The Silent Singer

The guitar is my journal. Her strings ring to the drumming of this breaking heart. She stores my sorrows in sonorites.

I know you must let go of the glitter in your hands. Leave it behind. Litter on the road. But for now- keep it in your hands to hold.

The streets are full of potholes but music lines the streetlights 
The sidewalks tear your shoes up fast but the rain cleans the dust and smells fresh. Theres graffiti on the pastel walls. Cars parked along the sidewalk and the drums beat loud at nignt and the coquis chorus continues on.  In these nights in old san juan. 

“We are how we treat each other when the day is done. We are how we treat each other and nothing more.” These lyrics resonate with me today.

Why do we always say you are worthy of love? Love is freely given independent of the merits of its receiver. It’s reception and it’s giving are a blessing. Why do we say we are broken? We are never fully whole. We are always fragments too. We are parts and we are peices. Simultaneously, old and also new. We never were fully broken. Not were we ever a composite whole.

Why do we say others deserve not charity? We judge their merits and their worth. Yet, we too have received gifts and suffering both deserved and undeserved.

If I am to be someone. Then define me by my love. I accept that there is losing. The more I lose the more I’ll love. Love is given freely and freely is returned. Maybe not within this cycle. But someday it always returns. Like the sea to shore.

Travelers love more freely
We care more and less deeply
Guided by intuition and chance
We love with impulse in a glance
Feeling the energy of brevity and equally intensity
We must be escapist’s
But also perhaps we live fullest
Because as the plane leaves the ground and the ship leaves the port
Everything we thought was significant
Now becomes so small and so poor


I traded my house and my car for the places I’ve been
All of my possessions become unpossessed
The chaos of my suitcase
Is littered with glitter and with sand
Sometimes we live more richly and more poorly than those that we knew
Who bought boats stocks investment and homes
I am not sure what I even know or don’t.

The white waves draw my feet too far from the sand
The spumes come crashing down and her tides now the shores have found.
After rolling in the deep
The sea foam comes hard down
Feeling its weight upon the ground
What was gone has now been found
The currents push me further
And sometimes bring me back
I like to touch my feet
But when I’m swimming I am free within the deep
And my spirit the seas good god I hope to meet
Out beyond the buoys
I don’t know what lies ahead
But I love the skies the sun the moon the waves
I’m healed no longer sad
The ocean always chases me
The winds blow me to and fro
I scare some people with this wild fearlessness
When the waves steal me I am at once at home
I will always swim far beyond the shores
If the waves take me then I am cured
If they save me I’ll return
I’m it’s silent roar
I hear music I hear chords
I can sing and I’m unheard
Give my voice back to the earth
I can whisper I can scream
I am will sing into the seas
I love to lose my voice in the quiet of the night
I always lose my spite
And the ocean heals the suffering of life

My mother asks me to turn down the sound
The winds and the waves
The ambient profound
As if I in my finite presence could hear her
I can’t even hear myself
My voice is somewhere in the deep
I long to swim too far into its greatness
And some may think this is suicidal idealization
But all religions center death as the beginning of rebirth
So I also see a sirens death
As being somehow reborn
My mind is sort of quiet here
I venture all alone
And if I’m not too careful then
I’d let the riptides wash me home
I’m also crashing white spumed noise upon the sands
Always leaving longing to go back to the sea and than the land
If I am quite careful then one day I hope I’ll leave with my feet parallel and underneath
To be drawn into the whirlwinds and far away from the reef
I’m always climbing on the crags
The rocks and urchins stab me
And I love them but I wonder how they only seem to putter because the farther that I walk away the father I hope to come upon the currents quite too strong
Nearer to the heart of whatever is hidden in her grief
And somehow in her sadness find the joy of the voice that once belonged to me

You speak in a higher register then you ought. Nervous in your own insecurities. As if your voice was faint and fine. You spin when you stand. As if you have ever stood uncertain.

Is it that you wish to leave and fly with the winds or to obscure the depths of your voice? With its low timbre that reaches into the deep Earth.

Do you not trust me? I who have cared for you for so many years. Do you not trust me? I who have protected and healed you. Do you speak higher to deceive those around you? For I know of the dark timbre that you possess. Do you spin to disconcert those around you? so that they do not know just how fiercely you stand? Why do you despise the darkness beneath my eyes? The weight which held within it poems?

Why do you hate my hands the hands that fed and loved you? Why do you look at me with so much disdain for I have learned to love you even when you do not love yourself and why do you look on my size with the poorest eyes as if despite my stature I were not wise? these hands have Fed so many. in love with you hate I have blessed feet thatyou say are too large have climbed mountains and despite your thin frame you have always ran. Why do you pretend you’re uncertain for I know all of your heart why do you pretend you are ungrounded for I know you’re mine and your hands every decision you have made I have guided every song you have sang with you I have song those lips which speak curses against herself speak only blessings of others do you care so little for me that you wish to be another do you care so little for me not to celebrate my worth.

You thought I was speechless and in my silence the more words I learned. You think I am incapable of decisions yet every decision I’ve made has been slowly strong love her do I guide you away from your values and I I’ve always keept you safe from harm, each moment of your life. I’m beside you every tear you have cried, I have wept. You think I am selfish and in your selflessness the one person you fail to Honor is your own soul that which was given to you.

When we are young we all have dreams of who we are and who we’ll be. More faith have I in our young selves then ever the person we should become.

But still unsure of where to be. For she have lived twelve lifetimes more. Her inner guide is thus betrayed by jaded and melancholic age. Despite these years grown. The wisdom she held within her eyes when she was but yet sewn.

She sings her songs with only a melody. No lyrics and no rhymes. And still years after leaving. Although she no longer cry herself too sleep. She has not found a home nor a family like before. And no words express the distance nor disintegration that this soul feels away from you. So who do we trust the soul who left for safety’s sake or the Inner child who guides us with her heart unknowing of gold nor our mistakes?