Love in Mexico

We had dreams and reasons
No concept of failure
No idea of success
Or that in the end
More than anything else
Life meant compromise
And waiting

I hugged your wet skin
My bare cheek and soaked hair
Clinging to your back

Speeding in an old rented scooter
Riding until the storm was behind us
I wore colors like you wore nothing
And we danced through the sand
Wasn't it so cliche
How it felt to be in love
In Mexico

I posed for bikini photos
Pale from Mississippi winter
But proud and feeling beautiful
Your wife
She looks just like a model
The cleaning lady said to us
I blushed and blamed the photographer
But I remember
Believing her anyway

When did I change
Become disenchanted
Grow up
And lose me
And why can I forgive everyone
For everything
Except me
For anything

When I stand before you
I see myself
No-I see who I want to see
At that very moment

When my world is sky blue
And my heart is lighter than helium
I see me beautiful
With a sunbeam smile
And eyes like the cloudless sky
Yes, I can love me, too

When my world is a rainstorm
Torrid floods smear my face
Distort and appall me
I am a pallid ghost
The clouds cast ashen shadows
Across my empty expression

What is it that others see
I often wonder
If I change like the capricious heavens
Making and remaking myself
Until I'm satisfied with me

In Search of Life

In the Great Salt Lake
They say
There is little life
Tiny microorganisms
Lacing the bottom depths
In an otherwise desolate hole

I know that team of scientists
Determined to find something
Where there is apparently nothing
Wading through years of possibilities
To find dead end staircases
Analyzing meaningless data
And coming to false-hope filled conclusions
Finding real life is so very difficult

Desert Life

My memories of you
Are grains of sand
In this dust storm
There's no rain
In my arid heart
To wash you away

I want them to know
Then I'll disappear
In the heat and pressure
Of right and wrong
Good and bad
And there will only be
What is and isn't
What happened
What didn't

You will return
Perfect honor
Stranger
Never again who I
Never quite knew
To begin with

Years will teach me
What I need to learn
And years will teach you
That in this oasis
These vines we climb
Are of the same root
And everything I write
Is both about you
And not

Overdue

I'm done with the blogging part of this blog. No blogs. Just poetry. Enjoy.

Oda a la Montaña

My mountain-
Still in a grey cloak,
You dissolve into atmosphere.
Clouds of rain and light
Guard your stairway,
Hug your time softened peaks.
You are for me
And me alone.

I want to caress your crevasses
With my eager footsteps.
I want to know you like the sun
Knows the horizon.
I want to feel your gravity
Make me microscopic.

And if there is a way
That you could love me,
That you could understand me,
That you could be my mountain,
and I could be your monument.
I would love you,
Wear you down
Until you were
Just a grassy hill.