What BAE really Stands For

(before anyone else) = BAE

Mni Wiconi

Your art is my art
On a sea of dreams
On the petal of a flower
Seen before through many times

History repeats all mystics
Forests rejoice in their coming
Your art is not about how many people
Enjoy your work, it’s about

Your heart on the display of discovery
At the beck and call of
Some secret of your spirit
At the mercy of some

Deeper feeling than you cannot contain
That buds from the silence
And gives in to the melody
Behind the vibration of everything

There’s no trading honesty in this world
Our anxiety and vulnerability show enough
On our skin, we cannot hide it
That’s why, your art is my art

There’s no homepage for holistic healing
It’s born from our journey and communion
With each other, all seekers
I can’t seem to master the art of timing

To be able to find you at the right moment
The years and decades will go by
And I’ll still remember you at twenty-four
The way your hair flew to sunsets

And the moist neediness in your speech
It was in late Autumn when you went west
Where I dug up a piece of your wildlife heart
But you had already flown
Like a swan into the night

And not even my eyes that had bathed in your sunshine
For a spiritual moment could find you
Through that rush of ginger and turmeric after-taste
Like incense, you had escaped all definition
Though the impression struck me as something subtle

The leftover from a life left behind
Of meditation or even caring about chakras
Through still I can say, “your art is my art”

Water of life, tears of loving
To wash the dust of daily living
From our souls, where we were adopted
And where we departed our most beloved ones.

If vision was the art of seeing
The goodness in others that was invisible to others
I imagined you could see right into me
And it didn’t matter you were miles away

Love of beauty was a taste
And the creation of art was a kind
And our art sometimes protected
Sometimes procrastinated with our mistakes
Those were the feelings we treasured the most, in fact
You always had him, before anyone else.

I Plead Myself with Thee

I have dreamed of death and mine
As if it were ungrateful of me to keep
Living and breathing, although

I have laid the rest of thy divinity
In a place so deep inside of me
That like a pilgrimage I scattered youth

The Autumn innocence that
Empties me of feeling every year
With each passing summer I leave

A part of myself well and beloved behind
And in doing so, I die enough to stalk
The future of my own gifts

That won’t be mine, but in meeting you
Will have unveiled something of the infinite
Where I can live irresponsibly and fine
Not bound by this Earth that won’t keep me lovingly
There’s no shadow’s length I bet
No growing pale as I strive

Who can understand the imperfection?
Of our humilities, that leaves
The orchard of our shared vulnerability
Open and not barren, where thrives
Scanty sunbeams for hidden fruit
Proof that we hung Springs together well.

On the truth in gossip

listen to the stories women
tell other women, O’
I miss my women friends
who would talk a history in a needle
listen to a name, gossip a little
that sound of other places
with a foreign taste
the ripeness of a voice
made vulnerable and accessible
I am no longer a hunter of women
I have only empathy left
In my bones, in my half-smile
You can only live and learn
In this world, there is no disgrace
That lasts forever, only heartbreak
That is extremely normal
So don’t fret, the falling seas
The falling snow, we’ve seen it all before
Listen to the stories of women
To the wisdom passed down
On hearing a name long unspoken
Take a guess as to why you hear it now
Our cries echo in unique ways
And our voice reaches the heart
At the appointed time, maybe
Centuries later, our love is recognized.

Inner child metaphor of a tree

The trees they rise up
As if up from their own free will
Into the light, wild, happy
Strong, if only I could be that way
But nature did not make me strong
And I was not born free
But chained, enslaved, shy

But what if the dreams
Were grafted to my branches
Like fruit and I could see
The horizon with replanted forests
What if I could breathe clean fresh
Perspectives for breakfast?
Fit with buds for birds to ransack

Or pollen to spread nature
The true nature of our spontaneous
Selves, the inner-child without her mask
The trees they rise up
For too many generations, with
The secret of the ancient taste
From our growth what silver fir

Reveals the truth that was our destiny?
It was not the water, wood, air, light
These were only elements
Of how we found what we were made of
It’s just that way if I am a barren stem
I won’t be blown around as much
Nor catch the eye of creatures

But what could I then become
In an open sunlit field, left as I was…

A Drop of Blood Like Shadows

My shadows have remained
Behind there, like a midnight guest
That doesn’t know when to leave
But the truth of the matter

Will surface, in sleep
The frosted sacrifices for art
Will suffice, the choice to be free
How the house is altogether preoccupied

Dust to dust, something called love
In the world, perhaps it’s not for me
Into a sterner living I must surrender
Why? Because life’s calculation found me wanting

There is no mercy in these stark designs
Of fate, no morning ray that sweet
Uncouth are the women who left me
Just as with my mouth I used to travel

Down their spines, their hips, their hands
Like a quiet shawl of tremulous abandon
I must warm myself with paler dreams
The dread of separation still in my gut

Heavy as a lost gleam of a lake of swans
There is nothing to forgive, nakedness is ruthless
My shadows have remained
I only sow the reaping done, a late comer

To reality, and ecstasy and maturity
I arrive at incredible vexation
A rage to break the barriers of sheltered patterns
Afloat in me like ice in foaming wine.

I Laid my Boyhood’s Head On The Pillow made for One

With careful fragments I’ve built
A shredded identity, pillaged by hope
Ransacked by heart-break

I’ve customized my grief
To the rapture of my outlaw-state
In glowing morning I feared

Being left, and prophesized abandonment
In which my very atoms
In the cosmic mirror, were scattered

I couldn’t help martyrhood
Like the shell of my grandmother in me
How we give our power away

And how those authorities contrive
To judge our worth, in quick months
Of evolutionary design, bitter comments

That I remember to this day
About the kind of man I am
With careful foolishness I betrayed

The self, that wanted to join in marriages the most
A wild execution of the simplicity
That marked me from my childhood

Of having been raised in poverty
Boycotted from those simple joys
I am a frenzied bargain of dreaming cheeks
Without the spice of wonderful confidence.