Maybe I Need You
The winter I told you I think icicles are magic,
you stole an enormous icicle from a neighbors shingle
and gave it to me as a gift
I kept it in my freezer for seven months
until the day I hurt my foot
and needed something to reduce the swelling
Love isn’t always magic
sometimes it’s just melting
or it’s black and blue
where it hurts the most
Last night I saw your ghost
pedaling a bicycle with a basket
towards a moon as full as my heavy head
and I wanted nothing more than to be sitting in that basket
like ET with my glowing heart glowing right through my chest
and my glowing finger pointing in the direction of our home
Two years ago I said I never want to write our break up poem;
you built me a time capsule full of big league chew
and promised to never burst my bubble
I loved you from our first date at the batting cages
when I missed 23 balls in a row
and you looked at me
like I was a home run in the ninth inning of the world series
Now every time I hear the word, ‘love’, I think going, going…
The first week you were gone,
I kept seeing your hand wave goodbye
like a windshield wiper in a flooding car
and the last real moment I believed the hurricane would let me out alive
Yesterday I carved your name into the surface of an ice cube
then held it against my chest til it melted into my aching pores
Today I cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my door
and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar
I told them I left my sweet tooth in your belly button
Love isn’t always magic
but if I offered my life to the magician -
if I told her to cut me in half
so tonight I could come to you whole
and ask for you back
would you listen
for this dark alley love song;
for the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies?
I wrote you too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak
But I know now it doesn’t matter how well I say grace
if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat
So this is my wheat field;
you can have every acre, love
This is my garden song
This is my fist fight
with that bitter frost
Tonight I begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath -
the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as I sang, maybe I need you
off key
but in tune
Maybe I need you the way that big moon needs that open sea
Maybe I didn’t even know was here til I saw you holding me
Give me one room to come home to;
give me the palm of your hand
Every strand of my hair is a kite string
and I have been blue in the face with your sky -
crying a flood over Iowa so you mother can wake to Venice
Lover, I smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest
Now my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered Bible
It is the one verse you can trust,
so I’m putting all of my words in your collection plate
I am setting the table with bread and grace
My knees are bent
like the corner of a page
I am saving your place
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.
It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.
By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco,
1999 All rights reserved
“
| — | Source |
إهداء
لمن نَزَع وصايَة هشّة عَن عينِه و عَقله
وسالَ دمُه قُرباناً
للمُتعَبين الباقيينْ..المتآلفين مَع المَوت
الثائرينَ إقداماً
خُلّاق تاريخٍ جَديد…
يتنفّسُ الحرّية كـَـ سِوانا
This has made me cry :’)
Khader Adnan, hugging his two daughters after finally being freed from the Israeli prisons - having ended his hunger strike which is considered the longest in Palestinian history.
BEAUTIFUL <3 Now I don’t want a flower crown like that of Lana Del Rey, now I want an Arabic Calligraphy crown like this of Queen Rania <3
a Portuguese word that means a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist … a turning towards the past or towards the future.
