I wonder if
You've ever read any of my poems
And panicked.
Trying to figure out if it was about you.

It probably was.
This one is.

True criminal, I sold my soul and stole it back.

My spoken word often
falls short of my
blood stained paper.
Where my heart spills
emotions only felt
with fingers between pages.

Words seasoned through the years,
lost love, heartache.
The many firsts and the lasts,
I experience my ink saturated tales.
Where one lives in a mysterious clarity
not received on the vocal reenactment.

Writing comes in waves, like the coast.
Overwhelmed, drenched in feeling,
fading then; waiting to crash back
against me eroding barriers.
To keep my detached self between
one tidal eruption breaking my
total defense from all intervention.

Long ago,
I remember,
we paid the lone-guard
twenty pesos apiece
to camp on
top of the temple,
to experience
something cosmic.
And after he left,
we stripped down
to our bareness
& kissed under
the milky-stars
with howlers squealing
a backdrop melody.
I lost myself that night.
Tracing your lips with my tongue,
I felt the cool jungle air
swirling around us,
you did not fight me
as I melted inside you.
I swear the jaguars
rejoiced that night,
as we had rekindled
the acts of the sacred gods.
It was more than cosmic,
more than stellar,
I felt the poles shift
our hearts.

red stripes of blood
stolen pearls as stars
a white house built with bones
the pledge, a discreet battle cry
a trail of tears we ride upon