Driving down the highway
Stormclouds
have turned to rain.

Droplets
splatter
against the paine.
Streams of possibility
Gliding over the horizon

I stick my hand out.
It returns dry.
The feeling,
I’m perplexed.

No rain, graces
my palm. I was taken

back to when my
old man failed to show up
or would slide
away just as suddenly

as he appeared.
The sense that something.
was off started to rise
then disappeared in a flash.

A big wet one
hit my palm.

Why I keep the fire alive, I don’t know.
It wasn’t particularly strong,
or explosive.
You couldn’t have used it to fight any wars,
or heat a city.
From the outside, it was nothing special.
Destined to flare, flicker, then fade.
But to me,
it was soft and warm.
Just enough to keep a hope alive.
But what if that hope burns brighter?
Brighter than I could dream?
Maybe it’s not a hearth, strangled in the crib,
but a wildfire, being nursed to devastating force.
I don’t know. I guess an arsonist
is more interested in the lick of the flame
than its bite.
It’s selfish then;
keeping these embers a glow.
…I’m fine with that

The bone dry
hand of stone cutter
works away.
The clink
of metal on stone,
scraping,
dull and full,
How many strikes have they laid
trying to form a new passage?
Humans taking up the work
nature left unfinished.
But they might disagree
saying nature did the hard work
bringing the stone to this point
from a miles deep furnace
and all they’re doing
is hitting a stone.

Everywhere I could be
your scent persists.
Vibrant.
Brissiling.
Blooming        out
to the edge of sight.
This bed of flowers that follows.
What fragrant colors
fill my day: Platinum, pale gold, indigo
as you linger on me,
rested in rich black
soil. So familiar
it seems a mirage.

The urge came.
Desire filled my breast
and before I knew it
I was flung from one corner to the next,
a branch iced over and shivering
as the tempest of want threatened
to shear me from my past,
to break me.

The urge left me
yearning to be carried away
to a place far removed
from these safe harbors;
over lands where I knew no names
and had no kin,
To a place unfamiliar,
but where the breath of God filled the air
and made sweet the prospect of new beginnings.

Marble is cold
like a lover, scorned.
Hard. Cutting.
It rejects heat.

Yet,
If you should touch
that frigid matter,
painstakingly, you can bring it to life;

make it look like there is blood
flooding through that stone.

when i think of you
i smell bleach.
it permeates my nostrils
soaks its way into me.
i feel the wretch,
holding it just in the back
of my throat
it’s not that you disgust me
no, i disgust myself
with my entitlement
with the casual
way i wanted to use you
for my validation
when i knew how you felt
and even though nothing ever happened
i still feel *****
so i clean my mind and soul
trying scrub away what the
shame that lasts under the surface
it's a stain i don’t think i can get out
elbow grease be ******,

when i think of you
i smell bleach
so these days i don’t think much about you