When I look at you,
I don't see beautiful legs,
or a gorgeous face,
I don't see perfect *******,
or eyes worth drowning in.

When I look at you,
I see through the material
captivating as it is,
and into a mystery
beckoning to the immaterial.

When I speak with you,
the rest of the world doesn't stop spinning,
but it slows down,
and the doubts and history,
fall away into the nothing
from whence they came.

When you touched me,
there was no ecstasy,
nor a beautiful pain;
just a simple warmth
which I never thought
I'd be able to feel again.

I fell in love with the way my name rolls off of your drunken tongue and you slur your way through the consonants. I fell in love with the way your touch wounds me with something like a bullet hole and you leave nothing but a band aid. I fell in love with the way I hear your voice scream "stop" through the smoke in my charring lungs. I fell in love with the way I can see your face at the bottom of my bottle, because we all know you mix best with whiskey. I fell in love with the way you watch me drive through red lights with a wicked grin across your lucid face. I fell in love with the way you leave a toxic haze everywhere you go, you make it impossible to not get drunk on you.

if we were alone, I would have
held you close,
turned you around, and kissed you,
rested you against me,
put up that armrest in between us
and sat in warm comfort together
but we were not alone
and I am absolutely parched for you

822

This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men—

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery.

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be—
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity.

The curvature of my fleeting thoughts
Have reached an unexpected capacity
To further torture my already tortured soul.
The distance between time and space is
A vague line unconcerned with
The confusing corrosion laying it's
Framework down in my mind.
The agonizing moments when one
Drifts away into a hollow truth of
Knowing that you will never be able to escape.

                                                      ...sm (11.23.14)