The True Chapters of Life
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Year: 2019

ddangler

Strangers

Passion & Desire

Any given moment of any given day, morning or night, strangers may visit.
These strangers have different names: desire, hope, lust, urge, yearning, even want.
They pass through as quickly as a flash of light.

When these strangers knock, and one is not alert, we may attempt to turn them away, deny them, even belittle these harmless, potentially beneficial strangers.

This moment of rejecting them can also occur in a blink of an eye, without even knowing we’re doing it.

Yet even though they are denied entry, these strangers leave their fossils behind like ancient visitors. Their fossils have been called emptiness, loneliness, weariness, depression, even heartbreak. It seems, much like an archaeologist, we may be more acquainted with their fossils then the strangers themselves.

When we can welcome even their fossils, mere symbols of death with an openness and acceptance, I suddenly notice those lesser know strangers, whom I turned away earlier, have returned.

It is then when I feel whole, as if I am the creative, imaginative person I was born to be

ddangler

Life my Lover

Living & Dying

The windows of loss wide open to the breeze
Uncertain of what loss to describe
I take my pick like snatching a leaf from inside a tornado

Loss, sadness and heartbreak is my partner
She is my lover giving me back lost pieces of myself
In my union with her I rest in her gentle arms, against her quivering chest of weeping sorrow

My mother has left the bounds of this earth
My father slowly slips away from his rotting, failed body
A friend blew his head off from life’s heavy hand
And my beloved sisters body betrayed her snatching her from our
desperate grasps

Letting a marriage turn to a friendship, rips away all I knew of certainty
And daddy’s little girl now proud with breast, fly’s away like a free kite in the wind

So I make love with loss and discover her lovely wetness
She brings imagination and creativity through her dark, mysterious eyes
Loving me like no lover could, she kisses my forehead with a caring assurance

She shows me what love is, while inside my orgasms shake my world with pleasure and with doubt
Forcing me to leave behind old parts of myself
And gather up of what remains

She, life gives all I need to live

-dd 2010



ddangler

Like Father, Like Son

Living & Dying

Holding his naked head in my hands I felt a different man. 
His hands raised me as a child.
Now he was a child himself, broken and fragile.

The plain, at times distant man, who couldn’t speak the words “I love you,” was now a vulnerable old man, needing me, his son, to hold him and love him.

As I stroked his head, I saw his skin so close.  It frightened me.  
His hands had freckles just like mine. I recall as a child, drawing imaginary figures around those freckles with my fingers. 
Now these hands, that once wiped the spit from my mouth, were in my care.
This man, whom I loved so deeply was a stranger to me at that moment.  
That moment when I despised him for who he wasn’t.

But I knew he tried with all he had inside
What kind of man am I and why could he not lend his guide
when I was lost and afraid with no place to hide

All I needed was for him to say was, “Son, I’m sorry for your pain, I know it hurts and I wish I could make you feel better. I have no answers for you, but I have arms, a safe place where you can weep when its time to weep, and rejoice when its time to rejoice. Your tears are your strengths and your sensitivity is your manliness. I am here when you need me.”
This was all I needed but he was not able to do that. 

But still. I held him there in my arms and wept.  
His hands, so strong, still full of life.
Yet he too may have wept for what he never got from his father. 

I may have caused him grief. And his grief came from what he knew he could not give me.
The more we love our children, the deeper we grieve.
We know one day we shall leave them or god forbid, they leave us. 

The more we love, the more we grieve, knowing we have more to lose.

And so that day I loved this man, just for who he was.
I held his head in my hands as he fell asleep…
forever and forever he shall be my father and I his son.

dd- September 27, 2009

ddangler

A Mind of its Own

Love & Relationship

I’ve fallen in love, only a few times before
But now I know when something is sure
It speaks when I can’t hear, trust cannot be sown
My heart has a mind, a mind of its own

But trust is its language, it speaks it so clear
So trust I must choose, if I want to live near
Near my center, my bones, my insides so true
That give me shape, beauty and shadows of you

Though love is a choice, whom we choose is not ours
So live close inside and trust in the stars
The stars and the moon, a pearl and a stone
Our heart has a mind, a mind of its own.

ddangler

A Feather in the Wind

Letting Go & Holding On

My hand outstretched before me 
A feather rests there in my open palm
Released in flight 
It’s a mere hint of the heart of its creature

My fingers want to caress, savor, and treasure it but my heart will not allow it
It has no roots, no home, no owner; I would not know what to do with it
Other then wiping my brow with its insincere nature

To move, it will only blow away
To close my hand around, will only reveal how little there is
What can i do with what looks so beautiful on its surface but is dead inside

A feather in the wind is beautiful on its own

ddangler

The Dark Night

Living & Dying

I feel safest at night when I am without my reflection
At night I see me and not a mere hint of me
I see who I am and who I am not; this brings me peace

Though I love the warm sun streaming upon my face 
I feel compelled to keep one eye open to see what lurks around me
In the day all I see is the reflection of me, in those whom I love

In this mere hint of me, lies madness
I’m addicted to these shadows of ourselves, to what we possess
Believing they are us

But the clock ticks and slowly, our souls haunt us
…….Until we can no longer bare it

But in the night
we come face to face with ourselves who we’ve avoided for so long
And then suddenly see the face of God

dd- November 2019

ddangler

The Day of Our Birth

Living & Dying

We have a drive inside of us to improve the person we were born as

Striving daily to be more, to be better, to be different then who we are

This drip continues day in and day out until the dam breaks and we realize then, that we’re not only perfectly acceptable the way we are

But we’re profoundly important to this life and the life of others simply by being that wonderful creature from the day of our birth

ddangler

In The Dark

Pain & Joy

God lives in our empty days
If we can close our eyes of knowledge and empty our hearts of expectations
we can see nothing less than the face of God
When we’re empty we soon discover we’re full

Darkness is our unconditional friend during our labor pains of grief
And where there is grief, there is death
And when we see death we see what we never knew
That death is the mother of beauty.

dd- December 2009

ddangler

I Found My Voice

Creativity & Conformity

I found my voice
it’s not in my head
I found my voice
it’s not there
instead
it’s somewhere down inside close to my chest-
it’s been there all along
it seems to know best

At least it does when I listen
to its idiosyncratic ways,
since its tone lacks any judgment of my arrogant haze

I found my voice
it’s not in the words I form 
rather it speaks through a gentle nudge
and brings no expectations to perform
for anyone but ourselves

This voice is our true self
so why would we live for others
when we know our true soul

Fear and doubt don’t live inside this voice
it reveals our destined path
but
we must be ready to lose what we think we love
for something bigger then the rest

Each of us have this same voice
yet
few actually hear its call

It requires great courage to pay a price of what it asks of all

dd- December 2009

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