There are poems hidden in the limbs of the willow
Lines of rhyme flowing from the music of the wren
Sonnets sitting like angels atop clouds resting on hilltops
Waiting to instill those with pen and ink to script lyrics to enlighten
There are triolets among the petals of coneflowers, pink, red and yellow

For poems are the breath of our life, the sustenance of the soul
Wars recalled in verse, memories intended to calm
Songs of poetry sing messages cascading from the heart
When gods, or monsters, or disease destroy the planet
The last words, lines forming an elegy, will drift from the debris

If I reached for you,
stretching out my fingertips,
you'd still be,
far beyond my touch.

I remember the way you felt under my hands.
Grabbing your waist,
running my palms across your pale skin.
My body and mind,
both set on fire.

I wanted to tell you then,
when passion consumed us,
that I adore your rough edges.
The soft scars you fear,
take my breath away.

I find you so flawless.

I've always known your brilliance,
losing myself in the corners.
I wanted so much,
to fill the empty vase she left behind.

You spent so much time chasing ghosts,
that you once,
accused me of being one.
Reality made me visible,
and perhaps that's what I did wrong.

I finally gave my whole self,
and you faded beyond view.
Leaving me standing here,
trying to understand exactly what was real.

We must lose a part of ourselves,
when we spend so much time,
Loving when it makes no sense,
and chasing ghosts that have no heart.

We watch you.
We see all that you are.
All that you are not.
We pick, we gnaw, we tear apart.
Into your soul, your brain, your heart.
We know your fear, we know your pain.
We know what turns you on.
We watch.
We take notes.
We see all angles of how this could be.
Yet we never actually become anything

Up through the cracks in the old chimney stacks and into the sands of the Gobi, they know me,
the Antarctic just blows me away, the Arctic holds fast to the blue rings of fire and the smoke that curls forward becomes the words that were tokens to be spoke in the classroom, we have been taught to be saviours but we swallowed the Moon.

In Sanskrit and Hebrew we knew all was done for but we went through the motions as if life was a see-saw and we were the fulcrum,
and the pirouette became the fame that we looked for on the road to the West.
And we got there to the World Fair where the conglomerates sold us a new deal for Christmas, a machine written wish list that ticked all their boxes but the boxes were caskets and we, the dead men, the basket cases, blanked out faces and no thanks to anything, to the king nor the Queen who were seen in the palaces and the princes sticking their tongues out and ******* on the poverty.

They knew me but ******* me and that's all I could hope for but one day I'll take a hammer and smash up that see-saw and see what they know about then.

The finder, the keeper the rich man, the sleeper, the ***** and the Princess I bless them all and the corporations that take us to break on the treadmill or blacken in the Sun, your day will come.

She was perfect,
meticulous
with her bebop hairdo,
nails manicured,
her precious feet
neatly fitted
into her wedge
flip-flops.
Jesus, a one-piece French-cut,
the see-thru kind!
She blew my mind.
That's the way
it's supposed to be.
I counted every single
grain of sand
stuck
in between
her pretty toes,
she was perfect.