Did you, ever, really…
Warm.
Cold.
Senses.
I must grant the expression of all I have come to be. Why?
Who will hear? Who will care?
Burn. Patience. Believe. faith. Love. Care. Transcend.
My name?? Does anyone ask? Or Care? Or wonder?
Sleep. Call. Know. Believe. Long. Ache.
Tender… For a moment. I may have known.
God. Heal. Please. Please. Please….
If not….
Suffer. Pretend. Marry. Children. Whatever.
Die.
Truth.
Fade…
Hope.
After all is said…
Imagine, for just a moment, that you could have whatever in life that you really, really want. Imagine, if at all possible, that there are no limitations to having what you want in the deepest, most protected spaces of your heart and that it’s now yours. Here and now. Imagine that you could have and embrace, call your own, to keep close and yet still release and realize all that you have ever wanted. Do you see it? Do you feel it? Can you embrace that vision? Can you know, without a doubt that it belongs to you in all the ways that you have dreamed and imagined it to be?
For me, it has been a very simple want… a dream, if you will.
See me. Know me. Love me. Take all of me in your arms and embrace me for all I am and what I have become. Set aside, if only for a moment, that which you have called your want and need, to see me as I am. do not look away from my faults but rather, if only for that moment, open your arms and welcome me to a haven that has been dreamed of.
In my dreams, I can hear your laughter. In my dreams, I can see your smile. In my dreams, I know that you will weep along with me, caress me with a tenderness never known, with a love only imagined. In my dreams, you will see how truly frail I am. In my dreams, you know that I have spent a lifetime learning to keep my pains and tears to myself. In my dreams, you are the one that will risk everything you are, to know all that I am.
After all is said and done, I only want to love. After all is said and done, I only want to love, you.
After all is said, if there is no love, there is no life.
After all is said, if you love me…
After all is said, I will give my all.
To Whom Do I Apologize…
Over the years, in all of my experiences, I have met and believed that I loved, many. In my stumbles, in my errors, in my attempts to understand and embrace who I am as a person, I have injured others.
Perhaps an apology at this stage of our lives will mean nothing, or if it does, it may not bear the burden required to release and free either of us from the damage done. So if I were to ask, to inquire in the gentlest of fashions of those that I believe I have injured, the question would still remain; how do I apologize.
Words seem so terribly insufficient and whatever tribute I could pay in an attempt to repair the relationship would seem far less worthy of the intention. Do I merely say, “I’m sorry”? And even if “sorry” were to somehow be accepted, there is still the challenge, at least for me, of finding a truthful way of defining the damage done.
So I believe that it would resemble this…
“I am so sorry that I didn’t know how to love you. I am so very sorry that I was so lost in my own pain that I was unaware of your needs. In every thing that I wanted to be, I was unable to embrace your beauty because I couldn’t see it. Lord knows that I wanted to, that I really did all I was capable of doing to look beyond myself, to reach further than my fear said that I could. But I failed.
I have no defense. I offer no excuse. And in the years that have passed, I wonder if I have even the right to ask for your forgiveness. If the very idea of repentance is an affront to the very person that you are, that you have grown to be.
To whom do I apologize? To you? Or to God…
I am sorry… Will you forgive me?”
I do, love….
Just Dreaming….
There are days when I wake, when I rise from the bed and think to myself that “today will be the day”. The frightening part of it all is that I’m not always sure what that’s supposed to be. Inside, where I thought I grew from, where I believed the inspiration for my creativity is born, I am sometimes left with the feeling that I am empty. That perhaps I have become so emotionally wounded and bankrupt that that very same creative reservoir may have finally evaporated and left me alone. All by myself.
This is the month, July, that I am reminded of the death of my son. As much as I want to proclaim that I am healed from that awareness of pain, from the very depths of that emotional torture, I at times, question just how far I have truly grown.
The fact is, I miss what could have been. I miss the potential. I miss his little hands in mine. I miss what should have been. In my heart, I know that there is nothing that I could have done. In my heart, I know that his passing was something beyond my control. In my heart, I know that he’s with God. In my heart, I ache. In my heart, I still shed tears for all of the moments that I squandered. In my heart, in the truth of who I am, I cannot talk to anyone about the very real longing to have those missed moments back.
I know that I can’t go back. Yes, I know this. I do. I really do. But tonight, at this moment, as I struggle with the idea that crying is okay, I am still left with the longing for a son that I can never apologize to for not being the best father that I could have been. Whatever anger I hold, it’s for and to a man that was caught up in his own path. A path that was inconvenienced by the needs of a little person that relied on his father.
So as I write this, with that dry, achy throat that signifies once again my ability to withhold my tears, that reminds me of just how “tough” I am, I am yet reminded of the frailty of life.
Embrace those whom you love. Take them in your arms. Smile today. Take their hand and just touch them. Just feel their gentleness. Relish the love that they so easily give you. Revel in their innocence. Look upon them today, right now and see the childhood as the blessing that it is. God, wrap them in your arms for just thirty seconds and feel them. Let them feel you. Whether mother or father, celebrate the love of life that they possess and share it. Share it with all you are.
Today, if only for a moment, cling to the reality of the love that is their every breath….
Love them today, with everything that gives you life.
Today, we have them and we’re not, just dreaming….
Without Thinking…
I looked back over my life to the moments when I thought that I was in love, to the time when I even spoke the words. I search my own heart today and reflect on the person that I was then. I realize, perhaps painfully so, that looking back on the “then” me to the “now” me, that I was truly an unpleasant person. I would use much stronger language to describe myself then, but this is a “PG” post.
I was thinking about all of this and it dawned on me that if I tried to follow the 12 step idea of making ammends, I could conceiveably spend the rest of my natural life (given 120 years) trying to find them, explain to them, apologize to them for the crap that I did then. I will however, say this, I was an ass. I just wasn’t able to see it or hear it from another.
So when one desires a woman with a wonderful heart, a gentle spirit and love to last for all eternity but is too screwed up to know how to recognize her when she is there, what is one to do? Be there no games, just a direct and honest spirit. something that I lacked, something that I didn’t even know was a part of the human experience means that I missed out on the beauty of so many people.
Patience. Kindness. Tenderness. These are the things that she offered. Those are things that I missed in her. The beauty in her that I couldn’t see. But had I known then, what I know now, I would have said that, “I will spend the rest of my life thanking you in deed and word for the love that you have given me….”
And yet, is it so hard to be honest in ones intentions, to give oneself without hidden agendas? If it is love that you seek, then let it be, or so they, those that preached the grander purposes of humnaity would have me believe. And yet if not, then thats okay too; just not for me to even know how to imagine the perfection of failure in love should be enough….
The question of the meaning of life is answered silently in a smile, in the sound of my name across those ips, in the gentleness of an unspoken touch; and in all things, I know, without a doubt, that I am loved without expectation or condition.
It is this that I yearn to know. In all ways.
Each day of my life.
Can breath truly be stolen in a single kiss? Within a gentle touch, can volumes of emotions be expressed? What is the depth of a man whos heart beckons to only one that may hear my plea….
If, in visions and dreams she dances with angels, why then can I not touch? If, as I slumber her voice calls, what then of those moments when I search?
“That which God has joined together..”
How has God dressed you this venture? From glorious moment came your birth? Alas, has your heart called? Yes, a thousand time yes. I dont want to continue, with hands empty, with armor abreast, without you another moment. But I will wait. I will wait through eternity and through and yet another still, if that promise, your kiss, shall await me thus. Find me, beloved, find me.
Let me once again kneel before and say, as only you will know; that I alone, have known no other. For this heart has, and is, yours.
Thank you for loving me.
I am Blessed. And I await your presence…
Moments to live by….
How does one explain…
You know, I have been called a fool before. Not once or twice, but many times. And sometimes it was well deserved. Other times, I had to step back and evaluate as to whether or not I really agreed with the assessment. In this particular case, fool or not, I want to set the record straight, so to speak.
This particular conversation had to do with my “ideas” about love and world around me. He wondered how I could be stuck with some antiquated notions about love, the role of marriage and the nature, the true nature, that I believed is love. My friend questioned my patriotism, my sanity and my right to “think such odd” things. I could well appreciate some of his confusion regarding my ideas about love (which is fodder for another time), but my patriotism? Here then, are my answers (I shall attend to the specific question later in this post).
I am well aware of the war/conflict/skirmish/misunderstanding/police-action taking place in IRAQ. Woefully aware in fact. But rather than argue about policy, to which I have no say or control, I choose to focus on the men and women, whether they wear the uniform or not, that are deeply affected by said actions in IRAQ, namely; mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and lovers that remain here, left behind if you will. You see, I have CHOSEN to focus on the love that exists. No, my head is not in the sand, nor do I want to engage in a political debate as to whether the war is right or wrong, instead, I have CHOSEN to focus on the beauty.
There is beauty in the letters written home. There is beauty in the sight of a mother raising the flag on Sunday morning because this is a way that she can support her son. There is beauty in every angry father over the loss of his daughter in a war that he never wanted her in – because the beauty resides in his love for his child. Our love transcends politics. Our love rises above votes or rhetoric. There is beauty in every tear that a wife sheds for her fallen husband. In every table setting for a wife that will not return.
There is beauty because there is love.
Yes, I am aware of the pain that comes in the loss of our loved ones. Yes, I know about the pain of the fear at a possible loss, the not knowing if or when it will happen. Yes, I know all too well the depths of hell that one can descend to at the loss of a child. And oh how I know the darkness that can swallow one when one is consumed by hatred and anger over matters that we seemed to have had no control over. So, my sanity is called into question because I say that there is beauty in the loss of a child? But that is not what I said…
There is beauty because there is love.
What we do with that love is an entirely different matter.
(The matter that caused all of this debate was over something rather simple. My “friend” could not understand how I could be so understanding of a God that would allow my infant son to die or allow wars to continue…)
There is beauty because there is love….
And we love because it’s beautiful…
Being loved…
“I will spend the rest of my life thanking you in deed and word, if you will have me….” C. Murphy, Jr., 1995
Looking back at those moments when I really thought myself to be in love. I know now that being “in love” is less about “being” and all about giving.
Just some random thoughts…