Prelude,
Skin was scorching,  
Prickling our naked ankles.
Whispers of passion—amounting to the indefinite.  
Excitement overriding fear.
Your smirk—it was scorning my wit, but all the while I was spinning—
Trying to outdo you.
Challenging the norm of lovers before me, despite those many warnings.
And yet, here I am, brushing against your infamous lips,
Having more intentions than I care to share with you,
Because I will be the exception.
I, a determined revolutionist bent on transforming your philosophy.
The inevitable vulnerability, the alleged helplessness found by your touch—
You were all talk, and nothing I couldn’t handle.
___

Interlude,
Something encroaches now.
A force unplanned.
It violates me. It breaches the wall of my veins.
Slithering, swimming —
A parasitic force of which I was convinced I was immune.
Biology’s symbiotic model; forever tainted by our act.
For many a love was given in primal flesh, yet goes unrequited in spirit.
I believed I could break this cycle.
I, the revolutionist
Believed I could topple your deeply set pride.
I believed I could crack your shell and pull out the viscera,
Bleeding, pulsating in between my fingers, and let the mass slide from my hands
To fall upon your chest, floundering in plain view.
I imagined that your eyebrow would raise, your lips would part to form a
Contorted grin, you would sigh, and then admit,
“Nicely Done.”

I believed you would be impressed.
I believed you would be impressed…

____

Epilogue,
Wit is waning.
Skin is cold, rotting… and wasting.  
My beautiful body is rotting.
And I cannot admit that you were right,
Lest I would rot more quickly.
Still unyielding to your claims,
Only so you not think of me as fragile,
Not because I think I may win.
Clinging to the hope that you may someday learn to love
This broken, yearning body.
This fallen revolutionist—
All along a convenient satiation of flesh.

Selfless spring
Would've ripened
His freedom...

Alas,

Lady Winter oppresses.

I remember when I was younger
Like you.
I didn't know what I wanted until
I got it.
Didn't know
What I didn't want
Until
The heavy breathing
And friction of bodies
Eventually
Rubbed a hole in my
Heart.

I left dozens in my wake,
But how was I to know it?
"A one night mistake,
Whatever."
Another person ghosted.

Now I'm in your wake,
Upset I didn't see
That I'm a casualty of exploration:
You didn't really care for me.

writing to realize myself,
realizing I love
what I find.

Mind is a cello;
Inspiration, its bow.
Love, its timbre.

Quite often,
a memory of you will to settle lightly on my forehead
whilst I lay in bed.
I brush it away, and then the persistent little fly will inevitably find its way back onto my deadened hide to
lay
   down
       its
     pestilence.  

Though, last night,
I did resort to set these thoughts to flame,
and then I watched your vestige float away
on melancholy clouds of loveless smoke.
Drifted then did I to restless sleep.      
             And there,
the sullen ashes from my fire fell      
amongst impassioned ghosts you'd left behind;
hiding there, in refuge of my mind,
and words held captive with them intertwined.

So then with every settling debris,
from sleeping lips a fickle utterance fell,
"Leave me, darling, come not now, for see;
a vow from you will not once more bode well."

Cowards avert fate,
The tenacious, challenge.

The indifferent...
are happiest.

You sang me many a whimsical sign,
Yet the firmaments my purpose fought,
And now it seems a misled love begot.
Alas, a wilted rose, my beauty be for naught.  

Yet now that I profess my heart be thine,
Wilt thou allow thine honesty to falter?
Nay, it be not sanctified by thy Father’s altar,
Thus none could blame thee be defaulter.

So, Wilt thou love me with lips like wine?
I challenge thee to sip as thou art free,
And surely for my form your ***** shall pine.
Prithee boy, Wilt thou instead love me?

Nighttime's rest evades me of late,
Waking long before the hour of eight.
Sweet dreams and nightmares wake me, amalgamated --
A compensation for day's despairs which I've abated.

From sleep I have this vision of a sun-kissed dusty road--
A familiar place from which this story did forebode:
There came two women in a speeding car who, at my sight, did slow
And both inquired about this path on which I solemnly strode.

I squinted my eyes and I cocked my head,
Saw a traffic boot on their car tire and said,
"This path is a diversion from the realities we've fled."
The two women laughed, and soon away their car had sped.  

I was left in a cloud of their dust, feeling very much alive--
Accepting, somehow fully, that their booted car could drive.
Now I see that none of slumber's sanity did survive,
And yet on that dusty path, I somehow still did thrive.

Sounds glide,
graze against your lips,
and in the tides of words get washed.
Words that are honest, but
too ****
BIG
for the
time we have left,
so

SPIT.

Underneath our masks
we paint our faces too pale;
Fraudulent smiles
Only must we wear in this play?
Tragedy makes the inks run

Audience sobs too,
yet we are too numb to vex;
Merely convincing
Plot: ignore true emotion
Please enjoy our props

Sensationalist
amusement at its finest;
Ready made to sell
Come one, come all and feel
Masques and poems enhance the play

Scripts all written by
poets, Saints and Prodigies;
Artless art makers
Publish our dear Mother Earth
Her manuscript grows everyday

Their realities
denied with good intentions;
So that we may live
A life of meaning and play
In a world of vast settings

I'm ******* tired and
I don't want to mix people's ******* drinks
I don't want to direct plays for ******* kids at camps.
I'm just ******* tired,
and I'll always be ******* tired,
so I'd rather at least be ******* tired while
I'm pruning vines with you.

Then we can drink wine
and sleep together
for three more months.

human hearts yearn.
when not a plea remains,

beating ceases.

"Nothing like a good smoke,"
They say.

Maybe I'll start.

Strange;
different words,
differently arranged,
yet nothing's changed--
Yearning remains.

A novel is writ
from the brush of a knee.
Stranger in the window seat.
What's wrong with me?

Me;
Before You, I was
Steeping in an invented
Self.
Comfortably
Immersed in
Oblivion.

You;
You looked at me,  
With kind eyes,
Having seen so much
Failure;
Nonetheless eager
To try.
Nonetheless willing
To be the
Extractor of my
Soul;
Unclogging the drains
Plugged with vile
Misconceptions.
Filtering the murky mere,
Instituting
Clearer waters.
Affirming that I had been
A victim of my
Body—
An excess of cells, merely
Bitter
Of their ephemeral
Purpose,
So concealing the
Intellect—
That which was
Truly sacred.

Us;
Philosophers;
Bathing in our own
Blood.
Thinking and feeling—
Basking in
Questions.
All for the sake of
Some redemption.
Claiming an awareness of
The world,
And dismissing the
Futile cycle of
Our mission.
Nonetheless,
We are eager—
Willing
To try.

Feeling weak.
Like I am the loser,
Because I care.

All I want
From you

Is me to be
Enough.

One page required...
Wrote three.

Lost some sleep to
Explicability.

lying in a droplet of water and shifting in and out of dreams

I am Crimson when all is blue

your hand becomes my hand and the song is an excuse to be close and the sleep is an excuse to recognize that we are boundless when we are together

the universe envelops us in a wave of blue
as well as the room
spilling over in tandom
with the setting sun

now it makes sense.
everything I know means nothing
unless we can share it

There's a woman drenched in blue
walking in a cold stone room
circling in a blinded way--riddles raddling out of her brain
and into a shoe.
what to do, what to do.
she walks with armoured gate.
hardened in nature,
speaking her truth,
she holds a hand high to measure
her worth
and it begs the question: do we believe her?
I don't dare go inside,
for worth dwindles with time.
the shelf life on her truth--
though certainly dire,
is short and sweet as vermouth
and society must hear him
before lighting the pyre.
I, a reporter,
root for her-- her biggest supporter.
through a peep hole I can see
the man, and then she.
but I can't type too loud, or the alarm will sound--
one eyelid closed, ball point pen stabbing down
to release some subliminal seismic rapture:
invisible to me, but gushing all around.
Our collective furry, coming un-wound
while unwavering folks still capture
a crooning boy in their arms
despite his cloying false charms.
She throws the shoe, blind,
spilling its rhyme
onto the stone floor
a moment of quiet
and some piece of mind...
but ending somehow
the same as before:
There's a woman drenched in blue
walking in a cold stone room
circling in a blinded way--riddles raddling out of her brain
and into a shoe.
what to do, what to do.

Simply enjoy the present,
As if the pending weren't impending.

What do I do with this longing?
no bags can carry it.
I grab at the mist
it floats around my head,
clouding my vision.
Outstretched hand returns with nothing.
An inkling of wetness, or something.

Waiting for the vibration in my pocket
a sensation
as close to aviation
as I can find.
To a dragonfly's wings.

I always used to write when I began to feel the weight of the world.
But sometime last year, I think that I fell into a hole and I forgot how it had helped me.

Every effort started to feel futile.
I stopped trying to make sense of my lonliness,
And I gave in to my
hopelessness.

Now I'm beginning to realize
that these feelings of dread
They are all in my head.
And I can put them to bed
By putting words in their stead.

I can use my rhyme
And up the stairs I will climb
Of sorrow and depression
With this tool of expression.

The more wine the less time
We have until you fly.
I hope you don't forget why
You loved me.

Underneath the overhead window, overlooking a chaotic city,
on cotton sheets,
gathering breath longingly like
soft blades of sawtooth grass in a woven basket,
I store them in this vessel, the size of a pea.

As humans we cannot truly feel the present moment,
as all sensations of the present have already been devoured by the past by the time our brains can reckon with them.

With each word that you read of this poem, another micro moment will have passed, and the seeds sewn by your consciousness will already be
setting to sprout.


But underneath the overhead window, my fingers circle the center of my sensation,
and my consciousness is caught beneath their pressure,
and submits
to their rhythm.

Outside a storm converges. I hear soft thunder,
the wet smell of rain, and the pinging of
droplets.
I devour their energy between my legs,
surging into a complete connectedness
with the world
and with myself.

And although the present charges ahead, I’m carried now languidly with it: eyes closed, legs spread, breathing the world in deeply.

My heart is skyward.
I feel light at the sound of low flying planes, recalling my home now so sweetly.

I am a wilted Trilium,
for months fed by a foreign smoggy sun, with roots longingly outstretched for rich appalachian loam,
but grasping instead at the plumes of dust left behind overcrowded buses.

Still, I've grown.

You were a pile of bones.
I loved you before I met you,
blindly as one should, staring at your photo through a phone.

I didn't know, but my heart knew, as I sat nervously in the car.
Scenarios of sickness,
unfolding in my brain,
spilling out like oil.
I tried to clean up, but everything was already greasy and black--
primed for you to leave me,
before you even laid down on my lap.

Then I held you.
You felt so soft,
and gentle.
But, instead of joy,
I felt dread.
You were too calm.
You didn't wiggle, or whine.
I said "It's probably fine,"
but your body was ticking like a bomb.

I feel foolish, dear pup,
ashamed of my dreams on the way home,
of you running, and playing, and growing up.

But you did not play,
and you did not eat.
You were so tired, and woeful, and weak.
I knew when I heard
your little heartbeat,
and your raspy breath,
right next to my ear as I slept.

And the next day,
on a cold metal table,
you slipped away quietly.
I hope that you know I loved you entirely.

Aside from crying,
all I can manage to do now, is to laugh.
Because, while grasping at straws I had thought
"You can't spell Olive without the word 'live.' "
What a cruel cosmic gaffe.

We have felt the gentle pressing of time
Its palms on our chests.
Together hand in hand we breathed in sync
Against the weight,
Plotting our escape,
Breaking the molds man made for us,
And carving out a new caverns in the clay
Flooding them with joy,
Recasting our forms, in stranger poses.

One day we will be too weak
to carve,
We will step back to admire
our work:
Our caverns,
Carved
Over years
So deep.
Sweeping sculptures
left behind.
The pressure of the earth above,
pressing down
again.
And the press won't feel
as gentle.
We will
be tired,
too weak
to breath
against it.

It's ok.

Holding
Hands
We will
Sink
Into
The
Earth.

The grass on my palm is pining.
The dogwood blossoms fear no risk.
We are blackberry winter in waiting.

But the walnut rests,
until the final frost has passed.
I'll wait as long, or longer, for a kiss.