A facebook friend asked the question:

I double dog dare you to write me a one stanza poem, limerick, or hiaku about missing someone you love.

Here is my answer:

empty arms hold a memory
if time is not a line but a blanket
then why does the past
not keep me warm?

On second reading, I thought it was rather good, so I’m posting it here for posterity.

I’ve uploaded a wealth of new song for your listening enjoyment… these are from a house concert in Duncan a couple of weeks ago which was recorded on decent equipment by a good friend (thanks, Rick). These are live, raw and flawed, with the odd musical imperfection, the occasional random percussive sound of kids pounding on the ceiling (their floor) overhead and distractions caused by a kitten cavorting cutely. Such is the nature of the live experience…

Christmas Presence written last December in Toronto, inspired by the frantic urban Christmas experience.
Something About Christmas (a capella Christmas song, written a few years ago)
Cup of Clay
Because
A Woman Like Me
Death to Sacred Cows
Fat Naked Woman
For Waiting
Freedom is Salvation (new song, debut performance)
Red Hands
Fool’s Gold
Midnight Flea Circus
Drown
Lilith
Beauty is Free a capella
Obvious (a capella)
The Way to Say Goodbye (a capella)
Fishbelly Skin

More songs here: myspace.com/phoenixwolfray

Ah, love, its mercurial moods, its rewards, its pains, its comforting presence and crushing absence. Where would we be without it? Some say “Love is everything, everything is love.” It is also said that love is endless and eternal. These things feel true; rather, they feel as though they ought to be, and perhaps they are.

But to parrot Pilate, what is truth? Because a thing is true in the abstract doesn’t mean we may experience it in the concrete. In our daily experience, time passes. Moments appear to end, and relationships terminate, often agonizingly. How can this be?

This mystery has come to obsess me, as it has so many others. Tom Robbins, in Still Life With Woodpecker, explored the question, “How to make love stay?”

I thought I’d solved that one. I was positively smug about it. I knew I had a love that would stay, as certainly as any fairytale princess. Nowhere will you find a fairytale that ends, “And they lived happily ever after until he fell in love with someone else and betook his bod from their shared bed.”

So many love stories end thusly, alas, and my own as revealed in the grit-grey aftermath proves not so different. Of course, ‘the end’ has not arrived since we both remain very much alive, but the bottom-line agreements that seemed so solid have evaporated into the thinnest of airs.

“I changed my mind,” the universal human prerogative. When heart’s eggs are placed into a single basket of love, however, a simple changed mind can result in serious breakage. I’d reached an age at which one is expected to know better, but really, how could I know? I had never been in love before.

And what an intoxication, what a sweet vacation to neverland that love proved to be. Still, since somehow now the ground has met my butt with a jolting, daunting thump, I must grumpily cast about for a replacement for the soft bed I’d made with my once-heart’s mate, all the while cursing the fickle fate that shuffled our cards into this new shape, with a new Queen of Hearts slipped into the deck to take my place.

That wild card, old Joker, tickled my lover with new choices and new temptations. New voices now whisper sweet nothings in his ear, while, I imagine, fresh new ears listen raptly to old words that must have grown stale in his mouth when whispered to me.

Love went south, and my bitterness is bottomless, yet hope doth spring eternal, doth it not? My heart leaps and crashes these days with painful regularity. The leaps are caused by visions of my love returning to me in some new day, his current fling flung, he falling back to land on our bottomline where we stood so long.

The crashes, of course, come after, cold water coursing down my spine with the recurrent realization that he is no longer mine, that he does not think of me when he comes, and that no further love will be made by us.

It seems, then, that when love is no longer made, memories of past love must fade, replaced by new which grows stronger as it is fed.

I protest, futilely, that this is not the way it was meant to be. We merged in a vision of limitless love, with a polyamorous plan to expand our bond to include others in the fullness of time with the ripening of trust. Time filled and trust swelled which led sideways to this shock, this choking hell of loss.

Irony abounds, yet I lack humour to appreciate it. My love surrendered his side of our vision with a swiftness that sickens my once-faithful soul. Out of sight has proved, indeed, out of mind, while love remains, as ever, blind.

Still, this cynical, burned state of being can revolve surprisingly into renewed faith in renewal. Some dauntless, indomitable part of my heart insists on faith, insists that love, tears and willingness may yet bring once-bonded hearts around and that dreams may still come true.

My mind conceives rosy images to illustrate how this might manifest, yet always faith is laced with fear. I may be delusional, about to waste essential life carrying a still-smoking yet extinguished torch for one who may move on, never to return.

He shares my dream, or cares to, but the desire that inspires it, I fear, is mine alone. I’d simply abandon the thing by the roadside save for a nagging sense that something essential may yet remain in the dirty bathwater of used love. Regardless of his ability to stick to commitments, my own are non-negotiable. Babies must not be tossed.

Life comes without guarantees, but I would give much for the gift of precognition, that I might focus my energies along the direction of life’s flow and not against the stream of change. Too often I have been blindsided by unpredicted shifts that left me reeling, pow, didn’t see that one coming.

Once again, I return to my default position of openness to all possibilities. Closed doors can rust shut, and though the wind blows through the holes, it feels like a cleaner way to be, to me. And love may surprise me, blowing from unexpected directions, manifesting in bodies currently unknown.

I will not say no.

I have a myspace page now, it’s pretty bare bones but it has songs available for listening, including my Christmas songs. They’re much better quality recordings than what I’ve had so far; from a recent house concert and recorded on good equipment. I’ve made the Christmas songs downloadable, so please feel free. Enjoy. And Merry Christmas. If you have a myspace page, please add me as a friend. I can use all the friends I can get.

myspace/phoenixwolfray