4:55 am, snoring boyfriend is downstairs
SOUND asleep
I lie awake and seek to reach the deep
Well of sound and music, a poetic
Kingdom, I made my queendom
With. Never tried emjambments but well,
They seem to fit, they bring to thoughts freedom.

SOUNDS like my well-being
To write poetry is living
The instants to the fullest
Even on a cellphone my rhymes do not rest

I may SOUND poised and in control
But at first my poems were about pain and all
The things that poetry sublimates with her crown
I owe much of my style to what Ginsberg wrote down

My American poetic self is a committed eye with an everlasting passionate SOUND.

When the world has exhausted me from continuously unresolved misunderstandings,
I retreat back to the inner workings of my mind and soul.

Trying to accept that even though I wish to settle inside of strangers
That I am just not a being to be comprehended.

I must be just a ghost.
Barely visible,
A sound in the background,
A closing door,
A whisper in the room.

Making you wonder if you really heard something or was it just your imagination?

I must be a superstition.

I continue to pass through them, trying to reach a soul,
but I am not even on the same plain of existence as you.

That constant desire to escape is the air I breathe,
Flowing down my throat,
A waterfall of despair turning into pools that fill my lungs.

Trickling until I am overfilled,
Vomiting the fear and choking on it.
Swallowing with a burn so fierce I'd rather not take another inhale.

I try to dive in pretending that the water is relaxing,
but really I am just sinking instead of swimming.
My mind an anchor.

My thoughts are seeping out of my pores, creating blood in the water attracting more and more sharks that circle and . . .
circle.

Fleshy pieces floating away.
Biting off parts of me one at a time.
Doesn't matter,

I was gonna drown anyway.

What am I doing?
I'm so glad you asked
Waiting for an author to write a perfect book
Waiting for an artist to paint the perfect canvas

Watching the stars for a moment
Hoping something will collapse
I guess I'm just painfully, desperately waiting
For something miraculous to happen

I am a knight.

Not the dark from an evening sky.
Not a warrior wrapped in steel.
More like the chess piece.

My movements? Impractical.
My purpose? Undetermined.
And I'll probably die early.

How comforting.

My accomplice.
My comrade.
My kryptonite.

Make sure to bury me with my horse.
And contort our lifeless bodies into an L
So we can finally embrace what held us back.

Contemplate a teardrop,
and this is what I see.
A drop of moisture
from an irritation?
Some agree.

What is a teardrop made of,
just some water from a gland?
But brush it off and contemplate
the moisture on your hand.

It's also made of sorrow
or from pain that you may feel
A treasure of emotion
on your cheek
that might congeal

"Tears of happiness" are made
of joy or great suprise
That fall like rain in summer
from a pair of smiling eyes.

They course down cheeks in rivers
or collect on lashes there.
They form in silent puddles
when emotions are laid bare.

Tears are gems as precious
as a diamond that is mined
So do not take them lightly
if their origins you can't find.

They're made of things like music
that can make the heart take wing
Or how the soul can elevate
to hear an angel sing.

You hold echoes of a shift
so plaintively
against the swell
of midnight summer rain—
within the roar of the planes
on cold faded glass
the stuffy air at the airport

There was no way around it
that I could see—
the world still kept its spinning

You lock your stare here
and how I wish
I was packed up too,

snug heartbeats in your leather briefcase.

© BT

Good ten minutes to four
I reached the temple door.

Take your offer for the God
the flower seller was eager
no haste, he smiled
his time for a rest
will soon be over.

I wondered
why I'm never contented
with what God has to offer
and as a rule
my bag of grievances is ever full.

In the faint light
I held his idol in my sight
listening in the quietude
to the temple pigeons.

With great peace
I bought two lotus at fifteen rupees
from the flower seller
dividing our happiness
into equal share.

The sleepy man at the museum
directed me to the balloons.

Ten out of ten shots went astray
proving my eyes are lame
and so my aim.

The galleries were eerily deserted.
(is people's interest in science flagging?)

I looked down the infinite well
for awhile eternally falling into it
recovering from the realization
they were merely infinite reflections.

The man's smile told he knew from my dazed look
I was lost in the mirror maze.

(Was I stuck in all the wrong exhibits
for my age?)

I got a ticket for the sky in September
finding peace in the dark of the planetarium.