Fourteen years old, a time so new,
I heard of love, a word for few.
My mother, father, said it true,
But not the love I looked for, through.

Night and day, in books and rhyme,
I searched for answers, all the time.
Just four small letters, plain and clear,
But what they meant, brought me to fear.

One morning, on my school way,
A homeless woman, old and gray.
Her eyes like glass, a broken view,
"Young one," she whispered, "Listen to this."

"You search in vain, you seek it wrong,
You must walk this tunnel, dark and long.
Go in alone, where shadows creep,
Some go inside, and never keep
Their minds quite right, they lose their way."
She turned to mist, and slipped away.

I stood there stiff, with shaky knees,
Heard echoes deep, inside the space
Was that love screaming? Or just pain’s trace?

Then faces moved, a shifting light,
I saw her there, so clear and bright.
She glowed, a ticket in her hand,
A victim too, in this strange land.

An arrow struck my pulsing heart,
Another tore my soul apart.
And still I walked, the path untold,
Into the hum, a story old.

The tunnel had no end, no sign,
Just unseen hums, a scent so fine
Of old, old rain, a whispered quest,
My own voice spoke, putting to test:

"Love isn't found, it finds your soul,
And leaves a wound, beyond control.
A mark that never truly heals,
But beautiful, your spirit feels."

I never saw that woman more,
But in the dark, I hear her roar
Not at me, but with a grin,
Like she knew all: the way out, further in.

In shadows deep, she bore the flame,  
Her woven grace, none dare to blame.  
Within her arms, my grief would fade,  
By her truth, the world is made.  

Her heart’s a well of honest tide,  
No insult dwells where love abides.  
When I do love, her soul shall mend,  
The woman holds what earth defends.

Your hands compose an echoed hymn, a whisper sung in shadowed dim. No brittle notes, no fractured tune, just soft-sweet murmurs, worn in bloom.

Where silence thrives, your fingers speak, a fluent warmth, both strong and meek. Each brush unfurls a secret art, the quiet lexicon of heart.

Knees snapped backward,
forced into worship without choice.
Was it triumph, or was it hunger
that made you loom so big and tall?
Did you drink the pleasure
of frightening the small?
Monster black-furred tyrant
you thrashed the skyline
to clutch a young heart in your fist.
But even kings have rivals.
The lion wears a crown
dripping with other creatures’ blood.
The ram carries prophecy
etched deep in the bone of his skull.
The bull dreams with one eye open,
hooves stamping the earth into gold.
All rulers, beast or man
hold their toys
until the toys grow teeth.
And teeth, once born,
chew tomorrow into shape.
The mind alone
is the crown that lasts.

Three women at the river’s edge,
bare feet digging into the cold,
playing that wicked game
hunting guilty pleasures,
dragging sin from her dark bed,
laughing loud, trembling wild
in the ruthless lap of lust.
Their hands don’t just touch
they carve borders into flesh and bone,
claiming, mapping,
finding fierce truths in each other’s fire.
Behind them, a desperate cry:
Don’t stop. Don’t ******* stop.
The river doesn’t care
she rages beneath their skin,
this Love they name a curse and blessing both,
the song tearing loose:
Oh my God, oh my God,
oh my ******* God
don’t stop, you savage witch, don’t.
**** all men and their chains.
The water shudders
bearing the heat of fevered bodies,
waves crash like a scream,
wild, sharp, relentless
******-waves breaking, breaking.
At the river’s ragged edge,
they spill their longing like blood
holy, savage, untouchable.
This is their cathedral,
their war-cry,
and no shadow anywhere
dares claim they weren’t here.
Love calls.
Love burns.
Love breaks everything.

Between question and answer runs a river of blood
each question births its own fierce reply.
Silence is a shroud we drape over the self,
and in the age of ****, silence is a crown of fire.
Poetry sheds its skin of metaphor, naked and raw;
the question strips the poem to its bleeding bones.
Strike a poet with your thought
but beware, deepen your metaphor before you knock.
I have heard the clumsy verdicts of my time
ears deaf to beauty, tongues sharpened as swords.
I answered harsh when the hour demanded battle,
sweet when the story’s soul cried for grace.
Rhymes are prisons and wings alike;
sometimes I pass through as a ghost,
more often they seize me in a tempest,
and I pour the hunger of my craft into their veins.
I drank deep from the storm of eloquence,
kept wild bees buzzing in the nectar of the line,
drove wolves from the bloodied pool of metaphor,
wrestled lions in the arena of chaos and form.
I have played the lute that blooms like a war cry
for the cities and for the Bedouins’ raw, untamed howl.
I have read to poets whose hair turned to silver ash,
while their verse remained green
poems born in joy,
and poems that claw at the guts of grief.
Some verses are prayers that thunder like storms,
some are lust’s own savage offspring;
from these, I have cleansed myself
like washing away a dark, ancient curse.
Poems are women, each a flame,
each a world of light and shadow.
And beauty itself is a poem
a young woman distilled
from the fierce nectar of femininity.
Yet still
I devour poems.

tight enough to hear my heartbeat in its seams.
Sir’s scissors slid up my thigh,
cold bite tracing the vein,
a slit opening like a whispered threat.
Safety pins hold the wound shut
for now.
The hem’s been hacked raw,
frayed strands kissing the tops of my stockings,
air licking skin that should be hidden.
Three shots of Chivas burn through me,
liquid courage, liquid sin.
I lean in close enough for you to feel my breath,
close enough for my lips to graze your ear,
and I say,
Some women wear lace for beauty.
I wear it to watch men bleed.