I want to plant my seed of love

in your heart like soil

and watch it bloom in your sunny windowsill gaze

and drink your flaws like nectar

to be the hummingbird who dances nimbly on your finger tips

who puts your tenderness in the spotlight

who no longer needs to beat its wings one thousand times a minute

and to show off its bright feathers

my grandparents lived on the side of a mountain
to the west a coast and in-between a railroad track
in the mornings, I would lay
stationed in my grandfather war cot
it is soaked the tears and blood he shed for this country
I was too young to understand this
I am only waiting for the train
my dog barks and growls at the rattling picture frames
of the locomotives clackety warble
I crept upstairs to find my grandparents having coffee
my grandmother a white plump cigarette
my grandfather a gentle grey bear
a toy carousel waiting for me
I sat under a dim table lamp
moving the carousel around with my fingers
watching the horses twirl and my dizzy boyish gaze
sparkle at the wonder of my grandparents
who finally want me around
who finally asked me to sit with them
as they have their quiet morning
I was not always so quiet
when my brother was awake we would throw rocks
and sneak into my grandfather shop to peek at his gun collection
he did not like this
my grandmother never had the patients for rambunctious adolescent men
waking the dead with the television
and screeching for us to play outside
I never knew my grandmothers love or never felt it
unwelcome on her stage
always playing the role of nuisance
not until this morning
this significantly raw occasion
just maybe I wasn't such a burden
but after that morning when night swiftly moves in
and tired eyes feel like old college roommates
I still wait for the melody of trains
I still creep upstairs to find my grandparents drinking coffee
and they tell me to go back to sleep

o sweet irony!

your voice
like ***** melting on skin
has cold-clocked and castrated
me into a submission
and I'm losing pieces of my heart and lungs
the only things that seem to be
keeping me
alive

to fill these voids with love and cigarettes
is to fill with joy and destruction

if death is the answer to life
aren't these things keeping me alive?

o sweet irony!

I saw you pass me by in your lonely-star state
and I thought if I ever had time to say anything to anyone
now would be the time to tell you

why you would ever want to collect dust in a place like this where all things
and dreams are swept out the door at night in place of the lies and hostilities
we all feel during our shift to keep watch of strangers and best friends,
why you would think of responding to me still baffles the shy kid inside my
oddly shaking heart while he's standing next to you asking
if you would please just dance with this broken toy and you did without
question or reason, you just took me and shook me and reminded you
of someone you still think about on the days when you feel lonely
and the people here just don't sing the way I can or meet your eyes
in the hallway where I'm trying so hard for you to not touch me
yet you are trying to graze my chest ever so subtly that everyone seemed
to notice the smile on your face or how quickly it left you
when that criminal came waltzing in, holding your emotions hostage,
knife to your throat, heart knocked out of wind when all you had to do
was ask me how to breathe again, why you would ever want that
still makes me wonder.

I didn't notice you coming towards me
or looked your way when you sat two inches too close
but my heart exploded like a fire *******
when it felt that electric pulse you gave off
I lit up a smoke so fast
purple zippo
red heat
you grabbed my hand and lit your own
and with a cloud of smoke
you said
*I've dreamt about you
I had a flower in my hair
you had on these yellow sneakers
ain't life funny stranger?

we swam in fields of melancholy
that shimmered like amethyst
the wind caught a fistful of your hair
and it lingered the smell of orchids
I can feel
melting into your softness
I can hear
a heart beat so clear
it was tangible
makes me want to rip out every tooth and every nail
for not holding you
as long as I could
as tight as I could