my fingers have become bored with
the quicksand of routine
they prefer to dance erotically over my typewriter
frolicking like naked ballerinas
over an ancient stage
spilling their secret thoughts
onto blank page,
after their day job
threaded together
over my lap,
or bending over to
reveal the contents
of my burlap sack

they have taken instead
to jumping over cracks
in the nothing of night
stifling the sound of silence
with assortments of clicks and clacks
punching in the perfect pitch of keys
to leave Beethoven blind
from this symphony of notes combined

and just like that at last
they have unfolded some rhyme
unachievable with ink and pencil,
without the stencil of time
dictating to work inside the lines

Looking out the glass
down over damp streets
spread like boundaries;
streetlights and stop signs
to keep everything in, or out.

This city is a prison.

Your heartbeat is steady
next to me, slow.
Beneath that slight frame,
veins pump the blood that
gives you life.
The same blood that
allows you to cry at your
worst mistakes, or mine.

This room is a prison.

There is a rotating light,
the spotlight overseeing these
midnight prison grounds.
It burns from green to orange,
back to green again.

Your chest heaves, hitches,
I can feel it as the sobs
whisper out like a jury sentence.
The prison is here in white sheets,
where sighed whispers of
blame echo out.
Aside from that, it is silent,
the window holds out
noises of another world.

I wonder, glowing orange
to somber green,
what crimes I have committed
that hold me here.

I wonder, trapped by these
barbed wire streets,
what repentance I must seek out
to find sleep.

Little flowers in the meadow
Exchanging brief blushing kisses
And if you blink,
Even once, you will miss it.
The wind blows their chaste faces
In just the right way
As petals overlap
And intertwine,
Like grasping fingers
Destined for one another,

Or
At least they are
According to fate's cunning design.

It's spontaneous,
Instantaneous
Convergence of the stars,
And their hearts
Spiral down to the planet's face
In a plummeting
Fiery haze—

And they destroy.

In smoking craters they sleep
As one body,
One broken mass of
Tangled limbs,
As if it was their cradle.

At least they have each other.
They have themselves and
That is all.
To heal oneself
In another's arms,
And to throw oneself
Off the cliff face,

It is the same.
It is all the same.
And the jagged rocks below,
Of course,
The rocks below will be blamed
For the scarlet water,
The scarlet sands,
Slipping through the gaps between
Their white knuckles
And clasped hands
Still stained scarlet,

And the harlot
On the street corner,
In her little black dress,
The men who know her
Know her not
And do not care:

They only see the curls in her hair,
And the sway of her hips,
And the gentle movements
Of her deep red lips,
But they don't hear a word she says,
And do not care.

Listen, it's a beautiful thing
when distilled to its essence;
reduced to its purest form.
A paradox and a paradigm;
a paragon of perfection.
Epic in its arythmetic
progression; poetic.
Like Chinese arithmetic,
so hard it hurts. Yet soft
and exquisite, like a bubble
of love caught in a beating heart.
That place where poetry starts.