We are all dying
and because of this I want to hold your hand.
Each day,
we are dying.
Each
day
I want to hold your hand.
Can’t you see,
the shining towers of gold
are illusions in the sand.
The stones are melting
and the heat fades with the land.
We are dying, my friend.
Hold my hand.
There is snow in my lungs
and though I try to warm my breath
by inhaling the sunbeams of the day
I seem to only speak an icy bitterness.
I used to dream
of singing, of adding to the world notes of amber gold,
but after seasons of unchanging season,
winter has set itself within my bones.
My vocal cords are frozen,
dead shores along white coasts,
waves encased like barreling wails,
burning to break forth.
They rage in me like blizzards,
covering wood and stone in crystal,
coated tears shed by shaded people crumbled
in unlit hearths,
and whose pains crackle in my ears.
To hear! Oh, to hear, loneliness so pure
that on its edge I see my image clear,
and to know! Oh, to know, that even those I hate
carry the same faceless frigid fears.
Is this humanity’s condition?
Doomed to days and deaths,
to wander in the storm,
white-eyed and blind—
Am I,
with small body and fragile mind,
to inhale every sour flake that curdles sky?
If so, I am a miserable host
because my words seem not to melt
or shatter ice,
and there is an iceberg enormous
lodged deep within mankind.
But the sea is wide,
and if I can continue—
continue sailing by star instead of sight,
then along the strips of sun I’ll cast my faith
and set to life
an ember in my chest—
in whose smallness rests the end
of permafrost.
And should it grow—
grow to rage like bead of flaming blood in cold,
then with frostbit hands I’ll grasp
my voice,
thaw the chords,
draw its breath—
and with full stretch
of lungs and heart
I’ll break apart the walls
with a song of avalanche.
I have song for myself
that is a song for you.
I have something to say,
something clear and crisp
like water from a mountain spring.
Nothing too wordy, just straight forward,
a kiss to the heart that is felt in the moment.
This voice you hear is birdsong,
the high good mornings in the early glow of a winter dawn.
And though, I can’t sing, I do have a song.
It is a song for myself
that is a song for you.
A song aching in joints and exasperating in their creaks.
A melody weary with the troubles of the day.
An arrangement undulating with the sounds
of hunger growing hungrier, and fear becoming more afraid.
I have a voice that spreads like flowers during the flourishing of May,
a voice whose humming brightness reveals the black echo
of distant groaning and iron grinding.
There is deep and bubbling sadness
at the bottom of far-off seas.
There is deep and bubbling sadness
within nearby puddles and lakes.
The sorrows resonate inside of me,
as I feel their mournful ripples along my voice’s quivering strings.
I walk about neighborhoods whistling my tune,
but when I do, I hear it all,
the real biting blues
of silence.
I hear it all
with ears I was given to love things.
I hear it all
and my voice breaks.
I hear it all
and my tears are salted
with shaded tones of voices no longer singing,
voices no longer mirroring
the stars on the surface of their midnight faces,
voices no longer tingled
by the earthly sensations of wind and rain.
But this is why my heavy tears
have a place.
Tears nourish music,
allows song to blossom more richly
from lips—like a rose refined through grief.
I know I can’t sing well,
but I can use the teary lyric of my life to worship
the things people have lost.
I can remind the sky that inside we love
the dance of morning and night,
and seasons and breaths.
That we love the inward
and outward, ebbing
and flowing,
rhythm of seas and passions
had in velvety secret.
Though I have one voice, my song is a chorus.
It’s the friend one has in the other.
It’s the unconditional lover.
It’s the mother and father.
I sing to protect you.
I sing to caress you.
I sing to tell you stories at night.
Though you may feel
isolated within the belly of darkness,
and the air that slips through the cracks may feel
as cold as hell can be,
I want you to note
the music hiding in the whispers of cold.
I want you to listen, to hear
the refrain that says to you,
kindly and truthfully,
One is never alone.
In the morning, there is the bird
firmly perched atop your shoulder,
and he is singing his tune,
a tune alive with the goodness of sensation,
of pulse in veins and air in lungs,
and soft long light along soft skin.
He is singing boldly and playfully,
dancing with goosebumps rising,
rising with the sun and the hour
of your life and his note;
rising,
it keeps rising,
this song he sings,
this song he cries, this song I sing for you.
