Words. Words. What an odd word, the word word is.
It has vowels and deep sounds.
It grumbles and roars.
The sounds percolate in my mouth,
Unfamiliar, yet free.
And it comes to a close,
my wits at an end.
But what end?
Where have they ended?
Where does it stop?
Stop. Stop. Stop.
And begin again.

Exceedingly underwhelmed,
I found myself in awe
of my own vacant stupidity.
Oh, how we often
fail to grow wiser,
and instead lose
our clear vision
with time,
the way the rain blurs
the window
yet cleans the air.

I grew tired of the sun and the snow;
of the night and the day;
of the right and the wrong.
Lines once so clear
began to blur together.
I grew tired of searching
for something more than what I had.
I grew tired of being happy,
just as I grew tired of being sad.
The days were long,
but nothing felt so long
as the days I spent with you.

Our vacant selves plastered
together in some vain attempt at intimacy.
And yet,
I've never felt further away from someone.

Take a deep breath,
and forget about death.
Once more, I set the stick aglow.
My fingers smell of tobacco.
Oh, I wish you could know.
Tenderly I blow.
I want to let go,
let my habit lie fallow,
but I'd miss the flow.

This is precious cargo.

You kiss like it's going out of style.
You kiss like you're already inside me.
Heavy breaths, panting,
arms and legs tingling.
No need for words
with kisses like those.

Those kisses are poetry itself.

Your sweet compliments
bring a flutter to my knees.
It's not out of politesse
that I smile and say, "Oh geez."

In your presence, I feel at ease,
though my mouth feels like cottage cheese.

Saying such things out loud is hard.
For me, this has always been my guard.

Her thoughts
grow like weeds
through swaying reeds.

In her head
exists a garden
as bright and as varied
as the tulips of Amsterdam.
Each canal lined with bikes,
the water flowing from one to the next.

If not careful, though,
that mind will overflow,
overgrow with the seeds
of past ill deeds.

She sits still now,
thumbing through her prayer beads,
pleading for the protection
of some modern-day Diomedes.

I kissed a boy in France.
He asked me to save him a dance,
but I didn't like the speed of his advance.
He never had a chance.
Love -
is it all just happenstance?

a single stream of light
filters through the muddy sky,
illuminating the dead and dying trees,
stripped of their leaves and color
by a harsh winter.

In every lonely winter, there's a brightness
that seems to stretch on into eternity,
and it is in this spot that beauty
infiltrates my mind and turns ageless.

I wish I knew what to say.
My feelings are like clay,
they bend every which way.
I spend nearly every **** day
just trying to be okay.

Maybe this is a cliche,
a girl who fights with her padre,
I keep going astray,
my issues I always downplay.

I wish I were a blue jay;
so I could just fly away.

I stand in lines
and wait for better times.
The sun shines,
We **** on limes,
tequila on our minds.

There are all kinds.

So I pass out my dimes
to pay for the ******* fines,
as we listen to the chimes
and the pretty, pretty rhymes.

Yes, I have been wined and dined,
but I have also been worked to a grind.
I'm no mastermind,
but I have tried hard to align

the faults of the self
with the faults of the rest.

Wherever I go,
I go without you.
You told me I could visit
whenever I wished.
A kind lie, to be sure.
But a lie,
nonetheless.

If grief is a wave,
then when will the water ever still?

With a heightened perception,
I observe the sensation
of my thumb on my fingers
as I rub them together,
the clock ticking away at 4:45 before me...
There are blue ink marks on each finger
and the air tastes of stale coffee.

Everything feels very slow,
and I find myself,
once again,
waiting to go home,
waiting for the clock to tick to 5:00.
Everything so slow,
with nothing to do except wait.

The blinking cursor
forever fading in and out,
mocking me
for my inability to create.
The words don't come
as they once did.
Blink. Blink.
It's daring me not
to stop typing,
so I don't.
Words flow.
Ideas flow.

Who can tell if any of it
is any good anymore?

Had I come another time,
I never would have met
You.
I never would have seen
You.
Just one wrong turn of a corner and
You
would never have entered my life.
How strange a thought,
Living a life where I didn’t know
You.

I awoke to the soft sun
of a crisp autumn day.
Feeling your arm around me,
I breathed in your scent,
the most ****** aroma I know.

Leaves are exploring space
as they fall to the ground,
now yellowing with time.
They look so free
as they dance and twirl.

I feel your breath grow heavy
against my neck and you awaken.
Your lips are on mine now,
as I wonder if you think
about the dancing leaves like I do.

I never wanted to be young and stupid.
I longed for the respect of my elders,
and I achieved this through acting old,
even though my heart was young.

It's only now that I realize
being young and stupid
is a gift,
not a curse.
Being young and stupid
is permission to live
as wildly and as loudly
as you please.

So let's drink too much,
sing too loud,
and have too much fun

while we still can.

People are like flowers.

We begin as sprouts,
so susceptible to harm
that even a vague breeze
may blow us out.
The only way to grow
is through the careful nurturing
of another.
Under proper care,
and in the right environment,
we bloom,
each of us a little differently.
We exude beauty
and absorb pain.
We feed off of both the sunlight
and the rain.

Like flowers,
we are so very alive -
creatures of the Earth,
and so exquisitely designed to be just so.

Charming and beautiful,
glowing with iridescent youth,
they swarm about me
in their languid days.
Some wear all black.
Others adorn themselves
with baubles
and rainbows of color.

No matter how fair their skin,
or clothes or speech -
no matter how rich
or poor they were born,
they are all the same.

The clock ticks for each
at an indifferent pace.

I walked through a burning house
and found I was alone -
all the others had fled,
yet forgotten to warn me.

The mirror is the only one who speaks to me now.
It tells me of my beauty,
and bemoans my fleeting youth.
It curses the briefness of my body,
and of my supple bones and bare *******.

I envy the trees and the butterflies,
who found their beauty too acute to share with me.
I envy the lakes and rivers,
whose beauty will only grow with time.

As I wilt and fade in color,
the world shall grow ever fairer, ever nobler.

Such is life,
and such is time.