Sifting

Grant me the restful slumber of fresh snow upon the streets
Blurring all senses with cold gentility.

Grant me the peace that only meadows know
Of the inauguration of certainty and faith.

Buoy my spirit through the choppy waves of vulnerability.

Fasten the cloak of hopeful compassion around my shoulders

As I face the cold sleet of anguish and despair.

Warm the bones of my soul with
The flames of companionship and community,

And send me with zealous affection
And earnest fondness into each enterprise I endeavor.

River

You were probably a river
Babbling with mirth, bubbling with clarity.
You were probably a tree
Grounded and strong, drinking in the rain.
You were probably a star
Eyes twinkling when you smile as you divinate.
You were probably an ocean
I felt you buoy my soul as you held me.
I think you might be the wind
Stealing my breath and carrying dandelion seeds.
Were you that mountain
Immortal, immense, immovably sturdy?
Did you live as that sand dune
Just as transient as you were in this one?
You were probably a river
Moving steadily through every form.

Barbarism

Laughed at by the gods
Our losses just an elaborate prank
To entertain something more
If freedom and abandonment
Were not loud enough
To put a force in me
To search for my own exculpation
The way a dog subsidizes
Its household's decisions
In a world that is abjectly unfair
Imbued with free will
But forbidden from philosophy
To bring us into this world
Only to discharge us again
Inhuman and hence divine
This is how I know
God is a terrorist

Mangroves

My fear, baited like a fishook,
Places the fruit of anxiety with a pit of trepidations
Into the soil of my abdomen to nourish and grow
Fed by insecurities and self-directed cruelties
Whose roots will wend their way tortuously deep
Into my own egregore, twisting through foundational ontologies
And cracking the bedrock of my confidence.

Uncertainty

I grow forests of worries saturated by my tears
They bloom anxieties whose fruit
Is always overripe and so often bitter
I chop them down with my ax of reason
Sharpened on the stone rationale and wet with deliberation
Their trunks fall haphazardly tearing at
My faith on the way down, shattering my ease on impact
But no matter how many I burn
To sustain the warmth of self-compassion
There is still a forest of doubt before me.

Loss

Mediated by the unforgetful soma
It's too hard to convey
The devastation we weathered
That is your latest transmutation

Arroyo

Your love is a dry arroyo that for years sustained me 

And quenched my parched heart with your flashflood adoration

But now crumbles under the footsteps of my words

Greedy for traces of you.