Lines of Angel Matter

And do you pretend patience,

And caution, my heart,

When we badly trained ninjas

Steal kisses in the dark?

And do we not seek then

To be now found out?;

The psychoanalytic mind

Sees danger and doubt.

It employs semicolons

To move all about

What hides but here hums,

Hopes with silent shouts.

But you asked for my treasure,

The chest that I claim

Grows waiting for you

When spoken by name.

So listen awhile,

For I could not stop singing

This song that moves in me

And waters beginnings.

In part it's projection

Of my top ideal,

Of love and of honor,

Of soul forged with steel.

And partly it's you,

And it's us these past months,

And partly it's dreaming

Of my future wants.

But always it's words

That come from what's true.

And always it's I.

Please take just what speaks to you:

You re-turn my mind

That's led by my heart,

That I keep on losing

In faces and work.

The words you push out

Of your boundless depths

Provoke a temptation

To match you at best,

To play and to top,

To impress and stretch,

To grow myself up,

As I feel in my chest.

You are the one vision

Of my better self,

Of whom I do know

I should have let out

Years before now,

And now and ahead.

At each tiny step

I'll lift up my head.

You come in sensation

And pictures like these,

And it's too late to save us

With red fallen leaves.

But I have yet lines

Carved into dried sand

That deeply run through

All I understand.

All oceans and forces

Of nature or me

Have not yet disturbed

This sanctuary.

For these million grains

That joined in this pattern,

This single, still stroke

Pre-biblically fashioned,

Were introduced long

Before I could choose,

And since then have settled

By conscious avenue.

And this is my line,

In words spoken now.

This here is Mine;

My Treasure.  My Vow:

In the small years

So far offered me,

To take and to make,

To learn to be free,

I've chosen few things,

Some philosophy,

A scripture that's mine,

A me Morality.

And in that sacred text

(That I write constantly)

I still reaffirm a kind of bravery:

The greatest achievement,

The greatest gift,

The greatest honor

That could fall from my lips,

Could come from my hands,

Could flow from my stream,

Could shine from my stars,

Could hold soothingly,

Is for my love

(The study of me)

To protect his stillness,

The moments of need,

The moments of furrows

And frowns and stalled tears,

Protect his solitude

From far and from near.

My greatest love,

To offer myself,

Is to seek to be brave

For somebody else.

But to seek too to choose

Who owns that grand role,

To seek to be worthy,

To have and to hold,

To give what I would want

Given to me

By we, all alone

Interdependently.

So, bold, handsome human,

So, spiraling whirl,

So, earth-toned eyes

That change with the world,

Keep on keeping on,

Throw language this way,

However you speak it,

However you say

Yourself to the stars

And universal Time,

Whatever you need

Just ask it in rhyme,

Or prose or in essays

That really are flowers,

Where every printed stroke

Could fill you for hours.

Ask it of me,

This solitary child.

She'll stand on her own

As she answers in style,

And offer this treasure,

Her chest that you stir.

Though in foreign tongues,

These jewels will whisper.

And though we be two,

The miracle lies

In translated language

From two distinct lives,

And from the two worlds

A mirror appears

Of light and of darkness

Of laughs and of tears.

This glass in between,

A transparent reflection

Of more than the two,

A discovered spectrum,

A working creation,

Movement ever towards

This shared two-way mirror

And visions of lords.

But I am not done;

This cannot end here.

I began with a title

Of angels and fear,

With a translation

Doubly obscure,

Because I see best

When truth's within words:

If this is my poem,

Best picture of Me,

Then I am a fraud

And undeserving.

And if you loved me,

You'd slap me across

The lines that I hold

Dear to my heart.

These lines I've betrayed,

The grains splayed apart

By silly young cowardice

That gets what it wants.

Too weak to say no,

Too scared to be alone,

When hypocrites cry strength

Knees bend to the bone.

You'd hold my head down,

If you loved me,

My hands buried in

Newfound mortality.

Now dirt twice again,

I'd see what I've shattered, 

I'd name what I've lost,

My angel, my matter.

If I held one

So sacred as to

Dare to work toward

Oceans like you,

Like me, I'd dive

Across the chosen

Matter, through the

Damp horizon.

Fog and seaweed

Wrapped around

Would caress bloodlines

Exact, compound.

And in angelic

Hosts of pain

I am reborn

Alone again.