So a guy asked me out the other day, but I was so scared he'd be too much like you that I said "no," and I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult anymore.

The line for the local convenience store
Stretched out to Market Avenue’s dirt curb,
Past makeshift street clowns juggling the poor
And the ***-stench of “Population Curb.”

We make like big balloons who self-implode:
Fires to fight fires, guns to fight guns,
Fighting for survival makes mores erode
When a dark illusion has fooled billions.

Little John waits in line with his mommy,
No more than a decade, he learns to shoot.
Life was quiet like a dark raging sea,
Now we shake from a screen and men in suits

Fear not, trembling people of the world,
There is a way to end the gun violence,
To stop making canyons of the knurled:
Guns for all! Shun to think of gun absence!

Automatics in the professor’s desk,
Two pistols strapped to Sally’s little thighs,
End common fear with something more grotesque:
Endless rivers of red and eyes for eyes.

Of all the lost souls I have come to know,
You are the bravest, strongest, most divine.
These misplaced foot steps set the world aglow,
With each touch of your hand, new stars align.
I assumed your wondering made you lost --
How foolish of me, but now I can see
You are more than stone: bright granite embossed
With love’s red roses, not sickly ivy.
Envy is my desire for your hands
And how they can shape such beautiful thoughts.
You are like a creation of Dream’s lands,
Lulled spirit tattooed with scattered inkblots.
     Wandering but not lost, found but still searching
     To bring color back to Earth’s eve of spring.

I've never been good with spoken words and maybe this is why
because everything just seems to spill out in rambles and tangents
like trying to follow a scribble cloud as if its a map to buried treasure  
locked deep inside with the secrets and I could never quite tell you,      
not straightforward anyway, how I felt when you sat in front of me,         
but that's not an excuse, and maybe I shouldn't tell you that when I           
see you I feel like I'm being drawn and quartered with every emotion        
pulling selfishly at me but maybe that's just me and perhaps I'm over          
exaggerating the momentum in which my heart holds my head but I         
can't say for sure because all I can hear is a constant drumming…         
constant drumming... constant drumming… and it never stops           
even as the sun sets and you, so far away, somehow crawl into my    
head as if its a warm hearth in the middle of a blizzard, but I am the
exact opposite and if my words don't convince you than perhaps a    
cold shoulder will burn the idea into the soft skin of the arms that used    
to hold me when I cried about those stupid little things that I laugh at      
now and you'd laugh with me, oh that laugh, would fill me with a heat   
that could challenge all the stars in the universe and yet it flickered so      
quickly like a single flame suddenly at the will of a breath that has            
become so shallow and shaken by the tears of something deep inside      
shattering at such an immense speed that everything else is slow motion   
in comparison, and maybe my head is right to think that you're no good   
for me, but don't think for a moment that I could possibly keep you out  
of the mind that has become so crowded and yet you sit in the center of
it all like a king, or perhaps a dictator, that knows he belongs there in
that crowded space just under my ribs echoing with that beat, that constant
drumming that runs through my body like a relentless river as it destroys          
everything in its wake and runs along a silent stream of thoughts and words           
that pour out of my mouth when I open it…                                                              ­

and that is why I am no good with spoken words.

He told me he could wait
regardless of what he wanted.
promises flew at 60 per minute
from lips and trembling fingers,
falsities billowing out with strain smiles
all because of the clock above his head
a constant ticking, reminding and controlling
as if it were a religion
as if it were his master
Creature of Habit
have you seen your master;
gone to communion today?
remember all you’ve wasted with each breath,
each blink becomes a hash closer to death
but they all claim patience and restraint
pulling against chains not clearly visible
golden lips whispering at 60 per minute
regardless of how they speak, they act;
They claim they could wait

They call a deep orange-red moon “******,”
That, somehow, she can hurt and wound like I…
How absurd! A rock can’t show tears or glee
Yet she is as joyous as stars are nigh.

Goddess Moon kissed Mother Earth in passion,
Fire consum’ng their love so time would not.
Time is a hunter they could not outrun,
As he ripped them apart, doomed them to rot.

One grew lush and strong, the other ice cold;
One circled the other in longing stares,
The other raising man in open wolds;
Memories in scars -- what a tragic pair.

Bleed, Moon, bleed as I do cry for lost love,
Alone and cold with the stars high above.

I wish I could find the book titled you,
The haphazard bounded and embroidered
Cover with pages spilling golden rue
And blurred lines under every lovely word…
But I don’t know where to look anymore
Or if my heart wants to ache like it did.
I couldn’t burn the secrets or foreswore
And forget the love seared on my eyelids…
But my thrum is in the eyes of a man,
Laced in every vein, waiting on his lips
Like a drug deal not according to plan
And your relapse stinging like poison whips.
     I’ve held and been held by this book in dreams
     And secret studies full of rouge sunbeams.
     Perhaps this diversion is what I needed;
     Maybe someday I'll learn to stop the bleeding?