We climb the beanstalk for the giant only; the goose is second hand. The giant's defeat is the glory. It doesn't matter what the stakes contain, live or die, princess or mother or cow or land, as long as a marching band greets us at the end of the ride.

The monsters don't hide in the closet, or under the bed or in you head full of juice. They roost, and they can't help us themselves in a world full of books gathering dust on shelves overlooked where their hardcovers guard against  stray shells unloosed.

It's
strange
to
me
to
write
one
word
at
a
time
on
each
line.

Who
speaks
like
that?

Poetry,
I
think,
should
be
a
conversation
between
you
and
your
soul.

Your
soul
may
not
understand
unnecessary
intermittent
pauses.

Well.

I
don't
understand
unnecessary
intermittent
pauses.

Case
in
point:

Writing
this
was
difficult.

(It's
probably
a
literary
weakness.)

I
imagine
that
a
soul
would
speak
in
at
least
partial
sentences
without
such
halting
spasmodic
twitches.

Unless it doesn't. I am not your soul. If you find wholeness and depth and truth by writing this way, then carry on.

*******.

(There's the rhyme. There's always a place and a time for convention.)

Irrevegant scapegoat with uncooked beliefs sheaths his knife when he finds the doubts he worked so hard to bury.

The words don't carry that weight anymore, he mused, and laughing aloud at the faces of the brandy-plied crowd he turns on his heel and vanishes into the rain.

We watch this, silent as only a stunned mass can be when faced with eternity, then turn to each other to mutter low-murmered threats about the night and the sight we'd just beheld.

A special time for all, as we sink back into hell.

An Old Soul, you said. What does that mean? My Soul's not old, it's gently used, like that song that was a hit a couple years ago, you heard it on the radio and you can't remember the title but you can hum the tune. That's me, a hummable tune with no title cruising the electric air for a million miles right to your ears.

An Old Soul, you said, like it was a compliment that my Soul has yet to succumb to the withering humbleness of that great equalizer, The End.

How do you know? You don't know my Soul. Souls have shapes, and shapes don't get old. Mine's shaped like a ******, kind of like an open flower, like that last hour before bedtime when you sneak that sliced orange even though your dad told you NO, but your mama gently scolds, "just one more" as she (soft as the comforter she tucks in around you all
singing that song that drips like molasses in the gathering dew), and she winks at Dad, who's pretending to be mad like the rain that's pouring and flooding the gutter.

It's a kid who stutters who has mastered Bach and has moved straight onto Brahms, while across town it's beer and people singing along.

No one these days to wants to sing to Brahms, but that's okay; she loses herself alone in its sparkling and prefers it that way.

My Soul (well not just mine, it's in heart of the hum, the mirror firmly reflecting our collective soap ****), is a kind of Boo Radley in his broke down joint and his sad soap dolls in the tree, in the knoll. Shut in an old house uncertain of who he was or where he belonged or what he might even one day become, he built a world for those kids the only way he knew how.

Drowning in a lonesome sea, where the only moments of freedom behind the pecan tree were a broken stopwatch full of frozen moments and some hand whittled soap and some gum. Boo Radley, no he was the shut-in son. Better than that inside-out drainage ditch who still walks the streets with the air of a rabid ***** who was shot at and missed by The One and Only One-Shot Finch. In the dusty 30s, in that vast, hot expanse, Poor Old Tom never even had a chance.

Now Scout, that kid is my kind of gal, all smart within and smart without. THOSE are the ones with the curious minds who stay young forever and laugh at time, who find gum in a tree and call it sublime, who worry about freedom and all it implies. Yeah, man. Jean Louise. And she'll never get old.

So don't you dare talk about what you don't know.

I've spent my short life knowing that god isn't the goal.

It's the dead dog in the street, and the man walking free, and a dying old lady who can't help but be mean. It's the girl with her ears and the kid with his orange and his mom singing softly as she closes the door.

It's the song that you heard, you don't know the words, but you sing in the car to the telephone poles.

There are so many roads to the idea of "whole." I have so far to travel, such long way to go, there isn't any certain number for the rest of my days. My Soul is eternity.

I'm still making my way.

It's floating and falling at once. There's no footing, but still a softness that eases the passing hours. If tomorrow is a problem, it's tomorrow's problem as I sink into a perfect nowness that extends beyond the reach of time.

It's dark out here under the cloudy half moon. We sit comfortably in silence serenaded by the popping drops of leftover rainwater careening to their next place of rest. They'll surely be gobbled up by the cracks or the ******* air or the perfect flow of water right down the drain and out to the rivers and the lakes of the many.

Alone with the smokey dark, so unlike the music of the forest songs in the old home that now belongs to some other child who might be wondering at my initials in the long dried concrete. What ever became of the small strange hands that cast their delicacy immortal on that casual day one summer, one year, so far away from the tiny reach of these brand new fingers?

Don't stand on the big fan, child, or try to fly by lifting your long skirt just enough to feel the hot billows underneath. Wait (oh the waiting!) for the hand of god to fill your body with balloons, and only then will you rise straight up and up and up till the farthest star is a blaring blot behind you on the white black sky.

Sit  there with the moon then and ask your secret questions. The answers in your swollen heart will sing like the cicadas clinging the trees and the jungle air will float you home on a cloud in the breeze.