HIM, LOOKING AT HER.


She is subtle.
A face hidden behind an iPad;
Only silent eyes are left-

they speak:

-my world is here.
i choose here, i hide here,
i like here.
see it shines?

-my world is here.
pictures picture pictures
the river my news feed;
a status a raindrop;

-my world is here.
and we are the cloud:
condensing, condensing, collapsing
relaxing, relaxing, relapsing

-my world is here.
so send me a message  here
don’t look at me…they're watching
     send me a message

please.

-my world is here.
i choose here, i like here,
i hide here.
so why…
    
...why do i keep looking at you?

outside.

Sometimes, I believe you were conceived in the womb of *Aphrodite
the subtle migrations of your mouth and tongue
manipulating my body in ways
that would make a courtesan blush

let me worship at the altar between your thighs

Sometimes, I think you are a descendant of Moses
your fingertips guiding me into warm places
your thighs and valleys so divine
I can't help but get lost in them

your lips and hidden places always causing exodus

Sometimes, I imagine you as a rose
your petals opening gracefully for select eyes
beautiful, in your surrender
your thorns, a barrier to most, yet

I would brave them, just to drink the dew from between your buds

Sometimes, I just need to know that you're mine
nothing more & nothing less than what  **you are

Come and gone, the calm
but the storm is far from over
it lingers in the what-ifs, and taunts
us from the fringes of maybe

This storm, will eventually pass
and the memories of love gone
reborn as odes and psalms
birthing life, from their flowering decay

The poet's capacity to love, rivalled only
by their ability to suffer, but
what a beautiful misery it is! as it lies in wait
for the moment it will flood from pen to page

Laughter and sonnets, will perch on sated lips
after sadness has run its course
and for awhile, all will be well again  
leaving poets to ponder love's mysteries

How ironic it is!
the way lovers leave, repelled
by their hatred of the very thing
that once drew them near

You see, poets are like paintings
beautiful from afar, we are
but flawed strokes on cracked canvas
the closer you come

Yet still, there is beauty in our flawed and fragile array

We are the words within our poetry, but
we are so much more than sweetened syllables
we are everything you wanted once, and you
**never even made it past our cover

Complacency is often mislabeled genius
In poems teeming with pretentious words
and trite metaphors bought in bulk
over compensations for a poem lacking depth

There's an elegance  in simplicity
a celestial spark, in the ability
to make the ordinary seem divine
and to turn simple into sacred

We are all gods, aching in our humanity
we are all oracles, with prophecies waiting to be told
So dip your pen a little deeper, press pen to paper
until heaven is felt in every verse

*G e n e s i s  is only a poem away

Finally*, after 29 years
"I love you" sputtered from your lips
like a flame being deprived of oxygen *flickers,
just moments before darkness consumes its light

The words slithered from throat to mouth
then dripped from your tongue
seeking refuge in our silence

Your words, posing more riddle than *resolution