I used to read your poems
but lately you don't write
you're silent and aloof
you know that isn't right.
You can't close a door once opened
you can't abolish all your dreams
you're a poet of the heart
mustn't fall apart at the seams.
Say what you can in words
they speak the message true
spoken from the heart
the poems will see you through.
A hermit's not your style
a recluse, you are not
never give up writing
of things that you've been taught.
I used to read your poems
I'd read them once again
if you would send them out
(this one's from a poet friend)

These are the hands that will guide you to greatness,
These are the hands that will stay through the years,
These are the hands that will celebrate good times,
And these are the hands that will wipe away tears.

These are the hands that will love you forever;
When you are weak they will help you feel strong,
And, right now, since these hands are entwined together
These hands are precisely where they belong

some people think “i just write”,
trust me,
i do,
but they don’t know that there’s so much story
veracity,
sincerity,
heartbreaks,
landslides,
sacrifices,
c­ourage,
in between words,
in this world,
it takes me to pour everything,
in what “i just write”.

The goddess of the spent moon skulks to her feathery bed of fiery dawn.
Wrens through the uplands wend the fence weft with piecemeal straw.
Lips painted like pomegranate groves, dashed with fructifying sweets.
A kiss is a far-off and warm opening of lips like the sun into forest gleams.

I LIKE TO SAY YOUR NAME

I like to say
your name

when you're
not here

turn you
into sound

conjure you out of
thin air

so that you appear
before me

dressed in sound
only

memory sketching in
the rest of you

as if sound
was just an outline

and love
colours you in

adding the voice last
so I can hear you say.

"Hello you..!"
and there you are

as present
as present

can be.

I like to say
your name

when you're
not there.

I've b l  o   w    n        my lungs clean
                                                           ­       e
                                                   k
                                        o
                     ­         m
of cigarette s
So why would you asumme
I wouldn't throw you   o
                                          u

             ­                              t
with the rest of the         trash
that cluttered my life
and poisoned my mind?

something he stole
      was very important to me
                but it’s not the kind of thing
that could ever be returned
         this is no game of
   lost and found
       oh, but the thief
                        the thief―
they couldn’t catch him,
            he’s got
               sly talk and
i think he’s part snake
          they couldn’t catch him because
he left no fingerprints

sometimes grey is really yellow.
he is sunshine on a summer day,
giggling at knock-knock jokes
with punchlines like the wind.

and sometimes grey is really brown.
coated in the mud of puddles
that he was told not to touch
but leapt into anyways.

and sometimes grey is really green.
when he is, he asks questions
as tall as his dandelion legs
that grow taller with each day.

and sometimes grey is really red.
like the day he came into the world
screaming and all-of-the-sudden
with his middle fingers in the air.

and sometimes i am really blue.
when i look at grey, and yellow,
and brown, and green, and red
wondering how he might paint

wondering if the world will see his colors
until grey cups my tears in his hands
throws them into the air
and makes a rainbow.