The rings on my stove have always been there.
They grow with every over-boiled ***,
Every spill, every mistake,
More indelible with every morning coffee and fried egg.

Today, I soaked and scraped and scoured until the rings were gone.

Maybe the other black and baked-on parts of my life
Aren't permanent either.

If I could get the right words
And the bait to bite,
If I could find the phrase
If I could say it right,
I'd search my thesaurus
And my dictionary
Check out every book
In my local library
For something I could say
To get you to stay
With me.

You be the raft
And I'll be the rudder.
We'll cast off unfettered
Unmoored but together
Till we reach the other side.

I look good on paper
Because I'm so two-dimensional.

My heart doesn't pound,
It 𝑣𝑖𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠.

I write a lot of poems to you.
You are the one who loves me
And you are the one who abused me
And it's strange
How both those yous
Get bunched together and mixed up
In my poems
And in my dreams.

The world went to hell
But together
We found heaven.

Before you go,
Can I get one more kiss?
Will you tell me about your day?
And about your tomorrow too?
And could you maybe stick around
Just long enough to share
Every day of my life with you?

A is for always appearing after appropriate
D is for denying deadlines
H is for haphazardly hanging on
D is for dealing with disarray

I keep refreshing that page
But it doesn't feel very refreshing
Anymore.

It’s a frightful thing
To throw words into the air.
For once they’re aloft,
It’s up to the one who catches them
To decide what they mean.

She looks
Like daisy chains and sand castles.
She sounds
Like the jingle of an ice cream truck.
She tastes
Like ice cold lemonade.
She smells
Like soft grass and soil.
She feels
Like sunshine on an endless summer day.
Is it so impossible
That by drinking her love,
I can stay young forever?

My soul is patchwork
Made of memories.
Swatches of what I've loved
Stitched together.

For every drop of my blood she spilled,
She shed ten of her own.
The barbs that cut me
Dug into her own skin
Always.
I was foolish.
I stayed and bled,
Because how could I abandon
Someone who was hurting more?

I'm collecting on my debt
For every thought I've had of you
That you haven't had for me.
That's 2,472,966 thoughts.
Yes, I brought receipts.

I’m just a witch.
In a suburb I dwell.
My home is my altar.
My life is a spell.

I brew my potions
Of tea on my stove,
Work green magic
In my backyard grove.

A ritual cleanse
With an herbal flair,
Lavender and sage
Shampoo in my hair.

My little familiar
Sits by my side,
Ineffable feline
Of wisdom and pride.

I arrange my belongings,
With patience and care
Objects of power
Both common and rare

A houseplant for hope
A guitar for joy
A pillow for comfort,
A childhood toy.

I welcome the night.
I wish the day well.
My home is my altar.
My life is a spell.

And love is my drug.

We've all done it.
We've had an idea for a poem
And picked out words
But the words didn't fit
Into our idea.
But they formed something else
And we liked the shape
So we expanded the idea
Chosen by the words
That we chose.
And at the end
We sign our names
And call it our idea,
Our pride and joy,
This poem we didn't mean to write.
And when that happens
Are you the author
Or did the words write you?

Hello my dear
It's me.
I'm you,
The one you gave your future to.
Maybe you thought
By now I'd be dead,
I know that you always saw darkness ahead.
I wish I could help
I wish I could say
The pain that you're feeling
Will all go away.
But I'm thankful to you
That you decided to stay,
And for all that you've done
I can never repay.

I hate the look and smell of you
The smile on your face.
The softness of your touch
The warmth of your embrace.
I hate the voice you sing with
It makes me want to cry
I hate the way I feel for you
I hate you said goodbye.

Steel is tempered in burning heat,
Made hard and strong through fire.
But flesh will burn and crack and die
When put upon the pyre.

Steel is ground and whet and honed,
Sharpened on a jagged stone.
But if you touch the grinding wheel,
Your skin is stripped down to the bone.

Steel is hammered hard and long
To give it form and shape.
But any part of me, when crushed,
Will only bruise and break.

This crucible of fire and pain
Is supposed to make us strong.
But you and I aren’t made of steel,
And we can’t last for long.

It's a cycle
Like night and day
A pill in the morning
A pull in the evening
And really
It's not that bad.

Avoid.
A void.
You
Avoid
Me.
It leaves
A void
In me.

She entered my heart like an icicle
Then melted away
Leaving only the wound behind.

When you said
"I love you"
I knew you didn't mean it.

Because "I love you" means
The thought of me
Makes your heart jump and twirl,
That all the silly idiosyncrasies
In the way I talk and walk and act
Make you smile.
It means you crave my presence
And think of me when I'm away,
Like drugs to an addict.
It means you'll still like me
Even when I'm sad.
It means you want to know me better,
To dive into my heart
And breathe the waters of my being
So I become a part of you.

And I knew you didn't mean it
Because no one would say that
To me.

We are all here
In our own isolated ways
Shouting our creativity
Into the void
Because we can't stand
Being unheard.

Unnecessary metaphor
Is a cat wearing a sweater.
Unnecessary simile
Is like *******.

What I'm saying
Is I quite like both.

They said I would not find love
Until I learned to love myself.
Yet I only began to love
When I saw the world
Through eyes more beautiful than mine.

Shy girl
Why, girl?
Don't you want to try, girl?
Are you gonna hide away,
Are you gonna cry, girl?
Hi, girl
My girl
I don't mean to pry, girl,
But I gotta ask you,
Are you gay or bi, girl?
Sly girl
Lie, girl
You think you can fly, girl?
Standing up there on that cliff,
Everyone say “bye, girl.”

Everyone said
I was made for Adam
But his fruit
Never tasted
As good
As hers.

In a slowly heating
*** of water
But you
Keep dropping ice cubes in.

I've locked my heart up tight
But she still breaks in
When I'm asleep.

I only write
When I should be working.
My poetry
Is a symptom
Of my disorder.

I can't seem to find
My lost peace of mind.
Now where was the last place I saw it?
I had it with you
When we were happy and true.
Is that where I left my contentment?
No wait, there it is
It was just covered up
Under this pile of resentment.

I heard you like short poems
So I'll cut the legs off mine.

When I first met you
I was so skin-starved
The taste of your lips felt like love.
I'm still hungry now
But my palette is finer.
Love is not to be gobbled, but savored.

There's a tab for you
A tab for me
A tab for all the things to be
A tab for games
A tab for shame
A tab for that one girl, what's-her-name?
There's a tab for ego
And breakfast burritos
And one that should probably be incognito,
There's a minimized one
For my work left undone
And a tab that won't stop playing music.
I keep clicking around
But I still haven't found
That one tab that people call peace.

You're trying to tell me
Your head's all a mess?
You're trying to tell me
Your sweat’s wet with stress?
I'll tell you a secret
Here's just what to do:
Starting from one,
Count down to two.

I found her
When I cast away my shame
Along with my garments.
My sin is washed away in her river,
And I lie In her sun warmed soil
Finally home.

I like you most
Because of how you play with me
When I share a thought with you
You bounce it back to me
With a little bit of spin added
And I have to hustle
To hit it back to you
Somewhere you won't expect it
But you always return.
And when you serve a thought to me
It zips through the air
So I have to lunge for it,
And it's power
Sends a vibration through my body
When I hit it back
And forth
And back
And I hope
Our game
Lasts
Forever.

I'm too practical for poetry.
After all, I spend my 9 to 5
In practical pursuits.
I sit at my computer doing something or other,
Certainly not dreaming
Certainly not wandering off
Over acres of flowering thoughts
Frolicking through the meadows of my mind
Dancing in the swirling winds of imagination  
That coalesce into clouds the shape of ideas
And drench my skin in misty anticipation,
All while my hands sit on my keyboard
And my status shifts from “available” to “idle.”
Certainly not.
I'm too practical for poetry.

I'm in love with the music
That my guitar makes
When I'm not playing it.
The resonant hum
When I pick it up
And the hard polished wood
Rubs
Against the sides of its case.
It sounds eager.
The hollow thump
That echoes in the chamber,
Percussive yet sustained,
When I set it on my knee.
The buzz
Of the textured steel strings
As I run my fingers up the frets
It changes pitch,
Lower and Lower as my hand moves higher,
Cut off when my hands are in place,
With a tap as I press down,
Steel meeting wood under my fingers.
And still it keens softly,
With a low and subtle vibration,
A quiet harmony of voices
From the strings and the wood
Unconscious music
Accidental
Unavoidable
And beautiful.

If I love you
I love you diagonally
The rest of my life is vertical
Tall and straight as an arrow pointed skyward,
But a line like that is too thin,
Our love would be balanced on the point,
Our love would fall to the side.
And I can’t love you horizontally either.
Nothing so flat as that,
Not so evenly connected with the ground, no,
Our love has to have some lift to it,
Our love would go nowhere on a flat line.
No, our love is diagonal.
Our love points neither up or down or left or right,
It points in the way it itself choses
Our love rolls down a *****
Gaining speed as it goes
Till it skitters and bounces and points itself
In a new diagonal.
I love you diagonally.

I smile as I raise my eyes
To the vast indifferent clear blue skies.
Too thick to see through, too thin to touch,
The color blue is nothing new.
And every day, it hides the stars,
Whose waltzing passage sketches scars
On tender flesh, with careless force.
The earth, the sky, the stars, and I,
Lie wondering, waiting, contemplating,
In silence so sharp I start to long
To sell my soul away for a song.
But no one's buying, only betting
And I don't know the odds.
But I cast the dice, and don't think twice,
And leave them where they lie.
Then leave the table to walk outside
And smile at the sky.

I want to share my light with you.
I want to put it in a jar,
With little holes in the lid to let it breathe.
A little part of me that you can keep.
I want to take it out and share it,
Trap it in a bottle for all to see,
The little light that shines in me,
And shows me the way.
I don’t mind making it a little dimmer,
If I could just make your life a little brighter.
I want to set it on the stand beside your bed
To keep you warm and safe at night,
To remind you,
When no one is around,
That I still love you.

She’s not your knight in shining armor,
No prince upon a valiant steed.
Just see the way your eyes disarm her,
She’s helpless when you’re most in need.

Her castle has ramparts that crumble and fall
Whenever your gazes meet.
She’s strong enough to stand up tall
But not to sweep you off your feet.

She couldn’t climb to the top of your tower
To save you from a dragon’s wrath.
And she never had the power
To clear the brambles from your path.

She can’t save you from your plight.
She’s not your prince, she’s not your knight.
But she’ll try to be true and good,
And try to love you like she should.

I felt it buzz
When I thought of you.
I thought you were thinking of me too,
And sent me a message
Out of the blue.
And it felt so unfair
That when I picked up the phone,
Nothing was there.