Caress
The butterflies
In the
Terrarium
Of my heart.
Come see
How they
Dance for you.
How they
Flap a whisper
Of nimble limbs
And draw thoughts
Of you
For my soul to sing.
How I
Want to touch you
With my
Grazing fingers
And wings.

The poets are too grim.
Too somber, too solemn.
Too serious for a world
That's bound to spit them out.
Programmed for defeat,
With their pessimistic vision
And their bouts with mental illness,
And the way they cut the gristle
From the bone of life.
Exposing the bare bones of it all.
They spend their whole lives sawing away,
Exposing the raw truth,
Digging down to the bone,
Living by the razor's edge,
And they take the little meat
They've collected
And they examine it -
For it is this kind of stuff
That entire empires are built upon,
Entire lives are shaped by.
It is this that the rest hungrily consume,
Piece by piece,
And they chuck away the bone.

The shards of a heavy dagger
Remain in me every moment.
You reached into my wound,
Wanton and haggard.
I gazed at the jeweled weapon
Tucked out of view
And the gape in my chest
I thought I outgrew,
Covered and sutured,
Well treated and healing.
But like a cold draft entering a weak archway,
You plunged deeply, weightlessly,
Leaving me reeling.
Poking, prodding,
Pointing out my shards and my scars.
I told myself I removed all of you
And the dagger soaked with love's poison.
You showed me shards from
The poisoned blade still linger,
The truth lies deeper than
Where I can put my finger.
You touched my wound with
The force of words.
How it stings with the sharpness of pain.
Twinging inside me,
Twisting like ivy,
Welling my eyes like a curse there to find me,
Pointing out my poison and shards,
Fiddling with the sutures of my scars,
And like a haunting winter's chill,
You left as quickly as the blood was spilled.