Outstretched heart strings
Strummed like a flimsy guitar
So many miles from where you are, I sit
Impatiently and so weighted with anxiety that I fidget like a child
I am, at most, a wild ride that you will recover from
A streak in the sky from a passing plane
The arched white line is proof of something I fear will always remain fleeting
A gash, but the bleeding will stop
And I will be but a vexatious scab
That doesn't even scar
So far from where you are
It is as if I am not even real
Outstretched heartstrings
But no music you can hear or feel
Just the vibration of
A vanishing love

Late December rain 

Cool against my skin

It's a poor substitute for snow

But a whimsical winter portrait

Against the the streetlights when it's all falling down

And it's all falling down

Around me

I jump puddles and take in this city

That almost swallows me entirely

But it feels so good to be touched like this

To feel connected to this city's beating heart

So good to be part of something 

There is life again and beauty in an evening 

That sparkles with late December rain

My body aches with need

Bones beg to be fed
Awaken please
Parts of me that play dead
It is more than just touch
But touch too
The kind that can pierce right through you


Make your essence shake and your body ache
Tremble with yearning
Instead of learning to suppress this 
I obsess it's 
All I can think of
But what is love without need?
Want without some level of pure greed?


My body is my instrument
My heart makes it play
But my head is intent
On getting in the way

Dandelion

A dandelion

In a fierce wind

I cannot possibly keep it together

under these conditions

The tiny seeds take flight

And the herb is undressed without a fight

Where beauty was
A skeleton sways 
An eerie reflection in so many ways

I am an awestruck child

with tiny, clumsy hands 

I did not even make a wish

I just watched it all come apart

And every seed (like a piece of my heart)

Is scattered about


I know new life is on the horizon
But I am ransacked and empty
and unable to see past the destruction
to confirm the reproduction of something worth dying for


I am desperate
delicate
devastated 


Where flowers grew
A weed remains
When love once was
there is but a cloudy haze


Suddenly I am purposeless and hopeless
A weed amongst many
Lost in a green sea
And sick with envy


There is nothing quite like it
To ache in this still quiet
And sway in the wind of change
And change in the swaying wind

On Wanting More

An unquenchable desire

It is wanting water and swallowing fire

I am burning and yearning

And this desire is but a ghost

I cannot explain
A thirst I cannot contain

An ex-lover with no proper name

A wall with ears to hear my pain 

And moans of shame

A faceless figure to take the blame

This hunger haunts me the way a shadow follows

I am wayward but I wallow in this temptation

And choke on the contemplation

Of this anonymous need

Is it greed to want this world

To the very last drop?

To travel by train and feel as though each stop

Is the one I missed?

That each moment, though completely and utterly filled with bliss,

Is, all at once, unsatisfying and meaningless?

Wake Up

My dreams linger into day
They dilute my reality
And the singing sound that ushers me into day
Is but a chiming bell that has no meaning
Just beauty
In this dream-like state there is no duty
No consequences
No chains upon my wrists
And in this

I have flowing hair
And not one care that weighs enough
To keep me here
I am a bird
A gypsy
A child

And all of the colors are so bright
I can hardly recognize them
The clarity is such that it all appears brand new
I know at once
Yesterday's hazy view
Will never do again

You can it Heaven if you prefer
You can wait 100 years to wake up here
Live your whole life in fear
Of every morning's chiming bell
Ushering you into
A self-imposed Hell
Or, for the slightly less dramatic,
A prison cell

Same old sun on my skin

I am waiting for life to begin

Aging in front of mirrors

Bending to my fear

That there is no other side of the moon

There is a loom of a single cloud drifting through

The way I wish I could

The way I always dreamed I would

Before these binding obligations 

planted me here

For inspection by a mirror

Who does not tell me what I want to hear

But there is nothing new to become

Under the same old sun

The dawn of it
Beckons and bewilders certain parts of me
The parts that do not write poetry
The parts that cannot sit still long enough
To watch the sun rise

 

After so much dark
The light is stark at first
A quench to my thirst

The birth of something new
As delicate as day

On Losing Myself

In memories I have since dismissed
and kisses I can no longer taste
I loved you
With my deepest and damnedest
With so much force
It broke us into several pieces
It came shattering down
In a dramatic show
The sound of it echoing off
The world I had known
Reverberating back:
'I told you so'

It became a source of pain
To dwell on the remains
I lived in funeral black and endless gray
Hanging on the edge of that cliff
Built by weighty words you would say
They kept me clung
But, too, they kept me from ever reaching you
I stopped showing up in mirrors
For fear of my reflection

Bloody and beaten hands gripped that cliff tight
Then one night, they began to climb
Near the top, there was muted sunshine
hiding behind a cloud
After a night so long,
I questioned whether dawn still existed
My body quivered, but my heart persisted
Upon the mount, the sun broke
And my shadow stood
I gasped because I forgot it could
But here it was:
Blatant proof of my existence

The wind blows cold tonight

Through weeping willows and cracked car windows

It is bone chilling on bare arms 

who ache

to wrap themselves around something more

My head gives my heart the old 'do or die'

 My heart does not have the guts to go all in

Pocket aces but their stone-cold faces

Make it feel like I can never win

                                               

I have set my own life on fire

And it is raging

But I do not move from where I stand

Watch it burn with a lack of concern

Smeared across my face like a sun tan

I am apathetic to a lot lately,

Not just you

I just do not particularly care

And if that is not fair

Well, I know it is not, but

I was always the one to care

Always the one left standing there

When it was burning to the ground

Looking around for the arsonist

Who just so happens to double

As an illusionist

Scattered ashes

From something that never matches expectations

So I have none, and

You have no chance at disappointing me

Or putting out the fire

Since it is not a flame of desire

It does not burn for you

It does not fuel off any particular concern for you

But if you are able to handle that

Then, by all means

Light a match

A gift

A truth

Fireworks from my Grandma's roof

Distilled desire in a Pepsi can

I drink it while I'm young

While I still can

A few pounds over par

But a shot to the green

A hovering hope

The size of a SCREAM

Your eyes and something

I had never had

Made skinned knees and splinters

Hardly seem as bad

An icy cold December

A New Year's revelation

He sat and ate my heart out

I suffered through starvation

A pause

A tremble

It sounded so fun

But the Pepsi can is empty

The fireworks are done

My mother's in the shallow end

And as I'm diving in

I remember that July

When I learned (again)

How to swim

In Death

In death, I imagine love as the breeze
That dances through beautiful things like blooming flowers
And if this love was ever only ours
It is so much bigger now

Indefinable and immeasurable
But concrete too
It is the coo of child
The scene on a mild summer evening
When the sun sets just right
And omits the perfect amount of light

In death, love is always, always right
Ever-lasting and ever-blowing
Love is all-knowing
It survives after reason
Season upon season
Till our bones are dust and swept in the breeze, and
I think that breeze is love