Tides

I am

A little older

Today.

And everything

Has changed.

The wrinkles in my knees,

Have become saints.

And an unending story

Is told through the treble

In my voice.

I painted the scenes

Of remarkable dreams

On my lap

And they became explosions

Of every strange place

I scurried to

As an escape.

The cave.

The end of every phase.

And through this habit

Of tranquil streets,

I take hold

Of my intentions,

Which none of them,

Bold,

Or tested,

Or frequented.

These memoirs

Are like gold.

Kept as an inheritance,

To be given to you

When I’m good and well and dead.

This same old scenario,

Of cloaked traps

Meant to detonate

With the simple trick

Of the wind,

A simple lick of it,

It is more like a sanctuary

To me,

Now that I am old.

Keep me.

As I am alone.

And no body is watching.

I took this one ticket home,

And set down in many

Destinations.

Most of sorrow,

Most of when my hands

Were crackled and tampered.

A gross time,

When the nickel

Was worth a quarter

And a story.

This will all mean

What it is to you

And ultimately melt you.

In front of me,

The white flowers

Shed their petals and

Settle On my aching skin,

And they give to me,

A new disease.

And two silken promises

Which permeate

To the crooked

Indentations we left in the bed.

And so I grow,

With a reverted language

Unbeknownst to me.

It bit me once,

In the hind legs,

As I raced to beat

The past.

Like a loose chain on a bicycle,

Snapping at

The tender part of your limbs.

We would ride down

Devils backbone,

And take over the tall,

Brown wheat grass

With our elbows,

Cut up,

Like the Spanish armada,

Their ships,

Dancing at the bottom

Of the hill.

Us little champions.

At dusk,

When the sun would crackle

Inches closer to the ground,

It was a tender victory for us.

The few times when we couldn’t

Beat the dark,

We took the beating ourselves.

And that’s the way it was.

We had hearts of stone.

And our fears didn’t curdle

With the tip of a rotten finger.

It is simply this:

That the losers are watching,

Waiting to sing their hallelujahs,

Looking at the love on our faces,

Which fill in their troubles,

But here we are dear.

Dancing and biting our lips,

Feeling the words

We brought to the only place

We ever let grow.

So, hallelujah

So it is

Upon the crescendo

Of our urgent souls

The light broke onto

The ocean bed

That wasn’t wide enough,

Or justly believable,

So, hallelujah

We turned our tides.