Sometimes
A woman is an island
Steadfast amid the violence
Of salt water and storm cloud
Eyes ever focused
Where the sky caresses the sea
Kissed all over by the ebb and flow of waves
Dancing with moontides
Volcanic at times
Worn and weathered and wiser
As beautiful at sunrise as sunset
As much a force as nature herself
-gws
Nevermind
You see
You were never mine
Not the way I needed you to be
You were an illusion
A twenty-four and seven hologram
Insubstantial and incapable
Pinocchio with a nose job
A foundation full of rot
On which we placed our house
And when the floor fell out
You did not reach for me
Did not treat my scrapes
Nor bandage my wounds
You told me to walk it off
Toughen up
It wasn't that big a deal
Not everything was about me
YOU were the one who was injured here
Look at what I did to YOUR floor
Look at what I did to YOUR life
And I believed I was the weak spot
The salt in the wound of us
Nevermind
You see
You were never mine
You simply made me believe
In an us without a we
Told me that was how it was supposed to be
My every need an inconvenience
My efforts doomed to fall short
A fat lazy black bitch
Who just wouldn't listen
Who just wouldn't drown my sense of self in your ego
And join you in your fortress of delusions
Nevermind
You see
You were never mine
And now I belong to me
After taking too long to see
I needed to be worth more to me
Than I was ever worth to you
-gws
Put away the books
Lying scattered across the floor
The table
The bed
Spilling across surfaces like toppled ink
A labyrinth of poetry and prose
Keeping me trapped in verbose clutter
-gws
I love watching the women with fire in their veins
The girls with Punky Brewster profiles
They enter with energy so big the room feels small
Laughs that ring out above the rest - distinctive and full bellied
They refuse to be shamed by the PTA moms
Not allowing their messy edges to take away from their contributions
They embody the revolutionary girl that Nikita Gill wrote rules for
Standing up for themselves and others
Accepting no excuses for bad behavior
They are often truth tellers slicing through mass delusions
Magic makers manifesting dreams into reality
Only ever competing with themselves
Chin high and eyes sharp
They are goddess and girl
Witch and woman
Scorching or blessing the ground they walk
In equal measure
Giving no fucks and taking no shit
As they say "yes, and" or "hell, no"
Fierce and joyous and unapologetically free
-gws
Thunder rattles behind her ribs
Lightening arcs from her tongue
She is storm clouds
Bringing steady rain to parched earth
Raging winds to clear the way
She is elemental
Wild and raw and rare
Her smile crepuscular
Her love blisteringly radiant
I live to study her meteorology
-gws
Let me
Write leading lines of poetry for you to follow
Tell stories that map the shape of a life for you to drag your finger along
Lay down relief lines that loop and dance in the shape of words
Let me expound through exposition about
The glory of the light and the shadow
Playing tag across the ground on a late summer day
Let me create a charcuterie board
Where you may sample experiences
Bitter rejection
Sweet elation
Effervescent joy
Bilious sorrow
Buttery new love
Spicy lust
Let me fold words like origami
Creating complex and beautiful things
Out of the simplest pieces
Strung together in a garland
Every angle leading to an experience
Every plane representing a feeling
Let me be a mirror
That you may recognize
Something familiar in my lines
So that you know that you are not alone
In the experience that is living
But that we walk in parallel
Submerged in this infinite sea of stars
-gws
I bought myself roses today
Colored for this transitional season
The meridian between winter and spring
Watched the red robins play in quiet branches Coated in the soft white of early spring snow
Sat at my window sipping steaming coffee
Tapping into a calm that was new to me
Reveling in the luxury of peaceful stillness
And let myself smile
-gws
With naught even a whisper
I closed the book
Put down the pen
Then cracked a new book
To begin again…
-gws
And so the sun begins its final setting
In that final twilight a transformation
US becomes YOU and ME
Without pomp or party
The bittersweet return to ourselves
Unwoven and remade
Hopes already decaying underground
Receive no grave marker
Hard won freedom and quietly resonating loss
We are becoming reluctant singularities
This fading light falls upon the final paragraph in the book of us
Two new books await
Unmarred by pain and tears
I wish I could say there will be no mourning
There is a hole where the unwritten life was excised
A wound where the light just doesn't reach and never will
I am told this is not unreasonable
Deeply feeling people cannot stop feeling
Life is nowhere near so black and white to allow for such
I send with you the last of my hope
Hope you will find your way
Hope you will learn to heal your fractures
Hope you can become the father you wanted to be
As the calendar counts down
The minutes marching relentlessly by
I reflect on my love for you that never died
It just couldn't thrive or survive the wreckage we became
We have forever marked each other with kisses and scars
As stamp and ink erases us
I gratefully return you to your own keeping
And truly wish you well
-gws
I thought there’d be one more Christmas
Below the foggy redwood line
In the temperate golden sunlight
Of California’s winter time
But life had other plans for me
And so the next I knew
My life was packed in boxes tight
And northward bound I flew
Here the winter skies are gray
The hush of snow abounds
No California winter sun
Shines down upon this ground
The life I’d come to know so well
The sea salt and rolling fog
The Bay and golden foothills
Now grace this monologue
This Christmas in our new home
Amongst the peaks and pines
Finds my tiny family brood
Building new and joyful lives
Those California Christmases
With lit palm trees in lines
Painted purple sunsets
Now only in my mind
Here night descends at 4PM
We tuck in nice and warm
The PNW slows life down
Outside my new front door
More time to talk about our days
New adventures we began
New traditions being created
With new family and friends
Another California Christmas
Has rolled around again
I reflect upon it fondly
As my new chapter begins
-gws
Words Wishes and Wisdom 