Your need is a knife,
Sometimes a chainsaw.

It cuts at my shoulders,
The bones in my arms,
Some days it's quite greedy,
Wanting a share of my soul,
Dissecting a chamber or two
of my heart.

You eagerly want to drink my sanity,
To dehydrate me of any positivity,
Till life seeps through me and into you,
And osmosis makes us even,
Two distorted figures with no aim,
That's when you can sleep.

I'm afraid we can't both reside
in my fraying body,
You weigh a million unsaid words,
And my spine isn't strong enough
To keep pushing us through
your derailing paths.

What if LOVE
essentially stood for
Like
  Or
     Value
         Everyone?

I thirst for
knowledge
so I eternally
drink it in.

I've taken the Time
and given myself Space
to compose

Provoked by none other
than my excessive mind
riddled in thought

In portrait mode when
I should be detailed
in landscape mode

Seeing the full picture
not just what's in front
of my face

Gaps of white noise and
blank canvases have
stalled progress

Oh, but I see light
a brightness of clarity
surrounding my path

Mock not good fortune
let it rain down and
lift you up to fly

I walk through the
open doors with
renewed confidence

Time & Space limit
me no more as I am
free to create... ME.

Years after giving up the game
for good I still dream of turning
up late to a match juggling
a chipped red racquet,

high-impact lenses,
salt tanned right hand
glove and two
blue ***** fresh in the can,

my dream court receding
down darkened halls,
a warren of identical doors,
portholes slashing avocado

carpet with watery cross ties,
florescent flickers that merge and pool,
flushing me into flat light within
a stark white cube to toe the red

service line once again only to find
my forehand serve impeded
by stacked furniture and packing
crates arranged into a crooked lane

plat of a miniature medieval
Bruges.  Racquetball,
a game of angles gone
sadly out of fashion,

the MacGuffin in my dreams  
and my playing days when you
were my true opponent.  Never one
for racquet sports, you ran me

stroking passing shots, methodical
while I hurled myself heedless
headlong into walls, losing on points,
nursing trophies of bruises.

It’s the letting go,
book of your hands
forever falling open,
your words on the page  
taking flight a few downy
letters at a time, sentences
learning to trust their wings,
short forays of paragraphs
you strain to read against
porcelain blue sky,  
whole chapters lifting
off as one to wheel
by their own lights,
leaving you
to slip between
these clean white pages
with a good book,
trying not to read
too much into the author’s
soaring dedication.

We first laid eyes on you over drinks
and dinner in the Latin Quarter,
a short stroll from the Spanish Arch,  
its historical significance gone
in a heartbeat along with all
expectation of ambush
by austere beauty
on those wind swept stepping stones
Inishmore, Inishmaan and Inisheer.

The River Corrib gleams
like vintage vinyl beneath
Wolfe Tone Bridge,  
grainy and black as your liquid
image glowing serene on screen,
countless heartbeats of moonlight
mingling quayside with the sea
in a salty embrace that stings
my eyes and seizes me
by the throat.

The windows of St. Martin’s
frame the timeless river.
Soft chamois of morning lifts
the stubborn tarnish of dawn
from its braided embellished tales.  
We tuck into our full Irish and drink
watery coffee while you float outside
time to the rhythm of the tides
in your small brackish sea.

A gentle breeze passed by my face
I closed my eyes to feel it more
A tender touch from nature's grace
Days like this I do adore

A gentle stream went flowing by
Making song with rock and stone
Softly sounding, almost shy
Peaceful waters seldom known

A tree stood still, yet waved at me
With gentle branches stretching out
My mind in trance how this could be
As nature takes her walk-about

Moistened leaves began to cry
But birds still sang their songs from branches
Singing out, the clouds came by
They yielded not and took their chances

Now time and tide will never wait
It's time for me to leave this place
On this day I'll close the gate
And let the sun to sleep with grace

She said to me hold on tight,
And don't let go.
It was a dark and stormy night,
*And she let go.