Those of us who release the stiches binding our lips
And taste the first rush of crisp, cool air against our tongues
Once the first note breaks, the sound that permeates the air
stuns us.
The liberated cry bursting from our lips
feeling so foreign to our muted tongues
Forces us to pause
And listen…
The familiar buzz of silence is all amongst us
and it isn’t too long before we realize
That our ancient silence has been broken
And the grey air once again is filled with
the aura that beams
The glow that brightens the world
When you sing until your lungs bleed
about how you feel

When I was young, I was told
that deep beneath our feet,
was a land I’d be sent to,
if I didn’t clasp my hands and speak
to an invisible man who lived in the sky.

I inquired softly what this land was?
They snapped, I’d burn and scream
in a cloud of smoke, fire
and a bearded red man would torture me
I shut my mouth as I wondered,
Why?

Shaken, I knelt by my bed and
apologized for myself—
my thoughts and humanity.
How would standing within these stained-glass walls,
I wondered, make me more a saint,
and how would a magic book
bring sanity?

I had a friend, once
that only I could see.
He followed me wherever I walked
in innocent company.
But they scorned my imagination,
how could I believe?
This silly made-up nonsense
that I couldn’t even see

Funny they said that,
because as I recall,
they handed me a Bible, and told me,
of some magic Jewish zombie
that saved humanity.

You smile at me
and somehow the world is serene
Somehow
the world forgets the debts I’ve left unpaid
Reality finds patience as he waits by the door
(Though I can only faintly hear the rapid knocking)
But he can wait for now
He doesn't know the light of your glow
Blind by his piercing, judging eyes
Oh, if only he could see

There’s an angel smiling at me.

There is no poem here.
I still hold onto your
words made
obsolete by time
and damage,
clutching onto them
like holy scripture
in a godless world—
reciting what now
means nothing, distorted
by the stains of sacrilege.

There was never a poem here.
We killed the prophets
weeping, kneeling
with a sinner’s grief
at the ruins
of sacred places
we’ve destroyed.

Don’t make me put a poem here.
I can’t create anything,
I only rearrange
the thoughts over-ripened
by silence
I can’t suppress.

When even the darkest of hearts blaze afire
What more upon this Earth can we desire?
From the depths of our souls we aspire,
For there isn’t a single level higher
Than the notes sung from an angel’s lyre
A gift from the pallid wings of a sainted dove
A gift from out our lips and from our hearts,
That we all call “love”

When the day will finally arrive
Into no ears she'll utter goodbye
Amounts of worth amount to waste
A useless soul disposed in haste

Mother Earth will pause not while
A final sigh leaves from her lost child
Devoid of hesitation, ponder or grief,
A mass of waste returns to its lodgings beneath

And when she stumbles to the gloom below
Faces that mirror hers will be all she'll know
A monotony of waste, pulsing in a vile brew
Beneath our feet and below our egoes,
One day we'll be there too

If everything were to crumble to pieces
And civilization would no longer be
I think I’d still be fine
Right here,
In the absence of you
With the world all before me

Love isn’t found in the throes of passion
under satin sheets,
Nor in the glisten of diamonds and gold.
Not even in the lips that tell you,
that you are their rising sun.
All that can be fabricated is worthless
when you find
that love is the silent voice listening
when you cannot bear the world any longer.

I once said I’d die without you,
and you without me.
I’ve been counting the months
since I’ve heard from you—
and the silence is still painful
But it dulls
by every day that passes
where I eat the words I once declared
with such conviction
that I’d never be just fine—
Carrying on my own life,
A you without me; a me without you.

The bitter chills of winter
Seem little more than a breeze
Within you

Silence of the waning day
Serenity of the cooling night
Warm breath on the nape of my neck
A warm soul in my armspan
Where scattered pieces of life
Become whole

The shining smile that I love
Not so much about the upturned lips,
on a beautiful face.
Rather, the light in your eyes
The glow.
How love within reaches out to your soul
and in its delicate voice
it whispers.
How it heals us so sore from the world,
With every whisper, every hint of light
Peace finds its way in our corner of the world.

“Nature wins eventually,” mused my uncle David
as we drove past an overgrown lot
on a barren street, where a struggling Motel 6
had long crumbled under the weight of entropy.

Defying the ghosts of a business
drowned in the unforgiving current
of Dayton’s economy, among
the leasing sign marking their graves,
patternless flora prevailed
effortlessly.

New snow scattered
upon this old, tired street
We start the cycle again.
New hope planted
into the still, frozen ground
We wait.
Perhaps come springtime,
like the exception to a truth,
sprouting between
receding islands of snow,
its flower may bloom again.

In a world divided by borders and tongues,
where exceptions exist by chance,
little do we think of those we’ll never meet
that we would hold dear,
had we lived in their country
or spoken their language.

You’re just the kind of person
some lost adolescent would go home
and write a ****** poem about
at 2am in hasty cursive
scribbled on stained notebook paper
wrinkled from careless handling, using your being
to bring some riddle of the subconscious
into an acknowledged existence— and then
destroy the evidence, rendering it
undiscoverable to humanity—like everything else
she ever kept
too embarrassingly close to her heart, because
when she was a little girl the adults in her life
told her that there certain parts of yourself
you always kept private
that are a no-no
to show to anyone, and those
perpetually invisible parts
are covered by your swimsuit and your stoic reserve,
the eggshell guarding your psyche—that if anyone
forces themselves in with enough effort, you’ll break
all over them
and stain their sacred feet
with your messy insides that never
seem to go back in
once you’ve released them,  which will
leave you eternally wishing
to retreat into that perfect little immaculate white shell,
undisturbed by your own humanity.

I deprive myself of glances
I would love to take of you, but that would mean
that at some point you would
grow suspicious and
perhaps conjure the ESP
I seem to think everyone has
whenever I have a secret about them I’d rather
they never figure out—but I have to admit,
you’re beautiful.
I wish there were words
precise enough to explain exactly how
I just ******* love
how you stare at the world
with a poet’s wistful empathy, peeking
discreetly through the one-way mirror
of well-guarded sensitivity,
eternally wearing a gaze reluctantly masked
with an adaptive weariness just
transparent enough to expose
brief silhouetted glances
of vulnerability.

You’re just the kind of person
I wish I had the courage
to let into
my psychological fortress
constructed with every accumulated brick
of accumulated cynicism
that materializes
from living in a world that
muffles every voice
it makes want to scream, even if
no matter how old I become I’ll
always be some lonely kid standing
outside of my own person, eternally yearning
for somewhere safe enough
to have a broken shell.

Such a grave silence
that's come between you and I,
growing like cancer.

Hello again, my dearest friend
I’ve come to talk with you once more
Shivering still from the stormy cold
Chaos that resides from beyond your door

I wiped my feet on your humble mat
Hung my hat upon the coat tree
To find your smile so ever warm
Seated beyond the door

I returned what I could of your glowing charm
(Oh! How could I ever reflect that light?)
Withholding impending words
within my grinning lips, I sat myself down
And looked you in the eye
I could have told you anything
but I was content with silence

After the echo of our last goodbye has long since faded
And I’ve stripped this house naked of your every reminder
But in this old room, perhaps it is the exception
All throughout, your letters still litter my floor
Words written when I was still beautiful to you

We were the senseless
death of potential—
where the shadow fell
between every beautiful thing
that could have been,
and all the reasons why
we could not have them.