The Dagger

Cold Winter.
Naked feet
on the naked floor.
Step to the
door frame.
Breathe in
what remains
of the night.
Across the room,
an electric beat.
Light sneaks out,
sharp and blue,
giving hints
of the man inside.
From the shadow
of the door,
I see, for an instant,
the dagger, before
it strikes my head.
On the left side
it has ended;
on the right side,
just begun.
I’m back
in the place
where I came from,
where it began,
but too much alive
now,
and too much in love.

Stretch

Make sure that you
have stretched today.
Make sure that you have
pushed yourself.
Make sure that you
have stretched enough of you
in enough different directions
that you have struggled
to keep your balance
and maintain your breathing.
Make sure that you have reached a little
further than you’ve ever reached before;
further than last week,
further than last night.
Make sure that you have
stretched today and made contact.
Make sure that you have
made contact and not let go.
And once you’ve found a way
to not let go,
make sure that you have stretched
a little further.

Alright for a Woman

It is alright for a woman
to be desperate.
It is alright for a woman to need.
It is alright for a woman
to cry out in agony
from within a skin that suffers
from being too thin.
It is alright for a woman
to lose her cool
or hold her cards too close to her chest
and conceal the inflamed things
that haunt her mind.
It is alright for a woman to
be treated the right way
and more important,
for a woman,
to be spoken to the right way.
It is alright for a woman
to be a child,
to strike out looking
and walk away with a smile.
It is not alright for a man
to be these things,
but it is alright for a woman
to be equally his.
In what sense two people
can be the same
when it is not alright
for them to be the same,
is something I have yet
to understand.
A right to become
what another is by nature,
is, without a doubt, a similarity,
but not one that makes
for any harmony.

Running

Coming off the river off
the ocean, a heavy wind blows down
my running path,
pushing me with the kind
of insistence with which my father,
in fits of rage,
used to say, “Move your feet!”
Why I push myself there, despite the exhaustion that haunts me at the end of a sleepless week, has something to do with the memory of that; not the sound, or the meaning it conveyed, nor even the promise of a better result, but the instinct to do what you are told by those you trust. I don’t trust him still, nor believe that good always follows good, but I still look down and see my feet moving.