Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Saturday, 7:00 p.m.,
December 15th, 2007,
What's happening,
to us!
Do you still want,
to talk to me?
I love you!
My love!
Sunday, 1:30 a.m.,
December 16th, 2007,
I finally plugged the phone back in,
How did that go?
On Wednesday,
December 12th,
You phoned me,
All excited,
Bursting to share the drama,
Unfolding there,
With Jessie and Jason.
You told me,
Jessie had left Armidale,
Going back to Queensland,
To live,
With brother James.
I said,
"She'll get over it",
You took great offense,
Me saying that,
Quitting our conversation,
Telling me,
"I thought I knew you!"
"What you said offends me!"
You hung up.
You called me back,
An hour later,
To tell me,
"I need time to think",
"What you said",
"Really offended me!"
"She'll get over it!"
"That's like me saying",
"About your cabin burning down",
"Get over it!"
You sounded so malicious,
Our scarred and wounded hearts,
Bleeding to death while love laughs in our faces,
Shock shook me,
Surprised by your response,
I was hurt,
Your malicious tone,
Your statement,
You said,
"I need a time out."
And you hung up.
I cringed,
Felt rather sick inside,
Like I'd just been punched,
Kicked hard in the gut.
I unplugged the damn phone.
Turned off the answering machine.
Now I find myself here.
Where?
Sunday,
1:40 a.m.,
December 16th,
2007,
We haven't spoken.
You've emailed me a dozen times.
I haven't read any of your messages.
Fearing more venom from you.
I fear hurtful words,
From those I love.
And I love you,
With all my heart.
I emailed you,
Three times,
Since Wednesday,
Once each day.
I told you I was sorry.
I told you that I love you.
I told you I don't blame you for anything.
I doubt now,
Whether you will ever phone me again,
I doubt everything somehow,
I don't know,
If we will ever talk to one another again,
Hold each other again,
Kiss or make love again.
You're probably thinking,
Hateful things of me now.
I can hear you,
From one hemisphere to the next,
Cursing me,
All the way,
Across a vast ocean,
Separating us.
I love you.
I hoped we could be together,
But it seems bigger than me now,
The Armada has been scuttled and burned.
The Empire has been crushed and disbanded.
All love has been sucked into a black hole.
Without your loving words,
It seems impossible somehow.
I'm sorry we aren't together.
Those deep vast oceans.
All that space and time.
I can't throw my love far enough,
Shout words loud enough,
For them to touch,
Or reach you again,
Where we would sit and talk.
I love you so very much.
I thought forever was with us on this walk,
Hand in hand with us in this forest of trees.
Love babels on cloudy days.
Love has its own ideas.
Love always,
No period please,
Love always,
- Joe.

Number 64 Number 64 Number 64

Sweet rising,
All these perfumed things,
Out of the generous earth,
Freely offered to the lustful wind,
Lasting pieces of you and me,
Carved from our inner beings,
Plucked ripe during kisses,
Fragments stripped from you,
Segments sliced from me,
Thin slips God recognizes and sees,
Vivacious sparkles captured in a creative fire,
Flames licking at love's sweet sky,
Embers tracing borders and songlines,
Hither thither to a nether world,
Sweet rising,
Out of perilous loneliness and danger,
Into tropical bliss and equatorial happiness,
Enabling antarctic words in ecstatic sentences,
Protesting icebergs calved by subterranean mischief,
Blatantly transforming taiga emotions into petrified forest,
Golden talons tattooing masks and totems on our eagle selves,
Black holes and pin pricks scarred by cuttlefish ink and sad dreams,
So many tentacled cuddles marred and scuttled leaving sucker marks,
All this scuttlebutt and fuddleduddle rising in the warm gulf stream,
Hungry sharks sick and going belly-up from the taste of tainted blood,
Blinded whales fainting and going deaf beneath the ocean flood,
Polluted flesh and random plastic gathering in other rebellions,
Congregations of faith flung to the lions from the gates of every big city,
Unceremoniously tanked and dumped on Neptune's failing altar,
Sweet rising,
Incense bewitching these magnetic moments,
Smoke and mirrors redirecting the moon and stars,
Crude oil blinding and choking us into ritual approbation,
Conjunct nations refracting astronomy and reflective astrology,
Meeting places and constellations in the Zen park,
Rivulets of light spring rain falling in the dark,
Baptizing every crack and righteous seam,
Fractured obtuse stages in a reckless ecology,
Columns of hot poker red and calendula yellow,
Smoke tangling with chiming crystal streams,
Sweet rising,
Tumbled into deep ocean currents,
Washed and polished on windswept beaches,
Salty sand rubbed into graven wounds,
Reminding . . . us . . . we . . . are . . .,
Naked astronauts starboard on our mother ship,
Witnessing the same sunstorms,
Breathing the same earth air,
Billions of beating hearts,
Sweet rising,
Pieces of amber offered to the vexing wind,
Quarks hauled onto a high dry bank,
Fragments of what was a moment ago,
Atoms of what we once were,
Rivers of elements and other dreams flooding by,
Contained by chemistry and physics,
Constrained by pick and shovel channels,
Prayers keeping tsunami and flood at bay,
Hymns and chants so hurricanes and firestorms are stayed,
Yet there are still asteroids and broken dams,
Earthquakes and volcanoes in every land,
Galaxies far beyond Andromeda,
Comets composing orchestral universal bliss,
Cosmogony reprising imagined heaven,
Vibrato in harmonic symphony,
Maestro's magic wand held high,
Such sweet rising.