We knock on doors to find if there is someone on the other side.

Lately I've heard knocking.

Desperately wondering if I am still there.

But I haven't responded in the fear of having to admit that no one's here now.

No one is behind the door anymore.

I am just a voice.

And there is nothing left to look for.

Just an empty room and a body.

-Percy

i watched him become - in my unbecoming.
still, I lay - unraveled.

hello, Melancholy.
old friend.

I watch you sit across
So in love with me
You won't say a word
Let alone look at me

Then hurricane Katrina
Seems to come back
Spinning in my head
Grey matter takes a whack

You with me
Strange things come true
The universe turns into a canvas
Impossibilities are few

We could build a starship
To fight alien invasions
Go back and forth in time
Exploring parallel dimensions

What if  we were captives
In an Intergalactic zoo
Invent ways to make love
Aliens won't have a clue!

Experience every fantasy
Only you and I can vouch
Exploring enhanced imagination
Sitting across the couch.

Tossing and turning, I lie awake.
1 AM..... 2 AM.....
Eyes heavy yet refuse to shut
3 AM..... 4 AM.....
My mind just won't. Give. Up.
5 AM..... 6 AM.....
The light and sounds of birds start to creep in
7 AM..... 8 AM......
and it's too late.
Not long and it will be time to repeat.

When you were a young child,
you wore your naive head in the clouds.
The vastness of space was your limit,
there were no social norms to worry about.

Growing up they told you,
you should pretend that you don't care,
so when your hopes would get devastated,
disappointment could give you a spare.

And now you find yourself wondering:
when did I stop following my ambition?
The thing you regret most when you die,
is your passion's creeping omission.

Besides, how can you ever win a game,
that out of fear you did not participate in?
Without your dreams you're a soulless ghost,
like a concaved snake's skin.

If only you're bold enough to walk your own path,
alienated and without an established map.
You will soon realize that your passion's just waiting,
for your courage to close the gap.

for Sally, Bex and Tonya, Denel and my beloved

<>

gods do not seek forgiveness,
or comprehension,
desertion, desecration, ascension
or condemning condescension

but how how they crave
just a good conversation,
to get a word in edgewise,
a nice chat,
entrée à, la tête-à-tête,
entre deux, deluxe-amis

a casually talking,
absent of
words of need and beseech,
reason and causality,
and no I or We pronouns,
sans enunciations and annunciations,
false hopes for incarnations, incantations,
set asides for life's grievous aches
all human requests, and some of God's commandments
for now, set aside,
annulled

just a talk,
some repartee,
but mostly an open ear lent,
an early morn quiet listen
over tea (he/she) and coffee (me),
paying attention to
both sides of an interactive story

as recompense for my willingness to be,
his engaged counter party,
my mourning gloomier cloudiness,
quick exchanged for instant,
rising sunshine warming glorious

my vista
of a bay dancing
to Tchaikovsky Swan Lake ballet music,
deftly inserted between
an Agnus Dei and an Ave Maria

mood music he said,
and we chuckled,
he/she was god and orchestrated
my tastes,
Adele et Dudamel,
comprehending my undesirable apprehension,
by granting my needy wish for
poetic inspirational composition contentment

all exchanged,
for just a good listen,
no judgements, in either direction

I am the god of love,
the one who makes you weep,
when you study your beloved's rising chest,
each uplifted breast heaving,
a confirmation blessing,
that her life is present
for at least the next second,
ready for your magi adoration

be not fearful,
this day we talk only,
as I pass by,
I have no business to conduct,
on your island of sheltering redoubt,
but to engage and unburden
for even gods
are required to confess,
and aging godheads do adore
a human shoulder
upon to rest,
a great invention,
(If I may say so myself)
and to whom better to address
than my only love poetry
poète personnelle

here he off-guards me
with a favorite injection,
Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings,
music so sweet that it never fails
to weaken my knees,
sweeping my eyes unto weeping
priming me with this first coat of
sounds so elementary soothing

he half-bows before me and says,

forgive me human, for I have sinned

in Dallas and Nice,
just this past week,
with forays here and there,
doing god's work

read your bitterness and struggle,
anger and forgiveness all in one crust,
furious curses and wails so plaintive,
my heavenly musicians weep from jealousy,
at the cries emanating from the fired fury song
of human hearts torn and love plundered

I am the god of love

and

the god of pain and all that is the

anti-love

(and to make me better understand,  
Schindler's List score, so sweetly,
he plays for me,
to clarify the atmosphere,
that death and love -
and the courage of understanding,
so oft go hand in hand)

write me a love poem for me,
no hymn or sonnet do I require,
for love is essence of forgive,
there is no perfect union,
that cannot stand,
with out this emotion of
conciliatory intermediation

tell me you understand
that the scales
of bereft befallen,
disparate chance interrupting randomized,
must periodic perforce
sometimes weigh more,
than the good of simple

balance tip that creative god spark within,
of which you write,
away from my bloodied, unsightly hand

write me one more love poem
a frisson semi-sweet and cleanly neat,
of good things sad,
but worthy of remembrance

you are not the first for this bequest to receive,
other poet's before and after,
will Jacob-wrestle with my angels,
battling to find the...

no matter

"my love to thee is sound sans crack or flaw"^

let your love poem
to me
be of whole healing,
for these disarrayed feelings
cannot forever persist,
the perfect balance you desire
is not on your Earth existent,
unobtainable

these cracks and flaws must and will come


and yet

love poems
will be our common language

and then he/she left,
leaving this poem behind,
born from my mind, yet,
carved on my skin,
written with the nib of my rib,
sealed and signed,
future undefined,
but dated upon my
cleansed hand's lifeline,
hand held outstretched
as if to say

“and yet"

He gave me dead flowers
So I can smell them every day
The rotten petals falling
The color of decay

The washed out sunflower
The dehydrated leaves
The mold on the water
The color of debris

The richly red rose
Now drooping to the floor
The color of love
Existed no more

But still I saved the flowers
And smelled them every day
And watered them with tears
To let them grow again.