We always reached for the mountains
All the roses were the color blue
The ocean tasted of honey
We were invincible
Never afraid of the monsters
that lurked just behind the corner

Fire!
Fire all around!
Burn me now sinner woman
Burn this body to the ground
Teach my your sinning ways
Teach me all that soul
Shake those hips sinner woman
Take me back home with you,
Back to that southern heat,
Away from this northern rain,
Sinner woman teach me,
All those beautiful sounds

Draining me of this september sorrow,
Drawing the wind back to my sails,
I've raised anchor,
Journeyed past those ocean depths,
Set my course for Elysium,
That paradise of your skin,
The taste on your lips,
I've eyed your neck,
Want my words upon it,
Written in shades of purple,
What a hunger we carry
Ready to sink our teeth in
To the crimson of this heat

Stop before crossing the street,
look both ways for landmines,
my father on the battlefield
where this killing is justified,
from resident streets in ferguson
to gaza strip homicides,
My palms clasped tight in prayer,
from humanity's suicide

I mourned the loss of a lover,
I drank away the Mississippi
Flowers grew between my teeth,
My nose was bloodied
My eyes bruised,
I know not the music to dance to
I only feel the sheet music in my bones,
Last week I jumped overboard
Tied anchors to my knees
Sunk between the floorboards
I know now the difference
Between the currents and the tides

Distance is defined as:
"an amount of space between two things or people."
yet even though you are less than a mile from me,
I feel everything and an ocean between us,
The choices made were our own paths
The destinations have always been known
I do not blame anyone for this
But the expanse of this space is always on my mind,
Some days I wish I could stretch my arms back
to a time before all of this, and shake the sense right out of my bones,
and relive those golden memories we once held so dear

I hold these valentines close to my chest
They are all addressed to you,
You with the faith unbroken
You with such gentle intentions
It's not easy to quiet the sounds of the heart
Yet these love poems do the best they can

Oh this love
Let me explain this love
She is from the Rockies
Free as the sun
Strong as the river
Kissed by the mountains
She curves like the bend won’t break
I am from the ocean
Timid as the tides
Subtle as the moon
Awkward as the birds
She is my rock
Solid like the lines
Sharp as a tack
I am but guest
In her most sensuous
of shows
She is all there is
She is all my love
My most timid of hearts
My most delicate flower
In this garden of woes

When we first met you were a firework,
Soaring through the night sky,
Hurling yourself into an explosion of color and light,
I watched from below in awe of your presence,

When we first met,
I had butterflies fluttering in my chest,
newly awoken and freed from their cocoons,
With a thirst to see all of what this new place had to offer,

When we first met,
I was a boy who had been growing up just a little too fast,
The parts of myself I thought I lost long ago
came stumbling out from their corners and onto center stage,
Making me feel younger than I have ever felt before,
Putting laughter back into my vocabulary,

When we first met,
You were a girl with a smile and so much to give,
Armed with a desire to wrap this world in your arms
and whisper that it would all be okay in the morning,

Dear unrequited lover..
I know this dance is a slow one,
My feet are clumsy and my arms are heavy sometimes,
But this song is one I can move too.

I Will Dream For You,
A Spectator to your word,
They drip silently from your pen,
Pain and passion mixed beautifully,
I Will Call You No One,
Sometimes I can not speak after reading,
Empty and Beating left my heart throbbing,
Your poems got me all One Sided,
Never stop writing,
Every word was worth it,
And so are you.

This is it
No revisions
My mind has been racing
But at a steady pace
Almost as if we are shooting
for our best possible time
in the yearly gym class mile run
Maybe if I finish first
The class will shout my name in celebration

My heart
It is in pieces
All scattered along the shore
On this island of a body
So lonesome at sea
Fighting off the waves
praying for someone
to venture to these shores
and stumble upon the
fractured parts of me

I've wandered for years now
All through neon streets
and past rainy day storefronts
For a warm bed and a hot meal
Something to fill my gut
As the sirens howl down
interstates and byways
I remain wandering on the shoulder
Thumb out hoping to
be taken by some strange angel
To a paradise of a place

How can I say no?
To a heart like yours,
One that beats insistent,
In tune to my favorite of rhythms,
You make this life plenty,
And my heart at ease

If the body had seasons
I'd say that this sadness is winter
The garden has wilted
The creatures have gone
Sought shelter and slumber
No longer can I hear the rivers
They've all frozen over
All that remains
Are these gods of malice
False prophet kings
Picking what's left of me
To keep their bellies full

An instinct
This animal desire
So close to your chest
My blood moving like a freight train
I need to be close to you
Your skin meeting mine
My most tender of loves
Holding your frame
As if it is all that ever was
Let me love you dearly
Let me kiss every inch of your skin
Oh how this heart aches
To be close to you again

I'm tired of the trails
The footprints you leave
I'm no detective
I can't follow the clues
The mystery between us
Is answered by you
This heart waits for questions
Yours loves to be still

Don't know how much this hurt
Felt numb to the whole situation
But when you shattered my existence
I found my only solace in bottles
Blow didn't even do The trick
I'm a lot like you in this sense
The only one willing to fight for this
The only one willing to strive for the better
My body is lost somewhere pool side
Yours is 3 stories up with a fistful of paper work
Mine is 6 feet deep with a question on my mind
To stay or to go?
That is all and everything to me
I'm just strong enough to tell you

The driveway curved and bent,
A stream of black asphalt
made its way toward the doorstep,
Sundays were always the warmest,
chalk marked the pavement
The neighbors conversed from windows
about the new girl down the road,
Cages for backyards
held the gardens for ransom,
Explosions in the sky
colored the black of the night
Just like the chalk on the pavement

My father loves his whiskey,
He tells me it reminds him of his home,
Nights in Dublin and Irish winters,
He danced with my mother under the moon,
Across the rivers and between the cracks,
Father do you drink to remember?
She still loves you all the same,
Oceans divided and still she remembers the barley,
All of the bar fights, and the serenades that sprouted,
Father do not be afraid,
For she still holds your heart

I do not think much of the desert,
How mountains shift and shake every night,
The way the dunes roll mighty,
How they whisper away with the winds,
I do not think much of the desert,
I've read stories of a forgotten oasis,
Nestled somewhere in the shifting sands,
Like an ocean, only smaller,
I am shrinking too,
Here there is a desert,
One too big for my arms to hold,
Because here I grow smaller every night,
And my bones shift and shake with every breath

I placed the sheet music against my side
The hot iron of the notes beat their way inside
Every strike of the mallet crushing it’s way in
Such a sad song, what a terrible tune
It hung in the pit of my stomach
Held by the fluttering of two song birds
Both with wings plucked from their bodies
They read aloud the music like an anthem
Knew every tap in the ivory and stroke of the clock
I dream now with earmuffs,
Anything to lay to rest their somber songs
Watch the ceiling as it spins and shakes
The eggshell cracking with every blink in the night
I’ve forgotten what it is to breath, the taste of a sunlit shoulder,
All I do now is play audience to their noise
No longer can I even hear my voice

My father is over seas
In the effort to make mountains of men
I am within the picket fence
In the effort to make my voice heard
My mother is in the hospital
In the effort to calm her thoughts
My sister is in the backseat of a car
In the effort to experience love
My brother is still a child
In the effort to remain that way

On this hillside,
I eyed down the tides,
Watched you roll on in,
Back and forth
This game of chance,
Be my always,
Tell me about forever,
Im tired of writing valentines,
To unrequited lovers

The windows open wide
New England crept on in,
Dandelions bent under feet,
Cleansed in the morning dew,
What is this place?
The waters are calm here,
let us stay awhile,
Just until the daisies bloom

Reaching across your side,
you lay your head upon my chest
We rode back home in the back of my parent’s car,
The night hid our quiet displays of affection
I still feel the warmth of you body up against my own,
The street lights passed one by one
A kind of metronome to the hum of the engine
My limbs went numb hours ago but i dare not move a muscle
Because the silhouette of your face resting peacefully was
all I needed to feel like myself again.

Tell me when it has been enough,
Let me know when these bodies have run dry
When the sidewalks have been painted good and red,
You can’t brush off the blood, It just fades a little bit,
A patch just slightly darker than the rest,
They’ll take the other streets, blind to the madness,
Forget about the graveyards they’ve made of neighborhoods,
When targets have names and the lead expires too **** soon,
Tell me when it has been enough
Let me know when your heart has been pierced too
Than maybe you can understand

For you who called for a moment,
One filled with seasons of house lightning,
Storms booming in the eyes of sofa cushions,
Splitting a room from chandelier thunder clouds,
This hilltop hierarchy has made mountains of molehills,
Barnacled itself unto the names of our forefathers,
Made porcelain tears in the eyes of mothers,
Do you not see all the spotlight in this tragedy?
All this powder and masquerade,
Simply to be seen whole again

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

I'm washing my ribs
Trying to wipe away this ink from my bones
These weeks numbers count down like some kind of bomb ready to break of its hollow shell
We lit the fuse the day those "I love yous" flew from our lips
I don't mind dying a martyr for your affection
All the shrapnel in the end  will be worth every second with you in my arms

I swallowed the photographs like vitamins,
washed them down with rusty tap water,
I’ll tie bows on the parts we gave thanks for,
One day the roar of the atlantic will pull me under,
Make fishbowls of my lungs and fill them past the brim,
Leave this body for the fishes so their bellies stay full

"It was all so beautiful"
The sky, the sea, the trees,
as she said in final breaths,
Flatlined and silence,
I still miss her,
it has been years now,
And all I think about
when I see the sky,
is her voice,
saying how beautiful it was.

The white linoleum,
Floods this endless maze,
Similar souls in different bodies,
I am simply passing through,
Another cog in the machine,
Eyes pointed up at ceiling,
Watching boxes of light fly by
as if they were windows of sun,
Unfamiliar voices pump positivity,
Promises of my well being,
My head rolls right,
Sight fixed on the dark haired nurse,
Her smile stretches wide,
Unsure where to place it,
She reaches for my arm,
A chill enters my veins,
My body turns to gold,
I drift away,
The sun spotted ceiling fades to black,
You forget how much you love it,
Maybe the pain was worth it,
Anything for her sweet taste again

Fists contorted into gang sign slogan
Chest drenched in the ink bestowed by brothers
face scarred and eyes dry of tears
sorrow glued to the billboard of your mouth

What would little brother think?
seeing superhero caught in petty crime bloodbath,
Noosed around your neck, you wear your colors well,

arsenal in jeans,
fistful of blades,
Sin in your mouth,
too suave for war tonight,

so you will cruise the block,
just as last night,
and the night before,
and the night before that,

waiting,
for someone
to move a muscle.