Your body
is an artwork
hung up like a Monet
it brightens up my day
A masterpiece
that I call mine
appreciated each morning
'til night without warning
I cannot
turn away  
a beauty so immortal
so sublime and so artful

For a moment,
We were both here.

Some part of me knew when you arrived.
The sun burned a little hotter, the moon lingered a little closer;
Flowers seemed to point in your direction.
I could feel the wind change its course whenever you laughed.
But while you swam through clouds and crowds
I could only watch from afar as I had to push past the forces
That pulled every part of me to where you were.
But you were here. And that was enough for me.

How funny that the streets I can trace like veins in my body,
Were so new to you, strangers to your eyes.
But for that single, fleeting moment,
You walked through them, not minding the newness of scenery,
Leaving your trace with every sneakered footstep.
I hope the city held you like I would.

My language must have tasted different on your tongue.
The words were as foreign in your eyes as yours were in mine.
For the first time, I could see your fingertips piercing through the barrier,
And God knows how close I was to connecting mine with yours.

Our stories were finally synced,
Finally on the same page.
I didn't mind that I was one word in your book
And you were a whole chapter in mine,
I was just fine with being any part of your story;
Even just for a moment, even if I wouldn't be a part of it again.

Now you are there.
And I am still here.
But I look for you in every thing I see,
Wondering if you saw the same.

And then, you are here again.
But just for a moment.

As a boy growing up in rural Iowa
I thought love was curve of neck,
tone of voice, hang of breast,
thick of hair, length of step,
temperature of hand, hue
of skin, size of soul;
I still think so.

I'm not here
I'm not here
I'm not here


It's just happening
I'm just hurting
Aching, to not feel
the pain.

But,
I'm not here

This isn't real

This isn't happening

Who am I

a weightless soul

drifting by in the sky.

You are so much to lose;
and for how I've gained
I'll accept all your burdens,
sorrow and pain;
but is it worth it for you?
with all my mistakes
I know they've caused you

melancholy and disdain.


It's mid-December,

but it feels like spring
such as the world, we are an
odd, complicated thing.


I just can't see you seeping
anything useful from me.
I am the raging forest fire that

mercilessly swept across the trees.


Lovely,

I don't mean to burn you,
I simply try to breathe


I can't help that it's within my nature
to destroy everything I meet


in time
with a heavy laden heart
my love

you'll fall to ashes at my feet.

I could swim in your oceanic eyes;
But when you give me that look
You lay dynamite on my iron skin
And you open me like a wound:

Spirit of fire that burns
Like a blade of sunlight
I sacrifice myself as I die
Into you, you ancient name of fire;

And your temper between the jaws
In the abstract geometry you propose
Lays me in an impassive torture
And you load ghosts of yesterday
Into Tomorrowland,
My cry and the cries of the torturer.

Be it the first dawn,
The last dawn,
We are bigger than the night
But the dream of us fits on the bed,
The bed of rain,
The bed of storms,
The liquidity of our bodies
As the moon wakes and asks
For our spirituality,
Souls entwined, we tear the night apart;

But we aren't always in the mood
At the same time,
Vehement bodies on invisible clocks
We can't see ticking,
You speak in Winter,
I speak in Summer;
Our words vanish like
Syllables of vertigo;
We are lost between the argument.

For all the good and the bad
I would make love with you
At the precipice,
Hanging at the cliff;
To fall in love or fall to our death,
Each is a timeless matter
And through it all I
Know that I am alive between
The polar shifts.