Before anything,
Let me say I love you
And that my body burns
With thirst for you--
Dehydrated in the desert
Of your absence, wishful eyes
Spy mirages of you
Masquerading as people.
But, when I lean in closer
I see they're just shadows
Of your laugh, your eyes--
There are pieces of you
everywhere in my life,
Like shattered glass in a carpet.

I'd like to speak to you
about the Taming of the Shrew,
and how you've suffered in silence
for too long.

I'd like to hear you say
that you were happier that day,
when you were gifted with answers
that you knew all along.

I like to hear you call,
or say anything at all,
I just need to know you've found
where you belong.

I'd like to talk with you,
sat on the wall by the avenue,
where we kissed under the street-light
in summers rushed and long.

I'd like to be your friend,
drunk under morning light's slight bend,
as we talk under the dawn-break's
hopeful song.

I'd like to eat with you
at a breakfast diner for two,
we'll lust away the hangover
in a memory lifelong.

I'd like to speak to you
about the sadness of the few,
about how you're disappearing
about how I need you
to be strong.

the street was my mattress
the sky my sheets,
dreaming of a car roaring
and squishing me
but for all my honesty
still death I cheat
I want to leave.
please Reaper, please
ride your midnight stead
scythe over shoulder
dead flame and worn teeth
grab hold my shoulder
split the earth
pull me under
split the earth
let me sleep

I hear the subtle sound of heartache
calling across the quay,
young lovers spell Joni's words
with the catkins of the tree.

I feel the heavy weight of lover's wake
as we dream on through the day,
old demons used to poison me,
before you took them all away.

I taste the blood in chocolate wine
and it's sweetening my mind,
it's telling me of fortune's treat,
when good intention is combined.

I smell the human in our longing sweat
as I press into your skin,
steady as my doubts are perished,
all happiness, lived again

I see the poetry in street-lights
imitating the moon,
telling  me when darkness falls,
light will follow soon.

I know there's more out there
than ever I've seen,
more than whatever I am
and whatever I've been.

Kiss upon my lover's nose:
It is for you the blossom grows.
Notice now it fans itself
Beyond the bough and hither flows.

Or else the scents came forth aroused
Not by those lips but by their boughs
Who shook and left them to the lake
With whose waters we are daily doused.

But could we shake the scent from trees
And drink the petals' milk as bees,
We might not lead our lips astray
And plant wet kisses where we please.

My brain is an autopsy
Observing your
Remains
Turning them over
And over
Trying to make sense
Of what you left behind
My body is your body
My hands could be yours
Only they are full of life
And yours feel cold in mine
My heart is a eulogy
It remembers only
The things I loved about you
It refuses to acknowledge
How the story really ends
My lungs are a graveyard
I breathed you in
But I cannot
Breathe you out
I am your tomb
And in me you'll remain
And maybe it's me
Who's buried after all

it's all in the details, shadows tracing shapes
of ghosts of past demons seductive with
wide eyes of warm brown flecked moss green
whisper in my ears of delusions and grandeur
while fingertips trace burning lines in
the well worn patterns on my back
temptress, succubus, leech, smooth with
manipulative cunning and dangerous beauty
a haunting promise to kiss the poison lips
of a night filled with fool's gold memories
left in the morning with an empty chest
and entrails that went west with the setting sun
with the greatest beauty, and grasping claws
silk sharp nails hooked in flesh and conscious thought
leave me from your deceptions and lies
my sweet Lilith, I am but a disposable distraction
naught but a notch in your bed
you left with my mind and my heart
left my body but an empty shell
a wraith wandering this grey plane