The water is always calmest at night, sometime around one or two on the Carolina coast. It’s right around the time the moon has grown tired of pulling the earth towards it; when its hands are shaking from holding in something so big, when the water takes a little bit longer each time to kiss the shore. I’ve learned to love how the water looks at night, it seems more selfless to me than it does during the day when the sunshine reflects the peaks and breaks of each wave, when the water is clear and you can see into every part of it. It’s different at night, it becomes a blackened mirror reflecting only the images of those awake long enough to see it, and it’s much more humble- to show off other people.

I think the thing is we inspire danger
Within one another
We’ve realized the falsity of fear
And found instead it was always a choice
And now we’ve chosen to forgo it
To embrace danger as easily
As we embrace one another
This is a beautiful thing to find in another person
So that when the skies fall
And the armies invade our city
When the streets run so rampant with violence
That the government outlaws touching
We won’t be afraid to stand in the streets
To hold each other in chaos
To kiss each other where we need it.

Holding you between my lips,
I would speak in tongues
And remain forever mute.
Although I need to taste you,
There is rapture in anticipation.
I delay the moment that you yield, then burst,
Your perfect, perfumed juices
Trickling slowly down my chin.

Find me a place where heartache ends
And when you find it, mark it with an “X”
But instead of burring gold there
Bury you’re betrayal, bury it deep
In a wooden box with a padlock
So that even over the years
When the salty air and crashing waves
Erode that sandy grave
And that pain surfaces again
I’ll have had enough time
To wash in the tide
The smell of you from my clothes
To baptize myself in the sea
From your sinful touches
To let the waves beat down
On my ears so loud
They’ll forget how your name sounds
When that wooden box floats
Back to me on the opposite side of the shore
Then I’ll know when it’s safe to come back to that place
And I’ll brush off the “X” you put there
Because that’s where the heartache ends.

The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that I fall in love daily
Held under so many captivating spells
moulded and crafted by all walks of life
I find myself longing for all of you
the broken, the fallen, the bruised
the saints, the sinners
the righteous, the dispossessed
the holy, the unholy
all meet here
to speak of life
as they feel it
as only we know it.
Onwards, upwards
Downward spirals
kindness, cruelty
crashing through boundaries
bounding across oceans
carried on wistful sighs and broken dreams
The trouble with Hello Poetry
Is that it breaks my heart
Then brings me back to love again
All within an hour.