They Won't Go When I Go

My son Dallas. His 19 years of life and the two years since his death, has taught me more about life, love, and the universe than I ever imagined I could have learned. He spent the first 9 years of his life as the happiest, smiliest and most adaptable human beings I have ever met, or ever will meet again I'm sure of it. He adapted to any situation in life, even the bad ones and the scary ones with a positive outlook, a smile, and a good little heart. He grew to be honest, giving, and full of promise.

But then something very sorry happened. Something irretrievable, something from which he could never return from. He went where he should have never gone, seen what he should have never seen. And it inevitably took him from this world forever. Too soon. Too wrong. Too unbelievable. Even through the dark and frightening years leading up to his death, he was kind, gentle, loving.
The demon that took his life could never take his soul. No matter what... he kept his beautiful soul.

And his soul, so tortured, struggled toward some small piece of that happy boy he was, but had lost forever. I know where he is now. He is in the eternal sunshine of happy. Where he always longed to be. That he had to die to get there, has broken my heart forever.

I dream of him every moment. I think of him with every breath. He never achieved stardom, but he was a star. No one knew his name but his name is in the Book of Life, recorded there for all time. He never crossed the ocean but the ocean is full of his tears.
He never said goodbye, but goodbyes mean I will never see you again. And I know I will see him again. I wait for that time unafraid, anxious to hold him in my arms, and see his soul glow with the happiness that eluded him in his short life. I see him in all the sadness of this world. But I also see him in every beauty, every shining sparkly thing the eye can see.

My heart is full of sorrow, I am full of lonely immeasurable grief. But I am full of the memories of being this child's mother, and it was the greatest gift my life has ever received. Thank you for being mine Dallas. Even for so short a season. I love you with every atom of my being. Every last particle of my soul.

They Won't Go When I Go


No more lying friends
Wanting tragic ends.
Though they do pretend
They won't go when I go.

All those bleeding hearts
With sorrows to impart
Were right here from the start
And they won't go when I go.

And I'll go where I've longed
To go so long
Away from tears,

Gone from painful cries
Away from saddened eyes
Along with him I'll bide
But they won't go when I go.

Big men feeling small.
Weak ones standing tall.
I will watch them fall
'Cause They won't go when I go.

And I'll go where I've longed
To go so long
Away from tears.

Unclean minds mislead the pure
The innocent will leave for sure
For them there is a resting place.

People sinning just for fun
They will never see the sun
For they can never show their faces.

There ain't no room for
the hopeless sinner
Who will take more
than he will give
He ain't hardly gonna give.

The greed of man will be
Far away from me
And my soul will be free
and they won't go when I go.

Since my soul conceived
All that I believe
The kingdom I will see
'Cause they won't go when I go.

And I'll go
Where I'll go
No one can keep me
From my destiny.

I won't beg
words from you.
Not waking,
or in dreams

where love
rises
above rooftops
or the stars.

Where it is
apt to be
believed,
God borrows
most from mothers

leaving
the cloud tattered
remnants
of their death
bloomed hearts.

Nothing Left To Tell You


His death stood between us like a growling dog.
Accusing, disbelieving. Dug in deep for settling scores
so far removed neither of us could remember one.
I wanted to say “It’s really all gone” as a question.

To say, for all your goodly sums, my careful spells
and long love he repelled too far out away from us,
breaking his rope anyway.

I wanted to say thank you. For him.
Brought in a time of goodness. A goodness brought that boy.

But I could only look at you, for the last time.
The goodbye already burst free and flown from my heart.
The profanity of his death cut deep into my soul.

So I turned away, small and heavy.
With the only thing left. Carrying away with me all the words
we will never again have between us.

My dear Beloved you are dead.
Dead on some distant star.
Me, I am dead here, below the earth.
We will not meet between the two.

Was it only yesterday I received the spear
draining you from me?
As if you had never burned in my bones?
Have you passed through me just a ghost?

There are no tombs of Kings.
Only men in the end. Only men
and boys scarcley born; authors
of great dreams trembling when they sleep.
Oh, it is so brief. Here in the earth.

I am troubled by so much coming and going
though I've watched restlessly the same road for years.

Letters come in languages I haven't learned
with luggage too heavy to carry.

My eyes never returned from war.

I sit their photograph in windows as lost and found.
Even the moon hangs like wet laundry.

I cry for myself.

Lying awake afraid- cross hung.
Teeth grinding the saviors from your eyes.

There were no hands to seize the pitch
of plague cast from those cliffs.
No ears to speak it into.

Pop culture Jesus broken down on the road.
The dead walked in circles around you
until morning yellow and tired- you let go.

Crashing through to the stars night is night-
is night whispering in the creekbones.

So many once to love you now grown thin alone.

Oh, heart! Never again to live and love
in these small hours of heaven?

Birds fly backwards...
seas recede from their shores-- I am a child again.
Dreaming you.

I speak to God. He listens and nods.
Answering no more forever.

Veins collapse like bridges.
Float like sea kelp.

What other business do they have
but to worry their skin of old bananas?

This secret war. So private you dare whisper it.
But you will reveal or conceal everything.

Words are mongrels anyway. Half assed attempts
or whatever is the opposite of otherwise.

First and foremost words are ghosts.
Hovering like shrugged ideas.

Like the whisper of a foreign city that aches in you.

Veins, secrets, wars...
unraveling in the shocking end
of the last sentence on the page.

Words fall like fools.
Don't they?

Blinking their miserable
rythym of melancholy.

Dying- it is so hard, so hard
in the glassy parts of me.

Your breastbone
pulled from my hair

from the Jesus Buddha Buffalo dream,
drying up into little stars.

Just when I think I have navigated the circle, finding myself in a different space on the spectrum, I look around and it seems I have not moved an inch. I have moved around and around I know and at times the circle looks different. But then there are days like today, where it all seems like the same dark spot. I haven't traveled so far after all?

Everyone I know has gone on with their lives, belly laughing, having children and grandchildren, taking vacations and getting promotions in their jobs. They have nights out, go to parties, socially connecting and making new friends. I look at it all from my window in the tower. Desiring it too yet.. having no desire at all.

You must find the ways to keep your child alive in your life while continuing to live without them.
It's because of their loss that you have come to fully understand the true preciousness of life.
You want to honor life. Theirs and yours.

But sometimes it so hard. It is the one thing you cannot seem to be able to do.
You crawl back into your shell and shut the world out. At the same time, wishing to embrace life again.
It can involve so much guilt and sadness.

I continue on in my journey......