I awkwardly said,
I want to share my poems aloud,
At this place, underground.
I'd like it if you came.

No reply.

I anxiously mentioned,
Some of them will have you in them,
I'd like it if you came and heard,
What I had to say.

No reply.

A few days later, you talk to me, randomly.
I mention I want to see you.
I've had a bad day.

What's been bad, you say?

My job isn't working out and
my car situation is all ****** up,
and my family is ****** up too.

You don't have your car anymore?

No, family needed it more than I.
And I want to save some down before I get mine.
I say.
Emptily. Thinking. No big deal.
This is smart. This is what people do.

But you never replied.
Not once when I needed you the most.

Looking back I'm frustrated.
I cared an awful lot.
And because I did I shared myself instead of
Partaking in you. And I think at a point it became so...
needy. So frustrating. So unmanly in your eyes, that
combined with some ****** dysfunction,
we just died on the vine. Black, withered, and disgusting.
So even though we remembered being green it just,
could not go back that way. And the irony was if I had
just ever figured out how to be nonchalant,
and not care so ever ******* much,
then, chances are, you'd have been my lady.
Life is weird. People... relationships... I don't know.
It's a cruel joke sometimes. Ain't a poem for you anymore.
You never really wanted.... that. I don't know what you want but,
It isn't me. Not anymore.

My sister said, **** that *****.
I smiled wryly and thought,
Once, but nevermore.

I think in the dark times of the night.
Even when the sky is bright,
Perhaps in a few years, when we are older...
I think with fear of a primal sort.
I have a girl that I love,
who I adore, and who doesn't necessarily mistreat me,
who keeps me though I'm an *******, and will take me
rich or poor but...
If you ever became someone who would come
and listen to my poetry
and hear what I have to say to you,
and cared, a little bit, sincerely,
and ever found me in your heart, truly, again...
What would I do?
I don't know but disgustingly,
I may always love you.

They swore it would rain,
overcast and cold, the grey
permeating every dead blade
of grass, every bare bough,
staggering in the wind,
and every soul beneath,
staggering for other reason
toward some unknown eternity.

The forecast told of rain,
but it is only the terrible,
everywhere grey and the
cold of low clouds and
wind that blows in deprecation
through and above everything,
those buildings leaning in the mist
weighed down by their steel frames,
and myself, inundated beneath it all.

They swore on rain
but there is nothing.
Nothing but the grey
and the cold and
the hangover death
of the soul that exists in
this Spring pre-bloom morning

The young women show up
at this old man's door
with their legs ripe
and long and their
skirts short, so short,
and framed against
those forever legs with
the bronze, sun-kissed
amber of skin that tastes
of the sweet, clean salt of sweat
in Summer warmth.

They knock a few times in
quiet, tentative rap with
slender, thin knuckles
before moving quickly
away toward the stairs
--No, this was a bad idea,
I should have never came--
Blushing furiously as I crack
open the door with a slight ****.

I am ugly in crazed eyes and
stained shorts and no shirt
and broken air conditioner
leaves me standing in thick sweat,
but it is the old dirt-sweat
of an old dirt man,
and it tastes stale and sour
as it drips downward
from my temples.
She smiles,
shy and honest enough
for me to want her right
there where she stands,
asks if she can come in.

My place is a wreck and
she doesn't mind
as I apologize for it,
but I feel terribly for it
and wish she was gone,
the wine is almost
finished but we drink it down
even though it is warm
and the glasses sweating
within our hands.

Copulation comes easier
than conversation and
so she is silent atop my lap
except for the nothing whisper
of *** in my ear, the breathed
moan of lust in the dark rooms.
--Baby, you're beautiful,
oh, oh, you're beautiful--
and I don't much have the heart
to correct her but it
appalls me that
she could think so
knowing myself as I do,
most likely she is
only acting anyway,
so I don't think much of it
except to nod and flip her
over and she is all
legs and *** and ****
but she is self conscious
and won't let them
out of her black-lace bra
and I let her have her insecurities.
Instead, I'm with those endless legs
like golden honey and so sweet
and smooth and burning
with that inner heat of womanhood
and Lord, doesn't it
just feel good to be
young again?

If only for a second
within those eyes
and arms and
legs
legs
legs.

In Spring, it is possible
to find God with only
slight attention to detail.
There is a park tucked
between the city blocks
and the green of the grass
breaks the slate pavement
and the jawline skyscrapers
like teeth, serrated edges
up against the blue.

In Winter, He can be found as well,
but it is not the same, he is not beautiful
in his pallid forms as he is across those
verdant leaves hanging.
It is much harder to notice,
and one must look closely
at the frost alongside the branch
shining in grim reflection atop the walk.
—if one can manage the cold and
the wind and the everything frozen
without hurrying too muchalong—
I find that Hell may indeed
be a cold, cruel place.

Perhaps they are both in tandem
with one another. Winter begets
Spring and back again.
I step back from both and let
them play their tug-of-war.
Build and destroy and build again.

So I sit in Spring,
and God is there dancing,
out in the wisps of light
that brim amongst the
petals and the great
wonderful things and
I laugh, feigning hope,
knowing so quickly how it will
freeze again.

Tonight the moon stalks my steps,
it watches me with baleful stare
daring me to break my pact.

I know it wants a sacrifice
a body laid out on ice.
But I dare to return your stare.

These iron bars cast lines.
Lines I cannot cross.
Crimes enshrined in moonlight.

You stalk my mind, my soul, my dreams.
You keen to me, to be seen.
You beg more bad to be done, you stalk me when there's none.

My life, this pantomime

Like being forced under frozen water
Electric burning in the lungs
The heart beats in fire
The body shocks itself alive
As it is dying
Memories flash
In pangs of emotion
The used-to-bes and never-was
A future with burnt edges
The sensation of the last time you touched me
And the death of a part of my soul