the price you pay
for kindness
is costly, but
your highness
has all the patience at disposal.
in kind he pays at his proposal.

the sacrifice undying
yields truth, but what i'm buying
is patience more to pay
for smiles day to day.

the smiles have been paid for.
your patience is your labor,
and all that you have cherished
is worth the scene embarrassed.

for sacrifice is needed
to see your words are heeded,
and silence for those years,
was worth to quell her fears.

I held your hand last night in
dream. Your humble clutch I
found was soothing to my skin,
was soothing to my touch.

I sewed my hand last night to
keep it snug with yours so
when I woke from dreaming,
I'd lessen my remorse.

Thus sewed, your fingers keep me
ever in your hands, and
thus in dreams I'll keep you
much closer than a glance.

My dreams are sadly finite,
trapped by my own hope, so
when you laugh or speak my
heart can barely cope.

I turn my head and grin, for
I have found life's haunt:
in my dreams we're one, but
real life stays a taunt.

Your relationship's a trap,
Like sand your quick foots gripped,
Like chains delaying freedom
That hold you to your crypt.

Or at least I think it shall,
If careful steps ar'n't ta'en,
Like a lion in a cage
That you right now are ma'in'.

And make it you must soon,
For feelings forced to wait
Become immersed in fear
With nerves that ants inflate

Antsy is the grin
That dawdles with the heart.
You'll sabotage your options
Before you even start.

So make your choice in haste,
Despite your drowned dismay.
To settle for this trap
Or trap yourself your way?

Again the choice is yours
To make or disregard,
But know this, future me:
Happiness is hard.

The Doctor named Seuss was such a great man.
He wrote words so deftly like few others can.
In fact, to this day we honor his rhyme,
Or, I do, at least, to waste all my time.

It's odd how with frequence I get up the urge
To write tiny ditties: a poetry surge.
I'm volted to pen any number of things,
Shocking, to me, like a staticky sting.

Whenever I am s'posed to be working,
I notice that my duties I'm shirking.
Perhaps without pressure my mind is more fun,
But by the same token, I get nothing done.

Maybe I study so well that it spills
Onto my other thinking-type skills.
My mind works so hard that it often requires
More wood to fuel my thinking cap's fires.

Anyways, I'm probably ******* for my test.
I wish I could say that I studied my best,
But honesty stabs me for truth til I'm ******:
The truth is that I fail when I "study."

Like sinews and sutures,
Our bodies interlock,
Separated only by our breath.

Softer skin would be a liquid,
and softer eyes would be transparent.
A softer smile would be a kiss,
experienced by sight.

An arm, a clutch, your fingers crossed,
with words I lie here as I lay.
And in our words are we so lost,
but "we" is how we'll find our way.

A forest waiting to be cleared,
Impending doom for innocence,
Our kisses and our thoughts appear
Already dying, in a sense.

But senses don't deceive themselves,
Like light which yonder breaks.
Morning brings me mild mourning:
It's you the daytime takes.

So stay in spirit, tangled one,
Or overstay your stay.
And no more mourning will be found,
If we have our way.

Locks for locks
and chicken pox,
a childish fit
for childish thoughts

Left for dead
left, right, red,
confused with age
but young in head

Youth will yield to age.
Truth will tell all rage,
hidden in a heart,
hidden in your art.

Expressed without much thought,
emotion caught off guard.
Perhaps your mask needs healing,
facades that must be peeling.

And still I'm feeling lost
Myself, my own, my frost
My cold demeanor falls.
They say, "Just grow some *****."

For gender dictates most,
and blenders will play host
to mixing and to matching
pretending I am acting,
pretending I exist.

A picture won't do justice,
For beauty is in motion.
Those thousand words are useless.
They don't denote devotion.

My rhymes and schemes may capture
A sliver of a moment,
While blinks of yours enrapture
And hold me without comment.

For words and verse are nothing
Compared to feelings fleet,
And just blinking's what I need
From you to be complete.

Internal quarrels rage within,
While all the while I'm without
Your kiss, your lips, unpursed for me.
I blindly fall about.

A steady hand is just a show.
A steady heart betrays
A heady feeling from below
Dissipates and fades.

Distance, time and lofty words
Can **** a man with strength,
But just one thought, one smile, one wink,
Can bring to life in length.

For lengthy is the depth of love
That like those oceans fill,
But even depth and distance stop,
And years can dull the thrill.

So in my words, forever be,
My love, my dove, for me.
While distance, time and quarrels fade,
You will thrive immortally.

With sagging shoulders
slumped like rolling hills
falling not as precipitously
as a promontory
but still falling,

with these shoulders
temporarily shrugged not so temporarily,
you take a deep breath,
and listen.

you know that the caged bird sings,
caged by the floor of cement,
caged by the convenience of cement,
but it still sings.

and summer knows not why.
maybe the bird doesn't know it's caged,
so its ignorance allows it melodies.
may a song have meaning,
if sung in ignorance?

like the worker's song
we chant and chime in
our rants and rhymes pin us
down.
for words aren't liberty.
forward isn't freedom.

then and now and then and now,
exist like cement,
only for convenience.
time is not an illusion,
just a simile.

because if we truly knew
what is
then the burden of knowledge would weigh us down,
slumping our shoulders.

but we don't need our shoulders to sing,
for that is how
a caged bird sings.
it doesn't have shoulders to slouch.

Gimmicks and shenanigans
Are altogether lame.
Overt meanings of a poem
Are meant to be more tamed.

Puns and plays on ev'ry word,
Or rhymes and playground taunts,
Lack a subtle nature;
Alliteration flaunts.

For free lines feel unforced,
And poems portray with power.
But not with gaudy gilding,
Like petals on a flower.

No, poems are not much better
When written tongue-in-cheek.
In fact, for all those reasons,
This one's considered weak.

From dusk to dusk we wait in vain,

While searching for our thoughts.

Til sunset comes, we’ll waste our time

And then massage our knots.



While we’re ******* in daily speak,

Our goals become our flags.

We’ll wave them high and proud above,

But failure’s such a drag.



So down they go, our signs of pride,

Just like our Sun at night.

And twilight’s hope comes in the morn,

When dawning breaks first light.



But unlike time, which knows no end,

Our hopes and dreams can fail.

And unlike Sun, who sleeps and wakes,

We’ll rise, to no avail.

every sign told me to stop,
every signal sent this way.
but poetry keeps writing,
and i have little say
    
every whisper that i thought
or didn't deign to hear,
i told myself i failed,
working up my fear.
    
but maybe Romeo for Juliet
like Helena from Paris,
was meant to wreak such havoc
for the woman he saw fairest.
    
and if that is what it takes,
i'll wreak the chaos til
you see me just one time.
one look from you would ****.
    
and i'd die a thousand deaths
for an equal count in looks,
just a smile, glance or gaze,
just a trickle from a brook.
    
and with your tightening of cheeks,
that like a fair wind chimes,
i could die again
a thousand or more times.

Every poem is
a family tree,
punctuation its branches,
lines its limbs,
stanzas its trunk.

and it's flanked
by the leaves
of words.

beneath its boughs,
are dead leaves,
each one marking
the words no longer.

for they are now simply
faded thoughts.

Thoughts are singular.
Emotions are -
collective.

Knowledge can only paint a portrait
with one color.
Wisdom, a hue of distinction,
but still just one.

Emotions are a spectrum;
no single one is clear.
And when feelings burst onto canvas,
only the artist can understand -
while others can stand perplexed.

I'm out of practice with these things.
I'm loving out of turn.
I can't convey my thoughts
If loving I've not learned.

I'm out of practice with these things.
A poem I should read.
A poet knows it better,
So sonnets I should heed.

I'm out of practice with these things.
Perhaps I'll write a song.
Or maybe that is risky,
If I sing it wrong.

I'm out of practice with these things.
I don't know what to do.
Nervously I'm waiting,
For a cue from you.

I'm out of practice with these things.
And so I'll practice more.
With a few small dollars
I'll practice with a *****.

I'm out of practice with these things,
But at least I got some.

Fleshy is such
a nasty word.
Like ******.

****** is a nasty word.
It's also a nasty action,
but it's one of those
rare, rare cases
where, where the word
is as bad as the action
(biologically speaking).

And if you combine the two:
Fleshy ******,
it's almost double the nasty.

It's like math.
Except gross
(biologically speaking).

What's a biologically and how does it speak?
Maybe we want our science
to speak for us
because we've run out of thoughts.

Maybe we need our experiments
to show to us
what we're afraid to depict
ourselves.
Our brains are driven toward creativity,
while our world is driven
toward tangibility
(biologically speaking).

Maybe we're just left with facts
because opinions are scarce,
and we're starving,
clawing away at the morsels of Nature
instead of the meat.

          biologically speaking.

I bet it's easy
to impress someone,
but I can't seem to do it.

Think of history,
A simple overwhelming fact
that everything that was
is "was."

And everything that "will be"
may be,
could be.

We are provided a context
that could have been a completely,
completely different
context...
thing.

And sometimes, it's easy to forget
that everything is forgotten,
which makes it hard
to impress people.

At least for me.

I heard it was easy
to impress people,
but I just can't seem to do it.