FOR ALI

as millions of mirrors in the night sky

glitter with the reflections of all your selves


I wander beneath them in the field of my loving

each aspect of me lit by one of your shining points


oh I am defined by the night

that is to say


I am defined by you

who light this night


until I am one of your shining points....







Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

UNSELFING THE SELF

nothing I imagined

brought peace to me


like finally restraining

that yakking narrator


composing my biography

as I lived it and made me regret doing so...


his chatter is a dull distant white noise

like traffic on an interstate a mile and a half away


or a seashore rustling at the edge of sleep

that wakens me to this blessed silence....





Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

FIVE YEARS

five years...with the length of five years...


and life is indeed a beach

where out on the dead shingle

ruins of what has been wash up

putrid in end of their time


out of the sea-wreck comes the new life


we who are carcass feed we who are scavengers

the tiny crabs scuttling thought the waste

to begin again in this dark damp surge of life....





Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

so you've lived a life of regret and sorrow

with time outs here and there

for the joys that reminds you why

you loved life in the first place


but there's no yesterday or tomorrow

the time and place is always here

and now and there's no reason to cry

when in the end your sorrows leave but a teachable trace...






Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

UNDERNEATH ALL OUR CONFUSIONS

for you I'll be some steady voice

(your personal chaos reining in

my personal confusion)


giving me an objectivity

I wish I could train on myself


but we're all here to serve one another

we're all here to teach one another

we're all here to talk to one another


even if what we have to say

is as confused or hapless or useless as our hopes


in any small measure of forging our ways forward

at least we poke our way into whatever darkness prevails

at least we have each other for company


my voice...and your assent...and everybody murmuring

around the edges of our exchange


we may all think we're alone in this...and we are to some extent

but we listen for voices and hear ourselves

and adjust to the silence in our hearts....






Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

and so this work...


for you the value is in the thing done

for me the value is in the doing







Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

HELL IS HERE

oh Hell is pressing down on my today...


more so than usual...

above and beyond the daily bread and circuses


of our smug righteousness...


oh and I wait...and I wait...and I wait...


for some release that we still the daily hell

the One mandates for our spiritual seasoning...


I'm done...I'm finished...what the hell's the matter with You???





Content (c) 2008-2013 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.