If I could I would live forever
inside a 10x10ft dorm room with walls higher than all your bottles could stack.

The next time you go home,
don't let your palm linger on the doorknob on your way out.
Just throw out the old toothbrush she hasn't come to use in months
and take down the painting above your bed
coated in colors that reminded her of *****, grass-stained knees and dandelion bracelets;
and don't pretend that homesick
is something you could ever feel without her shoes at the door.

drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end of my 2nd bottle
of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young girls in this
dwindling twilight
liver gone
kidneys going
pancrea pooped
top-floor blood pressure
while all the fear of the wasted years
laughs between my toes
no woman will live with me
no Florence Nightingale to watch the
Johnny Carson show with
if I have a stroke I will lay here for six
days, my three cats hungrily ripping the flesh
from my elbows, wrists, head
the radio playing classical music ...
I promised myself never to write old man poems
but this one's funny, you see, excusable, be-
cause I've long gone past using myself and there's
still more left
here at 3 a.m. I am going to take this sheet from
the typer
pour another glass and
insert
make love to the fresh new whiteness
maybe get lucky
again
first for
me
later
for you.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985

We found something worse than hate and love,
something that spawns when a heart is lost
and we thought it didn't exist, but it does
and we got hit with it's sun like the moss of a tree.

So now every time I fall for another one
it feels more like the ending of summer
and less like my favorite season.

Our mouths are loaded pistols
with golden bullet words that have no real direction,
spraying upwards towards a cloudless night sky,
but they never quite hit the stars.

I picked you out like a flower in a field
where the rain clouds stay,
where the ruiners of all good things play,
with temporary wars between you and I.

I moved your eyes like a chess piece
to wherever I walked in the room
so I checked into checkmate
so you could destroy me.
I thought you would have moved your rook
to E6, ending in a stalemate and us in love forever...

But you said "I'm so sorry" right before knocking my king over.

I hate your checkered past. I'm going to play solitaire.

I cannot explain you.

I cannot form my thoughts or emotions into words, but if I could make them into anything, they would be a rainbow of colors sky rocketing through the atmosphere and propelling themselves into the heavens.

You make me take compliments. You've forced me to see that I am worthy of life. I am not just taking up air. I am perfect to someone, even with all my flaws and misprints. I have a purpose. Even when I feel useless and so disconnected to the world, you yank me back down. You are an anchor, keeping me from floating too far away. You are a shoulder on which I can cry on. You are a raging fire when determined and calm water when provoked. You are kind and gentle and everything I want to try to be. If a person were to describe you in perfect detail five months ago, I wouldn't have believed them, couldn't of fathomed a person like you existing. But you do exist. And you let me exist and spin around you, like the moon to the earth. A satellite. You are my Earth. I am your Moon. And you are perfect.

I cannot say what I want to. I cannot express what I feel right now. But I hope you allow me the time to show you.