The warmth of our bed
The taste of you
The feeling of your touch

We all want the ocean
Or to hold mountains in our palms
Feel the winds whisp between our fingertips
And the warmth of summer on our necks
We all want everything
But to be content with this small plate of life
Should fill the heart up to its brim

My chest flutters with the thought of you
My hands columbus to your body
These uncharted territories
My heart is learning to survey
Your oceans and ridges
The bridges between us,
Our bodies embrace
without any words to give
Simply the breaths between
These lustful longings

light a fire in my chest
Melt away the frozen parts
My mind has been shivering for years
You bring this heat back to my spine
And I’ve been burning like gasoline
these past dreams of evenings

I’ll hold you like a memory
Hometowns between sheets
Make midnight forever
Like winter is always
Make love like jazz
Play trumpets with dreams

You entice me
Oh sweet divine
As if some nostalgia followed
An echo of past joy
The first tulips of spring
Aroma of a home cooked meal
These feelings rush my senses
My chest sprints to the finish
A marathon of a ribcage
And a greenhouse in my throat
Ready to bloom with words only
instincts can describe

We dance by the fire
Burn our thighs
I watch you glow in the light
Love you like a airplane
Soar with grounded wings
Share teeth like the dentist do
Let me die silent
Let us be at peace
hold our bodies close
Until this heart is at ease

I stole like a thief
Came in under the cover of night
Took what I wanted
Fled out the window
Ran home under the moon
Your heart in my hands
Staining my palms
Still alive and beating
I know that it is wrong to
take what is not your own
But their was so much love inside your chest
I couldn't help but wonder what it
would be to feel that same thing inside my own

How much truth sleeps at the bottom of a bottle
So much soul lies with a drink in the hand
I downed shots of forget and apologies
I've drank cups full of women to whom I don't know names
These pockets run dry as my insides burn
And all my poems are written with a quivering hand.

Fate has a pen name
She smiles wide as an ocean
Dances with the moon
She's got the whole world
wrapped in her arms
Fate gives away parts of herself
Sometimes to a fleeting lover
Other times to a silent morning
Fate writes me letters
I'm just trying to figure out
Which address is the right one

As are most things
I am temporary
This flesh will decay
This laugh will become a whisper
And all that remains are the memories
As are most things
We are temporary
Our timid affections
These fluttering hellos
So let us feast on the present
gorge ourselves with emotion
And frame the things
we wish to hold close

I've dirtied these palms
Mistakes from before
I've killed off my demons
They all ran like the wind
I've buried myself in bodies
Hoping to find something again
I've never been so lost
Such a gallery of faces,
none of them mean anything

I poured myself into vases
As if by doing so I could
Keep alive these fragile beautiful things

I flew home to that city of ghosts from years prior,
The walls in every room glared at me as if I was some broken thing,
I was never broken, merely trying to fix myself,
So I drove all night, passed streets where I once stumbled home,
Back when my winters were a fistful of pills
and a bottle in my back pocket,
Back to those years where the demon inside burned like the liquor,
And he screamed his song from within my ribcage,

I remembered all the memories I laid to rest,
They left postcards in the mailbox of my childhood home,
I wished to go back to the heat of the south,
Where my body would sweat every time I moved,
And all the things inside me past due would float into the air,
I was happiest there,
So I’ll leave the corpse of my younger years up in Baltimore
And fly home to Baton Rouge

Oh land of mine, harvest my labors
Lay waste to the sorrows of the spring
When the storms held heavy
And the roots of my grandfather unearthed,

Oh land of mine, teach me patience
How the sky nurtures the infant soil
Before the stalks knew to rise in thanks,

Oh land of mine, hold me gently
When the hour of my end comes near
May my body rest in the earth I loved
And let wild flowers bloom above my casket.

I'll write my sweetest words
My most heartfelt letters
All to the silence in the room
I am tired of bleeding this body
And playing my heart strings
To an empty audience
I'm still hurting somewhere
And my body ain't bleeding
Those love letters no more

We drove across the country
Back to that coast you call home
Through the plains where
The sky seems to stretch forever
And the stars shine like diamonds
We traversed through cities of machines
All pumping that liquid gold
To the men in suits who hold too much
Crossing bridges over waters who's
Names I am not familiar with
Back to your small town by the seaside
Where we drank till the sun came up
And the breeze kissed my skin
As if we were two old lovers who found themselves once more

Your sky scraper legs
Lead to the heavens
Some paradise in my eyes
I'll sing you songs of tomorrow
I'd love you like the beginning
You sleep to my dreams
The sounds of my lungs
How we hold this dear
This such fragile thing between us

Your body is an addiction
I crave your touch like a high
Find time to caress my veins
And make a grave of my insides

Paint me the words
You mixed with
Those acrylic eyes of yours
And the canvas of our skin

When you take the hot iron of morning
And rub it along those fences between us
The trees dip down their branches
To listen a little bit more clearly.
I know that the notes you pick from
That wooden box of yours knows
All the hurt in the audience
But when you sang the blues
I looked for all the heartbreak I had
Gathered inside my chest
And let their broken pieces flutter
Away like some kind of winged messenger,
All the way to the ceiling of that room
You made into Harlem just for a night.

You who speak the words of mountains
The kind that leave a chill in the room
with your snow covered peaks,
You who know the song the morning sings,
How this orchestra of a world plays
symphonies with the movement of the sun,
I've wondered for years now
How you were chosen to microscope this life
The way you analyze the details we are blind to,
You with those feathers in your mouth
How your words take flight as you read,
I hope your journey is a quick one.
Thank you for everything.

You give a whole new meaning to sheet music.

I ran my hands across my ribcage
Like there were strings between my bones.
That if my fingers plucked the right ones
The music would flow up to my throat
So that with every exhale, a chorus would
Escape from the peaks of my lips.
And that just maybe the song that played
Would make its way to another heart
Still willing to listen to the rain.

You are a walking smile
You think too much with your fists
You ask me for advice some days
And some days you choose to listen
I miss you and that city we grew up in
I hope it don't swallow you too.

**** a love poem
Or those love to **** poems
I don't care about my heart
Or the desires in my bones
This is neither of those.
I met a woman last night
With a laugh that sounded like spring,
Eyes that smiled when she blinked
And the allure of a goddess.
I've never known such charm
But ******* you made me come alive
And every single person there that evening
Felt the same way

Louisiana drowned itself when those clouds came to stay
All the photographs sank between floorboards
The street signs dotted corners like buoys,
That way we could still remember where our doorsteps stood
The interstates became names of rivers,
And the side streets creeks.
Those iron birds removed bodies with their
Metal wings spinning above,
But the horns still sing
And the people still smile wide and full of hope

Such a complicated thing.
I just want to write of how the waves move me,
How I have slept for years to the cricket’s song,
When my eyes flood as the fields did the same,
How my hips move when the horn begins to play,
The feeling when the eyes are heavy and the belly full,
I’ve been trying to learn the most direct path to these complexities
But the roads always blur, and my throat does not know the words