I remember the way
the alcohol
lubricated our words to each other
and she told me those three
poisonous words:
"I love you"
Except she added
my name to the end
to make sure I knew
how important it was.
"You're the only
person I've said that to,"
She told me that night
as we parted ways

The next day she told
me that it didn't count
and that she was being
dramatic
and I remained in place
amongst those
who function better
as shadows,
withering under her
light,
hoping to hear the
meaningless words
again.

You don't know this yet,
but I'm gonna meet you
in a few days
and on the 13th of December
you'll let me be yours

My mother will hate you
for a couple of years,
but I'll leave the house
i grew up on
just to be next to you;
all the hard work and sleepless nights
will be worthwhile

Sixty months after that,
we're going to get married
on the 18th of June,
and our children will be happy,
i promise

I'm aware of all this stuff
because, twenty three years later,
I'm still in love with your laugh,
your jokes, your rants
and changing moods

I'll always be thankful
for that first conversation we had
eight thousand, three hundred
and seventy seven
days ago

For Eliot**

a man possessed awakes and blessing pronounces that the world needs another poetry site even though nothing new under the sun nonetheless the secret passion is coded and the white swells grow into a hurricane whitecap crescendo, lighting thunders cymbals and the non believers (how I want to believe!) quietly step forward
from unpronounceable places you never heard of,
no longer cowards, not a one,
invoking a blessing of:

"me too, I am a poet with something to announce new, and I've been sitting patiently in distress, looking for a place to say, see,
I think I can,
I think therefore,
I am,
a named human.
no longer an asterisk."

6/22/17  2:40am nyc

It's the pain which makes us surrender, otherwise who prays....

Freedom begins when you are not seeking validation from others...

I guess this serves as a warning.
To the friends and the loved ones
members of an active social order
wanting a life of something more than disorder.

Poetry is not a breath.
It is not an escape into a lesser abyss
that leaves you scratch free.
Or an opening and interesting guarantee.

Instead
it grabs inwardly at you.
It coaxes the trolls from the deepest
corners of the forest that you had
long since banished and left behind
and wanted to rid your mind of and
never wanted to see again.

The fire that had been stomped out
is reborn.

The crashing waves that broke the ship
fight again.

And poetry reopens the wounds
that you had hoped would heal
with time and with suppression
that had once filled and consumed with aggression.

Poetry is anger.

Poetry leaves the poet
drowning
in a river of currents when it flows
but out in the baking sun when
it stops.

The issue is
for a poet to be happy
with her work

she must also feel the
unhappy in her life.