The Wheatfields East of Eden

You've never left me though you're gone
still we dance our silent songs
You're in my mind and still alive
with me looking to the sky.
I think of all those days back when
my fingers traced along your skin
a trembling index finger warm
against your chest away from harm
we fell asleep in loving arms
and retreated to my world

Where silver goes in elegant twirls
clouds under a madman moon
shadow figures through the dew
I chase you through the desert, and
you appear atop a mound of sand
with a white dress hair in curls
I chase you through these made-up worlds.
In dreams it seems
you run from me.

And when I see you on the mound
I call out your name aloud
I hear the words decay and fall
as though against some made up wall
the wall that I have used to hide
my real self from the public eyes
my reason for being
to deal with you leaving
in dark still grows the ghost of rose;
Had I known what I would lose,
I'd love you from the start.

As it is the tower fell
no wedding gowns nor old church bells
just the muffled sound of pens
where still I'm writing about when
when we lay together quiet
and softly talked away the nights
and you fell into my arms
when you fell through the walls into
the center of my heart, which grew

From the grass emerged at last
the most beautiful of fruit
of flowers and the silver showers
that often hit the ground
I see you when I close my eyes
and you never make a sound
Through the desert and the dreams,
I chased you through so frequently
is a maze that never ends
Once I reach the finish line
I go back again.

I always try again but fall
two long steps before the wall
where the princess sleeps within
Where late at night in breathless light
of the moon she stood outside.
She looked around and when she frowned
she heaved a heavy sigh.
She'll never see the tragic show
of the man who ran lost through the snow
with flowers in his pockets
and two strangers in his locket
his last words scattered with the dust
I'm sorry that I could not be
the man I wanted you to see.

I'm sorry that you saw behind
the veil of fiction to the mind
where ragged are the ruins you'll find
where a child who's dressed in blue
wanders through a gray tinged hue
a ring of clouds which narrow threw
the shadow of a giant on the wall
where before it David falls
Step past the curtain and slip through
the bridge I've made from me to you
to that private place, I call
The Make Believe Ballroom through the wall
where you wear a dress, and shawl
that lights the wall set to the hall
and at the end-another wall.

Another wall on which I hang
Windows to the past in frames
silhouettes run through the rain
and get lost in twisted lanes
lanes that circle and fall back
the silhouettes slip through narrow cracks
the earth goes on and on,
What we call now will soon be gone.
The actors with their lines who spoke
of love and sorrow, those who hope
to see the beauty just behind
the public face of fireflies.
behind the lies that wounded self
that's all I've known and nothing else
the same thing every day I've felt
a player with the wrong hands dealt
going through the motions never knowing
what is right and what is wrong
if anyone will hear this song
If only one would look to see,
my veiled transparent effigy
I only wish to leave a rose
a flower in the shape of prose
with fountain ink in narrow rows.

I drew a window turned to me
opened my eyes, to breathe, to see
myself in bed at home alone
listening to some sullen song
that sullen song, part of the set
of sorrowful songs I write to get
just a little peace of mind,
life's anodyne is every line.
That's all I've ever tried to do.
all in vain to try to reach you
I want to be myself when seen
no costumes nor dull lines to read

A quiet walk, dead end we go
shuffling through those narrow rows
those twisted tangled knots that sew
our lives into a little hole
until the world has filtered out
and I become astute again,
the body odyssey begins:
I travel through my fingers
up into my skin
I met some more explorers
and they became my friends.
We traveled through a narrow hole
between the mind into the soul
and when we got there all went white
I stood on the ledge inside
and saw across the great divide
my own eyes reflecting wide.