Dominoes | | and Tilting /\ Expressions of Choice

Dominoes | | and Tilting /\ Expressions of Choice

Sitting on a car hood, staring at you looking in a mirror ten rooms away

Renting some space on the reflection of my hours

Washing your cheeks focused inside in a discussion

To sort all this out in a fifteen round bout

Months and Years stacked like dominoes | | | | | /

That flatter me in their pondered iterations and

You see them falling and counting the dots :::

To compute just what this is worth the tipping point /_  or /\

Where you relinquish some segment of control

You assumed you would always participate

More completely in its fruition

To some option you see stacked down the line

Knowing it is your finger, the impetus to this chained reaction

Of stacked white rectangular buildings of time,

That will bring you there in an apparent inevitability of extrapolated consequence

Teetering the initial touch to these black dotted blocks as an extension of choice

That there would appear some platform awaiting a junction

That somehow steals your freedom in a railway fork

Awaiting in this future, startles you into a pond of sediment

Filled waters with submerged tree limbs and dangers

Like staggered road blocks of what ifs

And what must you let go of to open your hand to grasp onto mine

As if these choices are approaching in business suits of absolutes

Like mountain tops in Oz ascending to crumble up this yellow brick

All these contradictions that stick between the blueprints

Of months ago and this landmine exploding of Saturday night’s

Reverberations ratting out like a halo expanding

In this angel landing in your life like a second thought

Of what this means and who might one day call you his wife

Like something nuclear, fallout is expected in the depth of these waters

Collected all that sedimentary material floating in the undulation

I hear you calling out in this fog, grabbing for upside down branches

And my hand there extended swaying like a search light

To find you in the ghost dust of this explosion’s wake

Hoping you can hold your breath through this shock to your system

And breathe, just take the time to breathe and see these blue eyes

Like light house beacons to gravitate towards in luminous spherical smiles

Calling you into a joint nexus of want in what matters is no longer a singular

Expression of grammar expounding, but becoming plural

 

Like those two hands standing straight to the sky facing each other | |

I showed you while awakening in my bed sheets teetering in the faith of falling

Tilted and balanced in juxtaposed support /\ that all their weight of remaining upright

In control of their own ability to withstand the gravity of this world

Was transferred in a joint choice of selection to choose the other

With the faith of falling in unison of a meeting point, the heaviness

Would transfer into the feathers of knowing a true counter balance

In this stare of that mirror peering into yourself, I am here for you

Like these blue eyed lighthouses, I am here for you

Imperfections and my scabbed skin I am here for you

Knowing you can see these scars on my hands like holes I can not amend

For sins I have lashed my own back in hundreds of nights of self flagellation

To attempt to atone for that which asks you to share this yoke

As oxen on a tandem plow this landing point liberated by terms we construct

I see how in the fog of this dust storm the labels of Mapquest

May appear to be an internment rather than a dream proliferating into Kansas

With tapping of ruby slipper sidesteps into one measure of man

These restrictions chain my own feet to this stop sign on a highway to

This vagabond land you have never seen, foreign to your employment, your outlets

Your eateries, your friends, the pathways of your daily pursuits as if the accoutrements

And cornerstones to the foundation of your independent happiness would somehow

Be pulled like the linchpin to a pyramid of joy that might crumble in choosing to stand

Next to me in this non-Kansas and you see it as never getting to wear those red jeweled pumps

And you have my heart like a hand grenade, in your research of songs

You must know this by now and see me standing here upright waiting to fall

In a tilt like a domino drawbridge descending to allow all this stranded traffic

Awaiting behind me to pass like a flood into you, into what I see

Like a harbor of a woman I have hoped for and never witnessed in tangible construction

The path of our potential is not set up, I have not taken this room and

Placed a thousand domino days out in a carnival of musts and pre-written history

Awaiting simply a name to fill in the blank on the sidekick of my autobiography

I am holding my hand to you, to take me for the man that I am

With these imperfect holes baptized in the absolution of you seeing beyond

This Quasimodo exterior I have seen in my own mirrors for a faith of give and take

Awaiting your penmanship to write the story of these remaining days together

Knowing each other’s frailties and accepting in a barter of dreams

Recognizing the toll of these roads is not paid in coins

But in the lengths we will take to have these hearts adjoin

I have stacked up in warehouses promises to complete to you for every pound of faith

You place in me to balance this scale, I will repay to you

 

In time where your friends become ours, I will incorporate your world into my own life

Of time with your mother, your trapeze, and a step-stool for the dog, your dancing, and learning

And time for your self, secure enough in us to not take away your singularity

In these bastions of solitude that allow for our clarity to navigate these murky waters

Even without the extension of a hand, that I know you can accomplish so much

On your own, outside my partnership, and that your act of selection must be of a

Tangible rather than token nature, and these labels strike you at an impasse

Setting and resetting the iterations of these dominoes on the floor of your mind

In a circus of what if’s continually striking Hammond like Titanic’s stubbed glacial toe

Ripping holes in dreams you never knew you had in you as options to ponder

And you are so wary of how many passengers for how many life boats are on this ship

Just setting sail, and maybe if you don’t play this poker game, and don’t win this ticket

You can just never know and keep going in your scheduled direction

But life is full of risks, we can not fully predict and even in the magnitude of Tangipahoa

There could be others from your end, mine and ours lurking there like Krakens

But I will promise you this, no matter our heights or the length of our legs, or what may appear by The mathematics of time, for every step you take with me, I will match in you in pace

One for one, a choice in each day, and

It may seem right now that it might be every two for my one

But you must see in these mountains that obstruct the path of these yellow bricks

I will pick you and carry you up a thousands steps to get over it

And so if the faith of computation

Is why I know you will understand these words and find solace in their strength

And not take them as answers, but as honest tokens of a tangible man you say

You have seen enough to know, then breathe, breathe, get your head above water

Out of this soot and breathe deeply in unison

In the life raft of my chest you are a paddle without which I am adrift and you are treading

And I know you can swim, I know you could find shore on your own

But my vessel has spotted you out in these waters, offering my hand

And in that is a choice to see this stripped paint on my hull and choose in a choice

That does not need to be made by this sunset

But you do have to bare these waters and breathe and accept the realities before you

For what they are and allow your self the time to see these horizons roll off the table top of tomorrows, Into the tangible rather than the token impressions of what your suspicions might paint them to be

And I am here for you

In this stare of that mirror peering into yourself, I am here for you

Like these blue eyed lighthouses, I am here for you

Imperfections and my scabbed skin I am here for you

In holdings these pens waiting to write the rest of our story in ink rather than pencil,

I am here for you, In this mathematics of steps I am here for you

In these arms waiting to carry you and be carried over what neither of us know,

I am here for you.