The ocean will always whisper to
me it's sea salt kisses,
The moon hung high above it,
Seeing all my ***** and forgottens,
We looked for trouble all night,
Slept when the sun came up,
I felt like a child again.

17 years of bad luck and counting,
I find myself walking underneath ladders,
Black cats tend to cross my path,
Mirrors crack in my wake,
The reaper and I are close relatives,
See each other on holidays or birthdays
or unsuspected thursdays,
This has made me a corpse of myself
No longer afraid of commitment
but of myself, this fear of losing you
This pain of up all night rejecting all of my insides,
Flushing feelings like dead aquatics,
I care for you too much to see you hurt

Where has your heart gone?
Did it flee with the rest of you?
Fit inside your carry on as the
wings caught air beneath them,
Im tired of speaking in check points,
Ive been waiting at your gate for days now,
Hoping for you to round the corner,
Back to this most timid of loves,
I'll even hold your bags,
Come home soon.

Baltimore is bleeding,
Boys in blue blind to faces,
War being raged over races,
Can't tell what this place is,
Blocks where I spent my sundays,
******* with police and gunplay,
Hood up to conceal my color,
Complexion passed down to me from mother,
Hard to find peace when the avenues erupting
Nothing seems to matter when you're fighting for something,
So please pray for this forest of concrete and lamp light,
Scared for the events that are coming after midnight

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.

Your golden frame which I once held so dear
Trickled between my fingers like the unlucky prospectors
Me, cursing the wind, never saw it coming
For days I could barely breath,
Ive been trying to bring myself to the arms of another
But every time I get close enough I’m reminded of you
A scent carried, or a crack in their smiles,
What a fever this is, this thing called love
Hopefully the right prescription will do the trick,
Enough liquor to drown an ocean,
and rewatching Barbarella for the 10th time
is just what the doctor ordered.

Marble mouthed Mrs.,
You have neon on your neck,
Throw me back into the river,
I have not yet painted it's floor,
Anchored to the corals,
Sleeping with the fishes,
Sunlight shine on in,
Head above water,
Wind run across cheek,
It's all blue now,
everything

17 years now and
the sidewalk hasn’t
changed much,
But that is the opposite
with you

Whiskey lips and a
cloudy sky in your lungs,
the high is still a wild
and untamed beast

Hours of dreaming
are of few most nights,
to much work to be
done,
The sentences in your
head, over and over they
will sing

The chase now is not
merely just a game
but a way in which you live,
Find her in the night
sing to her the sonnets
written on the pavement

The buildings will tower
over you as they have
in the past years,
look up at them in awe
and bask in the glory
of human intuition

A pen will always be your
solace,
never forget that about
yourself

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

I did it all for the money, lord
These raindrops been falling too much
and most days I can't find my strength,
pulling out parts of myself for sacrifice,
Winter nights spent with unknown faces,
This temple of yours seems so alien now

Taking off the shroud,
Enough of the bandages,
I'm steady bleeding,
Been that way for awhile,
Running red like a river,
Cold as your winters,
Up there in New England,

The bright lights will be
forever romantic in my eyes,
alley ways and corner stores
be the base of the neighborhood,
Momma says you gotta be out
of the house before the sun come up,
But you still got your liquor,
and your smoke,
all your cheap women and poetry,
You got that scratched record,
That throat that will sing them songs loud.
You just don't have yourself no more
That part of you is gone,
or was never even there.

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

On that day
The two of us
Sitting beside another
On a pier over some river

Henry says to me:
"Do you ever wonder why there are fish
and birds and you and me?"

I took a moment
Then I said:
"No, I don't."

And there was silence
followed by laughter
And more silence

So we stayed on that pier
on some unimportant river
Watching the birds and the fish
and doing anything but wonder
How they could be

We will plummet
Destined to our fall,
Soaring out the window panes,
Pouring buckets of ourselves,
Whoever lies below,
Stares and wonders,
What has happened up there?
Climb the stairwell,
Gawk at the interior,
This is nothing but sad violins,
And cracks in the walls

6 months without you feels like forever
You are a burning ship, destined for drowning
Watch as you take the ones i love along with you
Trying to shout my way through the trance of your voice
The messages you keep leaving remained unopened,
Ive rerouted my veins, changed my direction,
But the thought of you clouds all my conversations
Its been so long since my blood has held you like a child,
Since your embrace has wrapped itself around my heart,
Some burning fever has left me with petty thoughts
Is it the bits of you that remain?
Or the knowing that this fight will and has always been
A back and forth between the rights and wrongs of my conscience

These kids been out on battlefronts
Holding pistols like prayers
Seeing yearbooks on the news
Mothers folding into themselves,
Masses march streets for solace,
Searching for an end to all of this,
But when firearms fight the fears,
It's hard to dream without one

Hold steady this heart of mine
for it rumbles in your absence
left me quivering in a golden tomb
I lay silent underneath the cherry tree
watching the clouds creep across the sky
Just like we did long ago

This mind of a Martyr
One still ready to die for this,
Forgot my tears
Far too heavy to hide in this,
So chin up and stone faced,
With your fingers wrapped
around my monuments,
Ready to salvage the wreckage,
These marbled memories,
Still glisten in the eye of the sun

Your spine curves like a saxophone,
I intend to play our symphonies
on the pearls that decorate your skin,
That trumpet in your throat sings
loud and full of life,
Please share it with me tonight,
The metronome across your chest
is a warm reminder of who I have
been looking for,
We do not even notice the broken
strings we share in our necks,
looked past tongue tied apologies
in the midmorning outros,
lay with me here tonight,
as if we were a chorus,
in just the right tune

The gunshots ring out from Baltimore,
I pray you are not tonight's target practice,
Young kings with concrete kingdoms,
Raging war against the parts of the sidewalk they cannot see,
Please stay safe another night

More than anything
I want to feel your touch
To taste your remembrance
This powder on my gums
I miss your simplicity
The tremor in my hands
The longing in my throat
Speaks only of you
I've sold my wanting
For a love that holds me dear
Remember my temptations
When the lights start begging to fade
And my heart starts to tremble
This ignition in my bones
Burns for the thought of you
And the love for her.

Like an angel
With clipped wings
You've fallen so far
Down to this menial life
Touching the same ground as I
Breathing the same air as me
Crossing paths in a whisper of a morning
Catching the eye of all that was
You are such a beauty
Like an angel
With clipped wings

When Atlas shrugged
Tears were left in the wake of you
Monuments made of your mountains
Such a sensual embrace you gave
Such caring to this heart
I have loved you for seasons on end
The leaves came and went
But your seasons never withered
You are my river
My most holy of baptisms
Keep me in your graces
For forever and more

You had a mouth full of bullets
and all your sentences rang out like gunplay,
How many times do I have to wear
Kevlar to our conversations?
-
A machine gun smile,
Ten trigger fingers waiting to fire on,
I was the fool standing arms out wide waiting for an answer
Bullets in my chest made my insides bleed red,
Hidden behind battlefield lips,
How could I not see this coming they said,
-
help patch all the holes left in me,
all the hollow places inside left behind,
Refugee bones searching for shelter,
-
You were the shooter and I the target,
Clip emptied, and we both got hit,
I am just not afraid to show
the parts of me that are bleeding

This body has no tombstones
This skin dances with angels
This body holds no secrets
These bones sing the truth
This body hides from no one
This blood will flow forever

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

You were an architect to my fears
Knew the walls that would cave in on me
the corners I sought shelter in
Built cathedrals out of my vices
Monuments for my shortcomings
Raised cities, lined the streets with my body
Named the neighborhoods after the parts of me
I wished to forget
All the good in me is timber inside a burning building
Making ashes of the man I once took pride in being,
You hold all the blueprints,
Know my alleyways and sewers,
The backstreets and corners that make my chest,
I have no more steel to make this foundation stable again.

You’ve got Orion in your eyes,
Shimmering and stumbling
all the way home
You with the audacity to live
To breath every northern wind,
Holding the ocean in your palms,
Arms stretched out waiting for
someone to grab on,
Journey to your moon and back again,
rub the cosmos on your gums,
Just like it was your first time