Little brown eyed girl,
With brown short ***** curls
And dark skin that you
Have not learned how to love yet.

I speak to you.

Little brown eyed girl;
Already jaded
By a world that from birth,
Has declared you unlovable
Just because you look like you.

I tell you, that is a lie.

Little brown eyed girl
With strength in your bones
And love in your heart
So much so that the little boys
All run away.

I say that any man who cannot love you as you are does not deserve you.

Do not be ashamed;
Of your dark skin,
Of your brown eyes,
Of your short ***** mud-coloured hair,
Of your thick thighs,
Of your stretch marks and scars.
Little Brown Eyed Girl
You are perfect, just as you are.

I have this place
no one knows about
between a field and a willow tree
along a pastures edge
a creek down around the corner
I go to when
things get oppressive
dark and hard
and I sit there
I don't know if I meditate
there in this place hidden
but I get peace
I see love I hug this earth

No river bed rock ever
Kisses the same water
Twice.

Autumn opens her arms
To September, and I close
My window for the first

Time since May.
I have had better
Summers. Love left behind

In a deluge of tears and regret.
Doctors sharing bad news
With honest concern;

Waves upon sand castles,
Moments; memories, then
Nothing.

I rest beneath the
Cold stream, perhaps
Allowing new waters

To feel my face in time.
For now, the rain strokes
Nothing but the glass

Of a window shut
To the chill of a dying
Summer.

She thought about trains
And what they looked like
The stations and how it'd feel
Just to sit and wait while figures pass
What it would feel like
To sit next to a perfect stranger
Everyday of the week
She thought she could live there
That place with trains
Grey stations and faces
She thought she'd never leave
Because when the snow hit
She could forget
All she felt before
She wanted messy love in the fall
The leaves changing colors
Smiles as bright as the sun
She wanted genuine silence
And admiration
The boots that fit snug
Wrapped around her ankles
She wanted to feel pretty
In pea coat in the rain
She wanted respect
The sort of acknowledgement
That anyone should get
She wanted to share her heart
With everyone who fell apart
She wanted simplicity
And hell
In one big shot
She wanted to live
And know she was

When was the last time
I felt a raving hunger for life?
When had I but an eternity in moments,
on the edge of something vastly different?

How was it me and not you
who staked her soul high
on rolling hills of green,
took long draughts to savour, to condense
the weight of the world into one precious drink,

cup the shortest days in her palm and release them,
for her thoughts to balloon into the wild?

The delectable now—
ripe as berries for plucking in winter,
and all things, like music
must peter
into silence.

So I suppose my question to you
is not concerned with
the stack of newly-minted green in your pocket,
nor the fleet of shiny cars, but
your pure self, simply being.
It’s prodding the heart,
a tiny critter fluttering with wings, wondering:

when will you ever get a second chance at this—
all this storm
and inexplicable happiness—

or will you
go hunting for things,
whirling at mere traces
of power in your name—

or will you turn around
only to find a life
or a lie,
staring back wide-eyed
in endless shame?

© BT

I don't want to need you
Or to know you so well
You may be different now
But make no mistake
I hold your heart
It's here with me in times
Where you're disconnected
I feel it around me
Wonder if you meant for it
To float above the horizon
Above the deep blue sky
I wonder if you feel it
Lurking where I hide
You're waiting I believe
The way you said you would
Then again I am crazy
And you would want me to
Wait for you?
We had plans of a sort
The ones you described briefly
I tried to comprehend
I do now sometimes
But you are gone now
You see your heart is with me
I don't think you'll get it back
I didn't ask for it
It just doesn't make sense
Like love has no rhyme
Has no reason
The way you said you got it
But you never could believe it
I still write for you this way
Though you're long gone
But your heart is here with me
I'll take it where it belongs