When I was green, the heavens oft did frown,
With tempests dark, yet sometimes pierced by gold.
My garden, scarr’d by rain that beat it down,
Bore naught of fruit its gentle womb might hold.

Lo, autumn cometh with her solemn tread,
And I must seek my grove, now left forlorn.
The yield I ought have gatherèd lies dead
By briny tides to grave and shadow borne.

In soil thus sick, by salt and sorrow marred,
What hidden balm could nurse a seedling’s breath?
May blossoms dreamt in sleep the frost discard?
Or must all bloom be choked by time and death?

An inward fiend grows glutted on my pain,
It drinks my heart and sings in tones profane.

Thy hollow eyes like haunted lanterns blaze.
In silence dost thou bear thy soul's unrest,
While madness cloaks thee in a shadowed haze.

Did sirens draw thee with their viper’s breath,
To drown thee in a brine of love and fear?
Or didst thou dream too close the verge of death,
And wake to find no guiding angels near?

I knew thee once all fire, fierce and fair,
Thy voice a flame that sang in measured grace.
Now wand’ring winds do toss thy golden hair,
And chaos paints strange sorrow on thy face.

Yet rise, O Muse, from ash and bitter rain
Let verse restore thy light, and break thy chain.

Quick thoughts crack your calm
should I call someone for you?
Wambulance inbound..

I do not walk alone
I drift,
something watches in the still,
a breath caught in curtains,
a pulse misplaced
in plaster and dust.

The dark is not a void.
It watches.
And waits.

Sometimes,
when I reach for the light,
I swear it leans closer
It touches me
breath on my neck,
skin prickling like wire.

Do you ever hesitate?
That single moment,
when you glance
toward the corner of your room
and your chest locks,
because something
might be
watching?

Not there.
But close.

Not seen.
But still
seeing.

I do not believe in ghosts
demons maybe a different story
but something knows my name
in a voice made of cold.
I hear it sometimes,
when I move too fast
or breathe too loud.

The shadows aren’t still.
They twitch.
They blink.
They wait for me
to turn my back.

There’s a weight behind me
when I’m alone.
A tension
like eyes trained
on the center of my spine,
waiting for me to crack
like an old floorboard.

You can laugh.
You can say it’s all in the mind.
But my mind has rooms
I don’t walk through anymore.
Not in the dark.

And fear
isn't a child’s story.
It's a hand.
Pressed softly
on the back of your head
when no one else is home.

In my quiet mind,
no secrets, no need to lie
only time stares back.

Lonely clock unwinds,
each thought echoes with silence
no one waits inside.

I run in your mind,
looping like a whispered name
you can’t let me go.

But where do we meet
between your dreaming of me
and my fading self?

Just because
I speak of marble
doesn’t mean
Michelangelo whispers in my wrist.

Just because
I name fire
doesn’t mean I stole it
from Prometheus’ ashtray.

I said David
but not yours.
I said God
but not the one
in your tidy chapel of restraint.

Excuse me
if I seem offended
but our poetry
is nothing alike.

You bask in the religion of restraint,
while I
build cathedrals
from collapse.

You drink from Zen porcelain,
cool and pale.
I sip lava
and call it communion.

Your gods are lowercase and quiet.
Mine arrive
wild-haired,
bleeding bronze
and speaking in tongues.

Just because I breathe
where you’ve once stood
doesn’t mean I’m standing for you.
Art is not a deed,
and thought has no landlord.

Yes, I say Nietzsche
but I carry him differently.
Where you saw a hammer,
I saw the shattered sky
and wrote the thunder.

Yes, I echo Rilke
but where you chased the angel,
I let it break my body
and sleep inside.

Do you claim Rodin
every time a figure bends?
Does Giacometti live
in every stretched grief?

Let’s not confuse
the use of a word
with the theft of a soul.

I am not imitating.
I am incarnating.

Let me build my riot
while you tend your minimalist view
then call it everything else,
Let me drench the stanza
while you count your syllables.

Form is not crime.
Expression is not excess.

I wasn’t made for clean glass galleries.
I am basement smoke
and bombed-out breath.
I am oil and gold leaf
on wood that won’t stop splintering.

So keep your calm.
Your precision.
Your borders and white space.

I will keep my howl.
My dripping paint.
My blood-wet diction
and firelit silhouettes.

We are not alike.
We never were.

And if I ever wear
the same word as you
know this:
I embroidered it
in the dark,
with my teeth,
while you were busy
measuring margins
looking for similarities
in mild abstraction.

And now you arrive
not with fanfare,
but as thunder held in the finest silk,
a hush so loud the clouds kneel.

You walk,
and the world answers
the earth flowering in your delicate shadow,
as if even dirt remembers
the scent of goddesses.

The wild rose holds no beauty,
no scent that can be compared.

You are the sun rising through cathedral glass,
stained with wildflower tones:
blue forget me nots,
turmeric yellows,
wine-dark crimsons,
lavender bruises that hold the hush of evening.

Your skin
oh, your skin
a canvas Van Gogh might have dreamed in fever
trembling with each stroke,
sun-drunk wheat gold,
laced with dusk-heat rose,
lit from within
like a lantern floating on an endless lake.

Your eyes
each a Monet morning,
mist-swaddled and shimmering,
like rare symphonies soaked in rainlight,
flickering like cello strings
plucked beneath gleaming starlight.

I hear you
in the hush between wind gusts,
the low hum of honeybees blessing a bloom,
in the breath of river reeds
bending to your passing
like sacred monks in prayer.

You are a madrigal sung in falling water,
the harp hidden in riverbeds
a sound no recording could capture.
Only ripples
know your frequency.

Your presence is an orchestra of moments:
the aria of mountain dawns,
the lullaby of petals torn by breeze
falling softly to the earth,
the rhythm of a thousand painted suns
in the belly of a Kandinsky dream.

I close my eyes
your laugh,
the clatter of silver in a velvet room,
a storm behind stained-glass windows,
a jazz note improvised mid-heaven.

I try to describe you,
but language buckles.
What metaphor for skin that smells like memory?
For eyes that hold entire equinoxes?

Shall I create words
only I understand
syllables that tremble,
tones that shake the earth
just to explain your undescribable beauty?

You are not one flower.
You are every bloom in disobedience
the fire-throated hibiscus,
the shy hellebore,
the rogue jasmine
that climbs past every boundary
just to find the moon,
reaching for the stars.

Each time of day becomes you.
You are dawn’s breath on a violin’s neck,
noon’s blaze caught in gold-threaded fabric,
twilight poured into a wineglass of silence,
while midnight kneels
in hush, praying
in indigos and magentas.

You step into my world,
and the scenery forgets itself.
Even the mountains lean closer,
hoping to be repainted
in your palette.

None can compare.

Even the stars
fall back
to make room for you.

I worship you not in silence,
but in explosion
a thousand golden strings breaking open,
a field of irises trembling in sudden light,
the last note of a requiem
held longer than breath itself.

You are not a destination.
You are the arrival.
The divine storm at the edge of longing.
The shape of the answer
before the question can form.

And I,
glowing like fire beneath snowfall,
sunrise beneath the cathedral of my chest,
waited
just to fall into your name
when you finally call to me