Pieces

There are pieces of me all over the world.
All over the country in different places
with different people. The different people
hold these pieces. Some have cherished them,
some have thrown them away. Some don't
know what to do with them, some take them
out and hold them for a little while and put
them away. Some pieces are large, some pieces
are quite small. Some pieces are incredibly
tiny, and it seems at times that pieces of my
heart, my body, my mind, my soul add up
to being more than that which is me, that which
still breathes, and talks.

That makes new friends and leaves more
pieces and doesn't try to catch them as they
fall, but lets them fall like leaves or pine cones
or lets them fly like seed pods and hope that they
land some place safely. And of the me that I am,
and of these pieces which I can no longer claim
in three cites now, I am present. In so many lives
they wonder where I am, where I've gone, why it
seems so appropriate only to see me in passing,
to say hi or just pass on by. As if I still lived there,
as if I were always there among them, my friends,
and what a joy when someone on some day is
carrying a piece of me and they embrace me
and they try to find where exactly the piece they
have came from, and put it back where it belongs
so I can feel it again before letting them take it
back to go on their merry way with yet another
little piece that's all theirs, so that now they may
have two.

And when I come home I am alone again, my
remaining pieces safe, and I can't count how many
there are, and I can't count how many have been
lost, broken, stolen, or given away. But I can
count these people who I call my friends and lovers,
who I still love who are spread out in so many places
who must feel some change int he air pressure
when I come back, who perhaps reach out to touch
me and hope that i have not left yet again.

I am not selfish with myself, and I give my pieces away
freely, but how nice it would be I wonder to have all
of these pieces in one place, not all mine but that belong
to someone else who can count them all, who knows where
all of them belong. Someone, who keeps them all
together, big and small in a cupboard like a glass menagerie
of fragments that all fit together just right, and some how
add up to make another me, a better me, a sweeter me.
And how nice if I could hold their pieces, some one who's
been there the whole time, who knows that their pieces
are safe with me.

And some times, when we come together,
all our places where our missing parts belong fit together
just right, or all of my people in all of my places come to
see me all at one time and put me back together piece by
piece just to see what I would look like.

But you live the life that there is to be lived.
You let more pieces fall away, and perhaps if you think
of it, you can take a picture, or write your name on
a wall that says "I was here once, and a piece of me will
never leave."

The Waiting Game

You've been playing the waiting
game for a very long time. You've lost
track of the hours, the days, the months
and the years that you've been alone,
on your own. Be it a small apartment,
or a rather large house. You see the
happy couples, you see the unhappy
couples, but you see two people
together doing their best to preserve
whatever it is that they refer to as 'love'
and you are so envious of that word
which they say to each other when
no one is listening.

You've developed a habit of occupying the
time you would have spent with another.
You've taken up hobbies,
You've started a career.
You've taken up jogging perhaps,
and weight training maybe, if age permits.

You've taken up painting landscapes on sunday,
or fixing old model trains- and then a song comes
on, and it stops you in your tracks.
You look around-
you and see how empty your house is, the tiny
amount of space taken up by the dog or the cat,
the one place at the table, and the song's sweetness
hits you in the gut, or in the chest, and you feel that
sweetness rise up to your throat as if it were making you sick
and you hasten to change the station, or get away from
the sound, or listen, and let it run its course, let
the sweetness sicken you, and bawl silently
spewing tears. You whine the way a stalled engine
tries to start, and then, you return to you're activities
or go off to work.

Perhaps you think of the lost
opportunities, perhaps you
try to call a friend and they're
busy, perhaps you wonder
how much time you've got
left to play the waiting game,
to play the wanting card, you
think, "lonely hearts are better
than broken ones" and then you
remember.

Perhaps it was
only once that you knew it, that
you knew the wait was over,
and suddenly, without warning,
you have the most beautiful
face, you have the most soulful
and seductive voice,
and you move light as air as if
everything around you
was set to the beating of your heart,
and you say 'a lonely heart
is better than a broken one,' and
a winner never quits
simply because they've been left
standing at the altar.

You remember a second, an
instant when the clouds parted
and you were allowed to walk
outside; and the sweet was
sweet and the bitter was bitter
and there was no in between,
and you return to your hobby,
or to your dog and you remember
that the loneliness will be forgotten
again, as it had been in the
past, and you remember the time
you spent waiting before, and
you think not of the loneliness,
but of the accomplishments made in
solitude. Even if they were modest,
or hard for other people to
believe. And you remember those
days when being alone meant
listening to the leaves fall from the
trees, seeing your reflection in
a pane of window-glass
in front of a department
store, and it pleased you
to see that figure of yourself, solitary
and free standing approach a
door where some one else was
waiting to let you come inside.

To One so Familiar

The sun is warmer on far away shores
The summer has gone, and with it the days
Where free and happy, I longed to implore
why thoughts of love had long passed me away

But something has waked, which long was at rest
Which I lost long ago, mourned for too long
a heart beating 'neath a lover's kind breast
now turned to stone, I no longer belong

Now when I dream, as I had long ago
No longer alone with fear do I dwell
Where once all was dark, there now is a glow
from a light I once sought, but know not well.

Her name, and her face, could she be the one?
For whom my heart fights, but knows not if it's won?

Was it all a Dream?

Was it all a dream?
The air, the hills,
The cats and shadows,
The sun rising over the
stones-

The mountain, that same
proud and saintly
mountain, kissing the clouds-

The City on the Hill?
The Quiet City, the large castle,
the small castle,
The Basilica, the pigeons, the bells?

The paved hill and the seminary,
the crook in the road,
the happy faces, the simple life
the humble repast?

The ancient sleeping city
The train, the coolness of the
window pane on my temple.

The echo of strange foreign
voices, the certainty of my
only three phrases,

the book, made dog-eared by my
sweating palm.

The panic, the confusion
The acceptance, the peace
The pretty girls, the ugly men.

Was it all just a dream?
Was I there?
Did I see it?

Books, diagrams,
pictures.

A house with every sound.
A name for every face.

When did I see my old,
and new best friends?

Were they there?
Was I with them?
Did I fall asleep?

Or am I dreaming still?