No pain, no gain

My mother often said, that if
there in no pain, there is no gain.
Gain, what gain? I would ask. She would
smile and let me grow old, and then
one day when she would forever
vanish into the world of mirrors
I would wonder if that was pain.

Did your mother vanish too, in
the world of mirrors where words
are inverted and meanings are
seven fold,

did you love and lose?

I have often picked up a stone
and thrown it into the mirror
not to find lost people but to look
through the delicate cracks it made-
I would keep on pelting stones till it
would  break into smithereens- the
smallish pieces always made poetry.

I have walked on those pieces sometimes,
 to let my feet bleed the colors of
my insides, such soft patterns it
would make under the summer
moon. My pain would softly speak to
me and make me its friend, and
when the moon would set and the
crows shall sing an arbitrary
tremolo- I will carry that pain
as if it were a beauty, and I will carry it
through my apartment and into the
highways where love gets run over
and people get lost.  

Names

The ennui of home takes me far away

To a land where things swell and sway

I can’t name that land, I can’t say

These images sweeten in a nameless way.

But if you ever could name it right

Sure, it would be my divine delight

For names have these strangest ways

To remind us what we loved on long lost days.