there is no place for me to hide,
if i were to tuck myself inside
the marrow deep within your bones,
you'd break each one to get to me.
and **** it dry, the whole supply.
you'd exhaust your every resource
in my pursuit.

i have become your madman shackled,
the prey your hungry eyes have tackled.
you are a flower ever blooming,
looming, growing towards me.
wide-eyed on the chase,
i am the most alluring poison
you did ever taste.

for me, your stomach's aching,
and hands are coarsely shaking
the demons you are waking
are taking every toll on me.
til i am gone, and you are weak
you'll seek my nectar, ever sweet.
no matter what the price will be.

i love you.
for what it is you love to do
when nobody is watching.
because i can not watch you do it,
i know not what you do.
but i'm sure i'd love to do it,
i'm sure i'd love it too.

i'd like to send you something,
to your house, if you permit.
it might be something small,
and light enough to fit

inside a standard business envelope,
so i may drop it down the *****,
of the mailbox on my street
avoid the lines at UPS,

all the clutter and the mess,
yes, i think it would be best
if it required just one minute and one stamp
to leave this something for you down the ramp.

if you allow, then i shall wait
check and recheck the current date,
meticulously calculate
the hours til it reaches you.

i'll pray that it arrives intact,
but please forgive me if in fact
you find it's perfect edges cracked
by the shipping and the handling.

or should the weather of the spring
sustain, and should this unforgiving rain
leave drops like kisses in the paper threads
or should the ink have bled,

accept, i beg, my small imperfect gift
allow your gentle hands to sift
through stacks of correspondences,
allow me please, to the suspense

of sending you, by mail a part
of a handled, weather-beaten heart.

i thought about you papa,
while i was flying last week,
miles above the ground.
and i imagined that while up there,
i was somehow closer to you,
to a heaven that i don't even believe in.
that somehow the plane was holding me up,
the way a person holds up a cellphone
in order to get better reception.
and so we were closer up there.
and you could hear my silent cries to you,
my thoughts soaked in red wine,
my eyes fixed out the window, at the clouds
my memories of you, jagged at the edges,
fragmented by time
and the worries that filled the days just before you died.
and so on that flight, on that day in mid-july,
i missed you, in a way that seemed to bring no pain.
it was the way you miss the summer in december,
because if you think hard enough about it,
you can still feel kind of warm.

one day i'd like to love somebody
the way i love a poem.

the way it seems to curve itself around
its own edges, with calculated precision, and jump
from line
to line
like
marbles
falling in a pin-ball machine.

the way it seems to stand up for itself,
self-construct and de-construct the space
in which it floats,
like the clouds that hug the air around the ocean.

the way it leads a wish, like a dandelion seed, into the world
gently and blindly.
and bears on itself the weight
of so many
human
sorrows
yet rises from the ground a flower.

the way it's purpose sits like a ribbon
on a christmas present,
beautiful both open
and contained.

you were like a loud television in the next room,
disturbing my sleep night after night,
but i was always too tired
to just get up and shut you off.

i tried my best to piece together what i heard--
the dialogue was intriguing, at times beautiful.
but still there was the wall...
and from my side of it,
i could not see you for what you really were.
until one day, i did.

and i know now to never again settle
for an image incomplete of description,
a story short of resolution,
or for losing sleep--for eyes so tired, so heavy
they made the baggage you put on me seem light.

never again will i paint pretty pictures in my head
for a love that is so clearly artificial,
it exhausts my wonder for the truth.

exhausts it so covertly,
and with such careful manipulation,
that i mistake my weariness for weakness.
when all the dreams i lost,
all the dreams you stole, were of my strengths.