her lips fragile like
watermelon

when

he broke her trust.

you can do
          whatever you want,
he says off camera,

touch them.
          grab them.
whatever.

sometimes,
he gruffs,
          I can’t resist.

sometimes
          I just can't stop
kissing.

          to him she was nothing but
an edible arrangement.

is a child running
into a busy street.
Only inattentive
and
lazy parents
let inspiration die.

My thoughts of you
are like hundreds of seagulls
on two sides of a bridge,
some perched on small
islands of ice, others
floating on frigid water.

Or maybe they are
like roses in the wintertime -
budding but not blooming,
waiting for some warmth,
or like the once fragrant petals
now fallen to the ground.

Christ and the Poet
declare the same cry,
“to those who have
eyes to see,
let them see.
To those who have
ears to hear,
let them hear.”

Depressed are my poets
because they lack the marketable skills
of my singer-songwriter friends
who, though they are still poets, at least
can play in a band or be staff writer
at some boring record label.

You know the place, where
good art goes to die.
It’s stripped and beaten,
forced into some man’s pocket book,
which consequently gets shoved
into the pocket of his sports coat.

But even the poet doesn’t get
such awful treatment.  No, the poet
puts out a few lines to be read by who?
No one.  That’s who.  Just a few other
lonely writers on a forum - that’s who’s
interested in poetry these days.

Fog, like the sigh on a tired man’s pillow,
rests upon a snow covered field.
Golden grass, aging and dormant,
stands like broken glass
on the snowy walls of
deep roadside ditches.

Ten brown mourning doves
perch upon black power lines.
Juxtaposed against a gray sky, it seems
carefully composed, like a painting.
It is so unfathomably beautiful.
Awakening to wonder is like this.