My Pedigree Hails From Mechanics

Thud thud kerthunk kerthunk
The sounds the old clunker of an engine -
the remains of my oil-rotted heart beating
so heavily in my chest as I hoist your words
from a piece of heavy machinery,
trying to dissect, to discern, to theorize and postulate
what exactly I did wrong.

Your heart is purring like the engine
in a well-maintained collector's
fifty-nine Cadillac.
The noise and rumble is entirely different
than the fading beats of the Model-T
that takes up long-empty garage space
in my chest cavity.

I imagine God is much like a small boy
with a set of toy cars to play with
and brightly painted inter-locking track
with which he plays out our lives
as nothing more than a game,
setting us up on a miniature collision course,
our two cars humming for disaster at every turn
and squealing and giggling with delight as we slam together
at the most awkwardly constructed loop on the course.

And on the worst of days,
I feel like you've resigned me to my fate
and retired me to the junkyard
for people to pick over my body for parts,
varied and sundry amusements and accouterments of days gone by.
Hands of strangers poking and prodding,
wondering if my leather interior is real.
Of course it is.

And an oil leak that will never cease
keeps pouring out from under my hood,
lubrication flows freely
as you rev my engine,
taking me out of neutral and all the way into overdrive.
Motor mount tears fall to the asphalt,
as you drive on without me.

It Was Only Because I Loved You

You:
You are the Arthur to my Morgana. You are the promises broken and the skies turned gray, heavy with clouds. My tears burst forth, oozing a thick, pendulous sadness that lingers in the air around me. What am I to say to you? What left is there to say, but to recall better times of bitter memories with a sorrow so sweet it tastes like cherry cordial on my lips?

Howling to the moon in anguish, I am an elm tree on the exterior - smooth bark and twisting trunk, holding steady at the root, trying to keep it together because I'm just as much of a danger to you as you are to me. Inside, rotting away, picked at little by little by these termite-like thoughts. I am not as strong and steady and rooted as I may seem: A caress just as well as a kick could knock me to the ground.

And how can I say this to you? My lion, my pride? How can I play these words off my tongue so as not to offend, so as not to cause you any more agony than I already have? How do I say these words that I have said not once, not twice, but so many times before? How can I make these wishes true, how can I make a spark come alive, when you want nothing more to do with me than a living body to warm your bed on the cold nights when my soul howls like the coyotes, a plaintive plainsong that echoes through the corridors of my very being, rattling me? How can I say this all to you when your eyes lay elsewhere?

Not once, but many times, I have felt your hands upon me. Not once, but a thousand times have you whispered words in my ears that could make a courtesan blush and a priest bow in humility. Not once, but forever, you promised I would have a spot in your heart - yes, a spot, my love. Something to be scrubbed at time and time again, a blemish on an otherwise perfect life - a spot that won't come out no matter what bedamned way you try.

And maybe I did myself in - maybe I fell too hard, too fast. Can you blame me? You're so full of yourself sometimes, your life so full of promise as you look onward past me, toward her, toward your new life, that you fail to see what you leave behind: and listen close, I will admit this only once - you leave behind the saddened little girl who is frustrated, hurt, angry and confused because she is being denied something that worked so well, when she tried to behave so good.

In moving on, you leave me behind - clutching the tattered strings of a tapestry quickly unweaving around me, the threads pulling and bursting as you walk and run faster, and farther, away from the life we could have had -- had only one of us been brave, had only one of us spoken up. But which of us did that burden fall to? I cannot say, I cannot lay fault. I won't.

My eyes well up as I write this....you're always so near and it stings and pricks at me, my blood buzzing in my ears like a hive of angry bees. You don't even know what we could have been, because you wouldn't even try.

And now I must let go - I know I do. I guess, somewhere, somehow, I always knew I would. I always knew, in the back of my heart, in the back of my head, that you would find any reason that I would be unsuitable for you. Wrong age, wrong weight, wrong religion, wrong touch, wrong love, wrong feeling, wrong everything and anything. It could have been anything and you would have found a reason -- because I am not the one you wanted and I never was.

I'm just sorry I ever allowed myself to admit that I wanted you in my life in a way you would never understand, with a maddening desire you only felt the most barbed, poisoned tip of. I'm sorry that I let myself open to you, feinted when I should have parried, and never ever struck back. I opened parts of myself to you that no one 'fore or since or again will have...the more esoteric pieces of my being and more of the physical ones as well. I offered you the world, but the world I offered wasn't well enough - and I can understand that, I suppose.

I remember those words you whispered in my ear, those tearful moments of confessions, of words not wanting to be spoken but pouring out anyway. Deer crowding the highway, you confessed. And so did I. And those words I can't take back haunt me, because if I could, I would steal them and horde them away, a dragon with a treasure in the most cliched manner. But I am left empty - in heart, in body. My soul aches. It all aches.

My heart is sliced to pieces now, ribbons to sway in the chilled wind that forces its way through my veins, ribbons floating on air where I used to harbor so much warmth and love. I'm sorry for the hurt I caused......it was only because I loved you.

Do I really need a title?

Bare skin laid out
with a cold inhale
taut muscle ensconced
within yielding flesh.
Will I ever see you again?
I don't know.
Sigh once more
and enjoy this moment
to echo against the mirrors of your mind
again and again
driving you mad
until I must,
simply must,
feel you again
My Love.

The Journey of Sancta Sophia

The sorrow I felt was ever constant, bubbling just beneath the surface of my heart, my inner landscape an uncertain world, quicksilver ever evaporating and reforming in a mercurial menagerie. But this sorrow grew less as the days wore on, and I replaced each living piece of myself with a hardened block of stone. I killed myself, the self that I once knew. I sat content among my rocks and admired my stones, my boulders and my cliffs. I ached, but I sat alone.

One day, carelessly, I allowed a small weed of compassion to begin growing among the cracks in one of the smaller rocks.

And that was my mistake.

I did not tend to this little plant, but sat by with idle curiosity as it grew, content to sit strewn among the pebbles of my undoing. I watched and took no action as this tiny little flower blossomed, grew and strained toward a sun that hadn't touched that land for years. The flower grew. The flower lived. The flower died.

A swift and chilling breeze came soon after, blowing the skeletal remains of that little sun-seeking flower away. I sat and watched. I took no action as the seeded remains of the petals flew on the wind.

That was the first night the rains came. And with the tiny little droplets, a cool and subtle breeze stirred the warm, cloying air. The raindrops felt sweet, so sweet. The warmth felt good, suddenly not as oppresive as it had once been. I turned my face to meet the spray. As those raindrops, warm with the first kiss of spring showered my body and caressed my face, I came to realize I was crying.

And I did not know why.

With a loud crash and a startling clap of thunder, the largest of the rocks was swept away in the crash of a salty ocean wave that arose from nothing, springing from nowhere to shatter my existence. This ocean arose, the bitter product of tears long left unshed and pain long left untouched, buried beneath the stones and waiting to one day re-emerge.

I cried to the sky. I beat my fists upon the stones. All those emotions came back to me, with a rage, the kind of which had not been seen. Self hatred, and hatred toward those who had hurt me without ever even knowing. The ache inside my heart was immense. I scraped my hands on the sharp, rocky outcroppings that formed when my heart of stone broke into a million pieces.

I ached.

I screamed so loud to be heard, the winds no longer touching me with gentle fingers and a soft caress, those once sweet winds and rain now a bellowing gale. And for the first time in a long time, I felt.

I felt.

And what I felt was fear and anguish. The loneliness of a thousand nights spent in solitude and the hopelessness of a thousand more to come.

I do not know when I heard the whisper in my ear. I do not know when my tears could no longer fall. I do not know when they ceased, for they seemed endless. I did not know where my tears ended and the rains that wracked my heart began. I did not know her name, the kind and gentle mother who rescued me from the edge of that barren cliff.

She held me there for a time, and nestled me to her breast as though I were a small child. She took my tears, and kept my pain. She took all I had to give and more.

Sancta Sophia.

The name of the divine mother. She who once sat beside God himself, constructing the world with He in a playful manner and the compassion of all. She who walked beside Christ and she who was forgotten just the same. Sancta Sophia, a figure long since relegated to the worlds of fairy stories and child's tales, remembered only in darkened corridors and dusty manuscripts. Demonized and vilified in the eyes of her children, all of whom sprang from She, the first to be loved and the first to be hated.

Be Not Afraid.

Her whispers came in soothing murmured tones as she carried by battered and broken bod across the ravaged landscape.

Do Not Shy Away.

I awoke the next morning in the landscape of my heart, that same place where I began and the same place I felt I would end. Where there had once been stone, there now existed a spray of fragrant blossoms. Where there had been a sea of salty sadness now sat a fresh, clear well of hope, compassion and love.

Her light was blinding.

And I fought not to squint against the harsh light of day. My eyes long unaccustomed to her illumination. I cried out as the warm rays touched my tender skin, shielded so long from the warmth by a layer of stone, dirt and cold.

Drink of me.

She said, an unseen force guiding me to her well. I kissed the ground, marvelling at each living thing, my hands touching the ground as a child does, exploring the world in the only way it knows how.

I knelt.

And drank from the well of Sancta Sophia. I realized for the first time I was thirsty, so thirsty. I was parched, my tongue rasping like the scales of a snake against the bark of a tree on which it hides. I was thirsty. I had not known what was missing, but here I found it.

I drank.

I lapped at the cool, clear waters, as gentle as a lover and as tender as a friend. I drank from the well of Sancta Sophia and felt as she.

Pure.

Unknown to all but those who seek her grace and wisdom. Known, but not tainted. Wise, but not spent. Bold, but not spoken. Kind, but merciless in her justice.

Renewed.

And my heart began to break once more. But this time there was no rock on which to break, there was no sea in which to drown.

And in that moment, I lived only for her.

Sancta Sophia, guide my hand.

"Sophia brings up her own children, and cares for those who seek her.
Whoever loves her loves life.... for though Sophia takes them
At first through widing ways, bringing fear and faintness to them,
plaguing them with her discipline until she can trust them,
and testing them with her ordeals, in the end Sophia will
...lead them back to the straight road, and
reveal her secrets to them. (Ecclesiasticus 4:11-18)"