I think I missed it
Failed to hear
the clarion call
The notes that pierced
the night sky
calling everyone
home

“And now it’s cold,”
You hear her words
On the wind
But even her voice
Offers no warmth,
For the moonlight
Paints illusions
That she’s yours
But she never was.

It’s not the “if”but the “when”,
That idea humming in the
Back of your mind-
The question echoing
In hushed tones, on repeat-
when will I succumb
To the ache to be
Consumed, primally,
Viscerally, again,
To be muscle and nerve,
Sinew and synapse,
To exist only as breath and bliss-
To let thought and process
Dissolve under his touch?

That siren song
Is not yours alone-
It reverberates through my hungry
Frame, my five senses
Alert and famished-
Overwhelming me with
An irresistible longing
To take, to own, to possess-
That urgent call-
our bodies electric, alive with
An unrelenting Desire,
flexing like a heartbeat-
Burning for the other side of
Midnight- when our
Breathing becomes harmony-
And sensibility bows to
pure sensation.

In the dressing room-
Mirror upon mirror,
Folded just right,
Creating a continuum
Of dimensions in which
I stand in silent observation,
Am I the man I see
(Or wish I saw)
Or am I merely A man-
Like any other?

Over time I dissolve,
My vision shattering me
Into the parts that
Make up my body-
The veins on the back of my hand,
The knuckle dislocated, offset
By some long-forgotten
Trauma ignited by an impotent rage
At not having the right words-
The brown in my eye that reflects
The look of a father who gifted
Me this, and nothing else.
The creases that time has carved
In my smile-
A testament to the unforgiving
Desert sun’s ability
To break me down-
To the heart’s inability
To ever truly forgive,
Let alone forget.
Am I not greater than the sum
Of these parts?

I am all that the mirrors
Reflect upon themselves,
The testament to
What air and heat and gravity
Have imposed upon me.
But within the blood
coursing beneath
The skin, lives every song
That broke me, every poem
That fractured me,
Every sunrise I waited up
For, to tuck me in,
Every ocean wave that
Moved my small
insignificant self
Along the grainy
unforgiving strand,
Every kiss that destroyed me,
In the most perfect of ways-
And in those I am not
Merely a man-
I just Am.

Her kiss goodbye,
Full of tenderness
And heartbreak,
Stung of a finality
of a pity
More profound
Than I could process,
And now in the silence
Left in her wake,
I’ve nothing but
Regrets

“Poets never ****.”
            -V. Nabakov


Oh, but don’t we?
Our methodology might
Differ, our craft more subtle-
And yet the end result,
Escorting some poor soul
To the gates of whatever end
Awaits them beyond this frame,
Is abhorrently familiar,
Our motives no more pure-

We move in different mediums
Some artists in oils,
Others in brute force-
Working in time signatures
Of days and weeks, years-
not Mere seconds-
This is not impulse-
But words weaponized?
That is artistry refined.
We work in palettes of grays.

We need to know them
For the poison to take hold.
To work it’s way through
The bloodstream, through
Every muscle until it is absorbed
Into who they believe themselves
To be, something they can never
Change about themselves
That they are sure is visible
To every passerby,
Some fracture in the facade.

The planting of a seed,
A word, a phrase-
Insidious in its design
A dark spot on the mind
So small, seemingly
Insignificant, but the foundation
Upon which we build our
Scaffold, buried in some
Line of text, in some metaphor
That draws an indelible line
Between some worldly beauty
And a deep buried flaw
They try to hide from the eyes of the world.
It’s delicate business after all,
Planting self doubt and loathing
So ingrained that one is unsure
Whether they ever existed before
The thought that now destroys them.

I cannot wish
That these be the last words
I commit to paper for you,
That this is my grand exit,
these weak, lonely,
Ineffectual
Lines, my parting gift
To all that time....

I am rendered mute-
Cannot possibly convey
What you mean,
(Never really could)
But should these be
The last lines you hold
As a memory of me,
Here then-

I Adore you-
Cannot imagine
A world in which you
And I do not exist,
Nor do I want to...

But what god ever
Gave a **** about that?

Let me take your hands in mine-
Let my graceless touch
Memorize them,
Lift them to my face,
To my mouth,
Take between my lips
Your sweet fingertips
To kiss and bite to taste,
Let my tongue recapture the
Sugar-salt of you,
your palms, Your wrists-
my body quietly burning
with a melody of the
Intractable tenderness,
The vast immeasurable love
That our bodies understand
When words fail.