Everything

Encircling one another with naked arms,
the enigma of creation,
all that could be called god
is in this.

The world begins with our love,
warmed by our mingled breath,
and set in motion by our own beating hearts,
echoing each other's voices across the gaps,
pockets of potential between us.

All that is warm, fresh, and new,
bursting with honest joy,
true euphoria sings
beneath the skies of our contentment.

We hold this world
between our brushing bellies,
and pin infinity between our blessed foreheads,
and in the end,
here between us lives
all that we will ever need.

For You, Buddha

And it was then
when my words
dripped
from your lips
like rain falls
on the surface of the river
the body where it began

It was most surely then
when I smelled
the poetry
on your skin
through the forest
and over the mountain
so many miles away

I do know it was then
that I breathed
knowing that you too breathed
and I burned brighter
just knowing that you
were out there
looking for a reason

Bone Love

Your love is my joy and my sorrow.
It is your profession of love,
unsubstantiated
that creates this fear in me.
It is not you I doubt,
but your constancy.
I am assured that you
are firm in your belief,
in your opinion,
of your love.
It is the endurance,
the reality of that love
that leaves me cold,
questioning.
A love unsaid is dead.
The love we force upon ourselves
and the love to which we cling
feel the same.
Both have bones of desperation.

Fight Fair

I am a detester of whispers.
Hater of hushed laughter-
the slivers of spite that wedge themselves-
into eardrums and tear ducts,
beneath nail beds and
rupturing the smallest of the heart's blood vessels.

Shout out your discontent.
Clarify your contentions against me.
Use facts and speak plain,
that I may refute your nonsense
and retain my pride.
Spare me all your veiled contempt,
I refuse to be shrouded thus
and spoken of in third person.

The River Whispers

My river speaks in whispers
the sound of it's voice reaches me beneath the rumbles of traffic,
grievances of sea-birds
and the chorus of leaves in the wind

It's breath smells of mud and stones
as it smears the dampness of growing things
inside my nostrils

To me, it murmurs secrets
why the maples crowd it's banks to watch
it's slow parade to the sea
how it's waters, siphoned from beneath the mountains,
tastes in the mouth of the ocean

It unravels mysteries of being bridge, hurdle, artery
to the beating heart of this world
and in it's hushed, trickling voice
it imparts the wisdom of enduring-
the beauty of moving, always to bigger things



The River Whispers by Dakota Farley

Whats Left

The world wears away all that is
into nothingness
billboards and road signs
now tattered and indecipherable
are testaments to what this Where used to be

Grooves worn in dirt roadways
and footprints in soles of shoes
are evidence of steps that took
all the Them's
from this Once Was
and into oblivion

Shards of glass
in the rotted window frame
flash in the sun,
brief flickers of memories
from when our Whys lit the day
and night
and kept Us roaring through all the Wheres
picking up Hows and
throwing them to the side of the freeway,
as aware of When as the ruins are
here in this ruined Now.


Whats Left by Dakota Farley

Divine Mysteries

I hold them before me in my mind-

On my left, a perfect golden youth
small in stature but so steady
a father's eyes in a young face
so solid is my Peter,
the Rock form which all I have
is built.

On my right, a tall, thin, dark shadow
pale as a ghost with the stance of a broken man,
a ruined temple
pain and passion swim in bottomless brown eyes
so wretched is my Judas
whose betrayal came in loving kisses.

How I can love one so selfishly
and the other so selflessly, always in the wrong order-
is more Mystery than Divinity.



Divine Mysteries by Dakota Farley