You die with nothing but a rage to live."

Pay heed to these words a wise poet said;

Your choice is to be happy or to be dead.

So what if you were dead, you might say?

Would life be any more or less than gray?

But take a closer look, my forlorn friend;

At what would be lost if you had never been.

The rest of us beg to know, does it make any sense?

For one with so much beauty, integrity, and intelligence,

For one who is loved and needed by so many of us,

To rue each passing moment with an unhappy grimace?

You were born to experience the joy of each day,

Not to whine and moan and wish it all would go away.

Awake each sunny morning and give thanks in prayer,

As you give and receive a cornucopia of love and care.

I come spinning out of nothingness

To become such that dreams are made of

I am the Soul, the animating force of life

Compared to me the stars are but dots in the sky

I am in this world, but not of it

I create the universe with my mind

I am the thinker of the thoughts

I am the ghost in the machine

Re-Creation

I move from life to life each day

With nothing but dust in between

I come and go in the twinkling of an eye

Recreated endlessly till beyond forever

Life after death repeated each hour

Regluing the universe together each second

I am creating a better self each minute

Life is glowing in my reflected beauty

Stillness

Find the calm space between thoughts

Become alive by drifting off to sleep

Listen by becoming quieter than your breath

The world will explode inward upon you

Eavesdrop on the cosmic mind

Be still, and come to know God

In between stimulus and response

Lies my freedom to choose to be anything

Joy

Joy came with me out of creation

It is the hidden child in me lusting for life

Find beauty in every cell in your body

Experience God in a flower or a rainbow

Past and future are time-bound prisons

The present is the holy playground of life

Beyond right and wrong is an infinite field

Where we will meet to laugh and love

Love

The lover and the loved are one

The mirror of you gives birth to my growth

I will pet, cuddle, and lovingly caress

For my love transforms itself into healing

Loving is a wholeness that transcends mortality

To love is to know the truth of re-creation

To find a nurturing mind, body, spirit partner

Is more than sentiment; it is to feel eternity

Sensuality

The universe is a sensuous cradle of life

My desires are seeds in the fertile ground

Taste and texture, form and color

Aflame in a ceaselessly reborn composition

Life is a torrent down a steep mountain

It is a lightning flash across the cosmos

Shed the enslaving chains of judgment

Embrace the burning ember of the naked soul

Mastery

To discover self over self image

To find my spirit beyond my ego

Escape the hypnosis of social conditioning

Leap over the psychopathology of the average

Act by living out imagination, not memory

The separation between bondage and freedom

Be aware of the conditioning to be free of it

If I understand, then I will be understood

Peace

We hate only those who we are

Disease is born only in toxic thoughts

My tormentor today is myself

Left over from yesterday's decisions

Peace is found not by looking for it

But by never leaving my place of meditation

My soul sleeps in beams of warm light

Not to be disturbed by the nightmares of my day

Death

Toxins wreak havoc with our physical being

Yet they pale in comparison to the spiritual ones

Shed the need for approval, or death will win

Abandon fear, or life will slip from my grasp

Ideas are the harbingers of death and disease

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he

My body is a place my memories call home

My memories create this home and destroy it

ReBirth

Time is an illusion

Spirit is more real than time

Life is not found in the study of dying bodies

We are more than recycled air, water, and earth

Move away from the whole idea of clocks

Things physical are but migratory birds

Progress is not more ticks closer to death

But getting closer to where you want to be

Eternal Spirit

Our bodies are but moments in time

Our thoughts and memories are eternal

Every breath of mine absorbs the universe

Which absorbs me in its infinate possibilities

Past, present, and future are one

Re-creation has bequeathed eternity to me

What's before the beginning?

What's after the end?

It is a lightning flash across the firmament

We are wisps of quantum nothingness

Yet our being animates the universe

We are the creators of tomorrow’s visions

Not just the sums of yesterday’s decisions

Live out not memory but imagination

To escape from bondage into liberation

Burst the chains of social conditioning

To earn the freedom to become anything

Beyond right and wrong is an open field

Where love and wisdom are revealed

Past and future are prisons timebound

The present is life’s holy playground

Living is not counting ticks closer to death

But seeing ripe possibility in every breath

To cleanse it of you

I packed it all away

There was nothing else I could do

The mug

Oz, the city where dreams come true

My lips to drink, while thinking of you

I packed it away

The cards

Heartfelt thank you's and I love you's

Touched me always, and chased away the blues

I packed them away

The elephant

Stuffed, but alive with the spirit of Yuri

A spirit that you once knew through me

I packed it away

The letters

Words that poured from soul to soul

A transfusion of love that made me whole

I packed them away

The pictures

Images of a queen, visions of a daffodil

A special loveliness that I remember still

I packed them away

A toy car

Frivolous, insane, but drenched with meaning

Resurrecting youth and joy that had been waning

I packed it away

The scraps

Little bits of paper, notes scrawled in your hand

Like you, they slipped through my fingers as if sand

I packed them away

The calendar

A keeper of time, which itself is unkeepable

The month frozen at August; it was always impossible

I packed it away

The poems

Music written for a dancer named Audrey

Music that set my creative essence free

I packed them away

The Introspection gift

A treasure from you that defined us both

A haunting image of a teenaged ghost

I packed it away

The pumpkin

A symbol of a magical spell that once bound

To have lost means something was once found

I packed it away

The packing material

Stuff that other people carelessly throw away

Priceless to me, since that is all I have left today

I packed it away

I packed and packed, till my arms were weary

I looked in an unseen mirror; the reflection was dreary

And finally the room was barren, as barren as my soul

I had packed it away

You who shared my book, then saw love start

With a dialogue between my head and my heart

The Poet shouted in my ear to sieze the day

Your mind, body, and spirit carried me away

I will walk with you....

Through the park and bus stop, whispering JCK's

Listening to talking frogs and singing Cranberries

Making for you a garland of letters and poems

Yuri inspiring me to dream impossible dreams

I will walk with you....

My Princess, my Cinderella at the castle

Mo Choill, my Lara, my burning candle

A Prince am I, your endearing qualities to sing

To be your hero, the wind beneath your wings

I will walk with you....

Behind us footsteps, a warm trail of love leaving

Ahead a vision, a path of joy and passionate living

Introspective, heading East into eternity with a woman

Whose image and spirit long ago spilled from my pen

I will walk with you....

Into a shimmering world of beauty and splendor

Moving, breathing, feeling, and living together

Wild wind in our hair, torrid heat the sun sends

Choosing to linger in an August that never ends

I will walk with you....

Into a special communion of hot sensual pleasure

Embracing, kissing, and loving the woman I treasure

Ecstacy harnessed, falling asleep with you in my arms

A country cupboard full of intimacy and charms

I will walk with you....

Hand in hand, two halves becoming whole

Skin to skin, heart to heart, soul to soul

Step by step, down the golden path we wander

A road, more magical than Oz, to many a wonder

I will walk with you....

Day after day, alongside my pretty flamingo

Climbing the mountain of life so we may grow

With friends Ayn, Nathaniel, Stephen, and Emmet

You and I have learned so much since we met

I will walk with you....

Into the teeth of the fiercest storms Fate can send

My irreplaceable Soul Mate I've sworn to defend

We will purchase joy with all that pain can give

And cheat Death with nothing but a rage to live

I will walk with you....

T'il a million Tuesdays have gone away

Long after we have been touched by gray

We have been cast as a modern Romeo and Juliet

The best years of our lives are ahead of us yet

Inside the depths of each mental notion

Inside the flash of every tiny second

Huddles the frightened child within

It fights, when there's no battle to wage

It fears, when there is no need for courage

It doubts, when pure hope floods each moment

It cries, when life is unrestrained enjoyment

The child within hides behind adult disguises

The callous armor of conditioned reflexes

The alien mask of stale social pretension

The idolatrous ego of aimless ambition

But if I look through window after window

Deep into the naked heart of your soul

I am quite certain that I will find quivering

A child for forgiveness desperately yearning

But what grievous sin must be forgiven?

What evil haunts the innocent child within?

T'is no sin in the dance of life to falter!

T'is no crime in the dark forest to blunder!

Children on the same dark journey, all of us

Seeking elusive answers out of mystifying chaos

Each of us defenseless, confused, and humble

Earning nothing but derision as we stumble

The child within must choose, it is certain

Between the dark guilt behind its curtain

And a bright innocent burst from its shell

T'is the crucial divide between heaven and hell

The lesson you must learn, my beautiful lover

Is that nothing separates one from the other

Except the courage to forgive sins large and small

And to forgive yourself, most important of all

All filled with love, laughter, memories, and happiness

Nine years living in our first home bought together

Stunning views, your family nearby, our cozy shelter

Eight is the number of a special month meant to last

Married in August, an echo of a magical part of our past

Seven spiritual laws of success and other philosophies

Deep thoughts and pearls of wisdom we lovingly tease

Six step-children you’ve helped me keep my promises to

A merging of families, done out of love, but difficult to do

Five vows from our wedding that I’m committed to keeping

Acceptance, understanding, forgiveness, nurturing, and loving

Four trips to Florida , our second home in glorious weather

A beautiful villa and a dream of golden retirement together

Three years of struggling to create children we can call ours

False starts, difficult decisions, and painful surgery for hours

Two wonderful kids who are nothing short of miraculous

Elly and Johnny, priceless reflections of the best in us

One true love that I promise again to share forever

With my one true friend that I will never surrender

To write words no poet ever dreamt of writing

To describe purity beyond saints and virginity

To portray timelessness beyond all eternity

But the words to my pen are too slow in coming

The challenge is much too difficult and daunting

I'm discovering there isn't any earthly expression

That can equal the depth of my love and affection

I do know that tonight when I'm dancing with you

There will now be on raptured heart instead of two

There will now be two prancing feet instead of four

There will now be one united spirit forever more

Your boundless beauty chased away my loneliness

As our new life blossomed like magic between us

Like a door opened to the land of Oz by Dorothy

Black and white transformed into color suddenly

We were always different than others, you and me

That uniqueness is our bond, our eternal unity

That is why I am composing this poem for you

To define our marriage in ways different and new

Though we spoke vows during our ceremony today

They were the vows of religion, the vows of society

Vows often spoken and often treated as casual

Words of posturing, pretension, and pious ritual

Our spirits want something deeper and more devout

Something born from within and not from without

Something more complete and enduring eternally

Something that is truly heartfelt and chosen freely

With this poem I restate my vows in our own terms

New vows as loving gifts for which your heart yearns

Gifts that contain no material or social measure

That will craft our marriage into a jewel to treasure

I vow to bestow upon you the gift of Acceptance

I will cherish you without condition or reluctance

My heart will embrace every little thing about you

While I help every dream of yours become true

I vow to bestow upon you the gift of Understanding

To see you in the special way you want me seeing

To hear you as you want to be heard sincerely

To reflect like a mirror your soul's inner beauty

I vow to bestow upon you the gift of Forgiveness

Your imperfections are but trivia for me to dismiss

Your human frailties are my cross to gladly carry

Tomorrow's mistakes I have forgiven already

I vow to bestow upon you the gift of Nurturing

The seeds of all your hopes I will be watering

The sprouts of your aspirations I will be cultivating

The peace you deserve I will commit to enabling

But alas, as poems go this one can't reach perfection

Because the perfect wedding poem was already written

It contains two simple words and three simple letters

Saying in just two syllables everything that matters

It is the shortest of all poems by the humblest poet

The smallest words yet the most profound statement

My most sincere vow is my undying love for you

And the poem's two simple words say it best:  "I do".

Yet everything to me

With time I live

Vainly conjuring meaning

Then time is gone

And so am I

With life I create

I invent and imagine

The cosmos is mine

But time has no master

Thoughts end in time

And so do I

With life I fight

I engage in horrific battles

With dragons and demons

But time mocks even winners

All succumb to time

And so do I

With life I love

What I cannot have

I love the unreachable

And recoil from those who reach

Love withers in time

And so do I

With life I cry

For what is and was

But mostly I cry

For what might have been

Tears end in time

And so do I

With life I ponder

The answer to every question

Chasing moonbeams and mirages

But all remains an enigma

Time taunts us all

Then fades to black

With life I challenge time

My weapon is hope

I wield it with all my might

But wager a fortune on time

Its weapon is Death

And time wins every time

With hope to find it no more than a sliver.

But love's meaning Fate has now uncovered,

And here is what my heart has discovered.

Love is a sacrifice, a giving without measure,

That magically becomes an emotional treasure.

Love is a choice to see beauty and perfection,

No matter the humanness of my special person.

Love is that deep and breathless anticipation,

Of looking into your eyes, the eyes of heaven.

Love is knowing that of all the stars in the sky,

There is one especially twinkling for you and I.

Love is a sacred trust held tenderly in my palm,

A womblike shell protecting the other from harm.

Love is believing  and affirming and inspiring,

A lifelong wellspring of support and nurturing.

Love is that painful push out of life's cozy nest,

A spirit of soaring transformed from fear's test.

Love gives meaning to life as a motive force,

That intertwines two souls into a single course.

Love is that unique, spontaneous connection,

Without which life is empty, a cruel deception.

Love is that piercing stab that knifes my heart,

When the time comes for my other half to part.

Love is a deep devotion, a passion that blinds,

A fiery warmth sending chills down our spines.

Love is an embrace and a kiss that never ends,

When time stops and the profane world suspends.

Love is that comfortable and carefree silliness,

A contagion of childlike giggles and playfulness.

I always thought of myself as wise and knowing,

Seeing and understanding and always growing;

But I was taught this meaning of love I never knew,

When Fate intervened and I fell in love with you.