The act of hiding

I catch lies

in the story

of him

in the story 

of me

(apple minded snakes and all)

I catch truth 

but the words still come

like they are held in fizzy soda pop

instead of vocal cords

('it was him, not me')

I don't like being 

the liar

the one to blame

I would rather not ask for forgiveness 

if it means I'm wrong

if forgiveness 

is the strongest superpower 

strength lies in my weakest point

so wrong is wrong 

and here I say sorry

sorry I hid

(nakedness)

sorry I lied

sorry I was so afraid 

of what you would think 

I didn't give you a chance to think anything

sorry I am still hiding 

because I am afraid of you

afraid you will not love me

for who I really am 

(clothe me)

sorry for seeing each of you 

as a need to pretend 

instead of seeing you as a lifeline to love

I got lost in being right

stuck in the wrong song 

wrong key

(eden was there)

(promise was there)

I forgot

if sin is the act of hiding away from God

and the darkness this act creates is what creates death/ pain

and if hiding our nakedness from each other stems from this act

(every sin is found in relationship)

maybe the naming of rules / law

was an attempt to call us out
(towards him/ each other)

and instead we followed the rules 

and hid (again) behind right

and on the subject of words vs silence

Words and what happens to them

words spill out of me

like I have had them inside 

for a long long long time

see

saying 'long' one more time seems needed here

necessary 

not excessive 

when words spill out 

and there is no one there to catch them

do they disappear?

such a good question 

a question that needed to be typed 

blogged 

and held 

who is there to sit with all these words? 

Is it silence?

Does silence hold answers?

If so, she'll never speak them 

I know silence 

at least in my car 

and there, she is kind of a nag

I don't trust her at all 

so many words

that so clearly don't express it

and for every single word 

there are a thousand left 

still waiting

never said

will they disappear?

or does that nag 

take them with her 

like a scottish folk tale 

stealing babies 

from their beds

replacing them with 

closed mouthed fairies 

pretty to look at

“Hope, do you find strength?,” Shinji Moon

Hope, you are what my sister saw when she stood
looking across the mountainside of Sedona, Nevada.

When she came home she brought stories of 
medicine men and shamans and taking long walks
towards god, and we sat around the kitchen counter
counting red stones she took from the heart of a healing
land – an acorn stone, small animals of jade —
and a crushed up bottle with the palest of red sands inside.

Hope. When the medicine man asked her what she saw
looking at the silhouette of those white-peaked shifting plates,
she said your name, and he told her that what she saw in those mountains
were what decorated her own bones.

It is summer and the milk dew of our home keeps leaking into my lungs, 
into my skin, into my always autumn heart that keeps blushing
from red lips to orange leaves to yellow, yellow
the yellow of the sun across Picton waters, to the pale of
the veins of dried leaves, its heartbeat
its heartbeat
so much like
my own.

Hey Hope, do you hear me? 
I’ve been meaning to talk to you for days now
about something or another, about the way
my hands feel too small when I screw them on in the morning
as if I can’t hold anything in them
that doesn’t drain through the bottoms.

Hope, do you hear me?

I’ve been trying to call but the last few digits of your number
are smudged by my last boy’s rain, and I keep clinging
to a flat line that doesn’t exist 
but still I feel you pump my lungs
when I’m toppled over into myself with my knees rubbing
against my chest like I’m a cricket who lost its meter, and

Hope, I want you to know
that I believe in you like I believe in the soft heart
of my sister, who tumbled the glass of our childhood
with her palms so that I would never have to tread on anything
but a sea glass world, and

Hope, I want you to know
that I am here — thin wrists and gawky words
and screwed on limbs.

I am here. Listening. 
With every ounce of my fist sized heart.
I am here.

Hope, do you find strength? 
Do you know if its in season?

Because I’m trying to bake together a beautiful world
and the neighbors won’t lend
a cup or two to make this 
goddamn dough rise.

”

—	“Hope, do you find strength?,” Shinji Moon