the words seep into the pages
they slip from my mouth to my pen
leaking out on to the paper
        don’t read that
     it’s not meant for an audience
the words help me cope
make me feel less alone
numb the pain
        don’t read that
      it’s not meant for an audience
the words keep me up at night
chase away the demons
but make them seem all too real
        don’t read that
    it’s not meant for an audience

i'm black or white
either i love too much or hate till my last breath
either i talk too much or don't say a word for days
either i take things so seriously or don't care at all
there is no gray for me
i live at the edges

when I die cut me into pieces
keep the bits of me in your back pockets and leave me at train stations
hide me in between books at libraries and tuck me between the pews at church
leave me next to shampoo bottles at the pharmacy and plant me with blue hydrangeas
stuff me in between the sheets at ikea and in stranger’s coin jars
I want to be known so much,
I want the world to have me
If they don’t want me as a whole,
maybe they’ll take the scraps

Question-How do you write?
Answer- I write,
What I have seen
What I have been
What I feel
What I deal
What I realize
What I visualize
What I love
What I observe
What I live
to live....

And their feet move
rhythmically, as tender
feet of Cretan girls
danced once around an

altar of love, crushing
a circle in the soft
smooth flowering grass

Someone once said that we die twice--
First, when we take our very last breath.
The flame on our candle goes out as we
Transition between life and death.

But then comes our second dying.
It’s similar but not the same.
That death occurs when someone for
The very last time says our name.

So where are extinguished flames?
What happens to the morning dew?
What effect does speculating
Have upon our point of view?

Life has many questions to ponder.
I wonder if such thoughts are freeing:
Knowing that we once had been
And not remaining attached to being.

-by Bob B (10-26-19)

He says "Can we meet?"
And the drums of doom
the possibility of sweet sin
blur my eyes, make me dream in the daylight
But what about that?
I've been feeling wrong
so he turns up at the gates of my world

A certain drum roll inside of me
A song I know from years ago
I am not supposed to dance to it
I don't even like the beat no more
But God I am stuck
And I fantasize about his lips on mine
now it's drought time
about he would tell me
Dear I always loved you
I cannot keep to myself
all the things you make me feel
both heart and body

It's a male siren's song
It's my personal devil's call
But I light up and I fall
I'd better simply ******* to his thought
But it simply pops and stings with no content
yet he poisons my heart
Yet it is not their fault
I threaten to go dry again
But I will flood the doors open

He stirs the poetry in me
does he distill?
I got rid of him
but he is a cotton cloud, is he the Sun?
I claimed he was one

He was everything
now he is just something
and we are moving
towards something, whatever it is
budding

He says "eat me"
like a cupcake for sweet teeth
I don't really want him
I am stuck
I needed poetry
to realize my luck

You are a fantasy
but you are deadly
You are a reflection of me
but the love and the days we shared,
they were ******* real