Why?

Because I like her voice.

Why?

Because it feels like home.

Rich and dark, like apple cider on an October street corner
I didn’t know you, dulcet and sweet
Until the full weight of your intoxicating world washed over me

A gentle, delicate, beautiful hand
Extends from the Excursion
And drops a can
Ugh, what a hideous hand

To hold her for hours
And hours on end

The desire of he
Who contends with discomfort
And fights for her future
Be it not his own

These are the paths which only he knows
Lonely though they may ever be
He walks
Steadily into the good night

A light
Alone

Thank God
My sin is my own

I cannot help
But feel the feeling
That our trains have passed
In the dead of night
One before the other
Ever so slight

The perfection in the blank page
Could never be matched by me
It says
In a boldfaced lie
Designed to keep me from the one thing which will
The TRY

If work, a sea, has tossed me asunder
Then I in two, will sit on the edge of a caffeinated cliff
And write about it, about me, about you

If you suspect that you've made a mistake
And it's me
You have
But not at all the mistake you were thinking of
Initially

You walked in
And I saw
For a moment struck by falling awe
The same starlight in your eyes
As had been within my dreams as of late
And like that
The morning of not knowing was over
And you were there in the afternoon

I didn't expect such starlight then

Cars roll by in subsequent order
Aimless yet guided
Aware of me yet not
And so, gone in an instant
Though similar in nature
Are thoughts
Are cars
Are these other lives
Are these

Hello poems
I'm your penman
And your ship which has sailed over a thousand times

Hello times
Where are you going?
Lord knows in nowhere you will find

Hello no one
Hello some
Hello life and underwhelmingness of love

Hello certainty
Hello un
And hello to you my most newly begun

The great woods are
But a memory to me
Of a time when my words clung to the branches of trees
Before the fall
Great indeed for their inherent value
For their intrinsic worth
Were such words and such times to me

Drop a smooth stone in a pond
And no one sees the ripple
Skip a stone on a running river
And the ripple is consumed

The smell of skin
Alabaster
Mixed with deep breaths in the dark

As quiet minds
Slowly unwind
And let go of the thoughts inside
Like shooting stars
We fall in line
Most quietly here side by side

Within this bed
All that could've been said
Has faded like the setting sun
At least until the morning comes
Until you smell the coffee
And hear the distant purring hum
Of the ceiling fan
Let your heart beat slow until we speak again

Because there is no safer place
No secluded cabin or basin by a mountain face

There is only you
And there is only me
And the edges of what cannot be seen

Like the trust we keep in each other
So completed
Which results in an expert exclusivity

So you know that when I say I can
I mean thay I will indefinitely
As you know that you could for me

Because no other eyes can see
The certain way the palmtrees sway
Longingly beside the sea

So if you ever desire to sleep
While lying right here next to me

I wouldn't mind such a memory
In fact I'd cherish it, hold onto it
And try my best to forever keep
The essence of your tiny feet
As they passed by my awkward knees

Provided you don't mind my skin
Or the smell of my cologne which I always keep
For as surly as the sun will peak
Near by my side is where you'd be

And slowly as you succumb to sleep
And drift into a pleasant dream
I'd close my eyes and be at peace
Just knowing you were next to me

There in the dark
Where our deep breaths meet
Is where I hope you'd fall asleep

Those two are like jazz
In both song and spirit
Full of unexpected twists and turns
Highs and lows
Peaks and valleys
Moors and mist

Love turns to face Hate
And at the altar says
"I am yours and you are mine "
Hate doesn't respond
Knowing similar sames
And marital fate

They aren't just standing there
Breathing in and out your air

They are standing at the very spot
Seeing with the same clear eyes

And feeling that which you once did
The breath, the silence, the reply

I have always been a shadow tower

With arms of bended steel

Love me, hate me

Do with me your opinion what will

But never will I change as this

Or let my shadows lack therein

The will to see it though and thru

And deliver it with a furious will

Sometimes my stomach empties
And it feels like I
Could consume the sky
With a single breath of air

But when I see my peers
And their success
How quickly I forget
Every win and concurred fear

The hunger is an eternal thing
With an observation to see
But the memory of what ere I've won
Ought to be enough for me

Nine meters per second
Twenty miles per hour
No speed is sufficient for this
This kind of falling

To close this wound I never knew
To slow my waking thoughts alive
One moment I am all a hope
The next I am crashing into a puddle down

But not like the others
Ever falling over and over again
For I am a selective raindrop now

I cannot clear the palate of my mind with all of this noisy taste embodied.

I know when I am kept at length
I feel it still

The distance between
The shortness of breath
The memory of such

Did you know that such things never escape me?

Like the way in which you used to be
How you used to breathe
So...openly

Just know that this change is not insulting to me
But speaks more firmly than any word
And more clearly than any crystal stream

So I need not ask if I may drink
I simply cannot
Nor am I capable of thinking beyond

For that is how you have made this to be
Quiet again
And short without sweet

And thus, I am left
Disappointed in myself
For sharing like this
So....unabashedly

How I feel like a child standing beside a rapid river
Raging onward
How it runs and swells and passes by my confidence, quickly it flees

For in my mind comparatively
We were the same in prior days
Like a mountain stream
Clear and crisp

But now, just know that I must learn to flow more cautiously
In order to be and protect myself 
Remaining as is

For this is how it must now be
Directional, proportional
Or at least based on what I've seen
For therein grows a greater distance between
And greater still

And I will not pay
I will not suffer
When your attention in such moments
Is no longer free, to the likes of me

So here I lay the honest truth
In an honest statement, without plea

Those who are not just "I am"
Glow like stars in the night sky
And serve others
Even if they do not know it
As guides
In the absence of light
Is where they shine most bright

A surgeon reaches down a path
And walks out with the heart of the woods

Be it beating slow or beating fast
The hikers pray
That the woodlot surgeon puts it back

In the heart of it
Where the woods still belong

Strong...as they once grew strong

True reflections appeal to me
Like the churning waters of the Atlantic
I am lost amidst the vastness of this deep blue sea

I think therefor I am and hope that I will ever be
A clever well of reflective waters
The kind that people always seek

And yet I search for you in streams
Because I thirst and need to drink
Your words in deep which comfort and compose the likes of me

No other soul will see you shimmer neath the snow capped mountain peaks
And so I stoop to catch your fragrance
And drink you in a draught so deep

-SS

The height of the stars
The depths of the ocean
The colors of the flowers
And the warmth of a summers morn
No human heart nor hand to hold
Is responsible for making you
Feel with such feelings as these adorn

Is there truly strength in knowing?
I used to think so, so knowingly
When really the strongest person
Is the one who does know, doesn't run
And doesn't worry about such
Knowingly

There is no green bright enough
In all the trees
Or in every sea
To tell of how envious I am of you

Let it go
Release your hold
Lie back at sea
And be

Turn your eyes
Up to the sky
Into the fire
Stare back, daringly

Cover not
Your wavering life
Of the underneath
Be free

For all is heaven
All is earth
And all around
Is all to see

Open your hands
To grasp no more
Open your mind
To stars ablaze

Let night consume
Your morning plans
Let waters wash
All fear away

Let first your thought
Be not of me
Not of yourself
But all of these

For all is heaven
And all is earth
And all around
Is all to see

To the sounding chill
Past the open sill
I could never compare

My voice but a whisper
And hers a symphony of a thousand crickets
All performing piano consonance on the air

Find answers at the bottom of a cup?
I think not.

Find freedom in the freedom to choose how you will be?
Not me.

Find a lack of self in a deepless sleep, where no answers are present for a moment?
Maybe.

Find yourself on a way, to being OK, with the inevitability of everything?
Now that...

That sounds like something substantial to me.

The nature of intensity is like an eclipse in the sky
Most memorable
Most vibrant
Most unique to others
But no less alive than the prior tries
No
The trick is in the duration
Just for a moment
A certain time
That is what in the mind’s eye remember
What makes the instive memory shine

You cannot see me
Hear aloud
Though here I am regardless

Consisting of the why in wind
Though I may howl
And crash upon the sudden leaves

I am still
The whispering in the hear and now

A cylinder of burning flame, standing tall in the dead of night.
With wisping smoke and warming waves I radiate.
Emulating the fires of old, which charred the brick and mortar stone of a fireplace.
Like the flames which gave you first your warmth, turn now to me.
A fiery ember burning fast, a glutton for your oxygen.
My lifeless love will ever last.
Until the waters poured upon me turns the lye from Phoenix ash.
I am your love.
Your lonesome fire.
A comet in the sky to pass.

-SS

Presume the best
And best meaning first
It's far better than the opposite
Far more trusting than the worst

You are the girl across the yester year
Like a memory bound town
Vague as watery days spent in summertime swimming pools

And now, we have the same ears for similar sounds

The same ears for similar sounds

No matter how hard we fight...
Natures rain falls regardless...
Even if we hide.

The struggles and vices of another.
Are no less genuine to them, than you are to your own.

For we all have scars, and struggles, and little selfish lies.

The kind of thoughts that say that THIS or THAT or HE or SHE...will satisfy.

When they will not. And you know it.

Loneliness is the realization that all of your friends and family have married. Long before you have tamed and owned your own expectations regarding reality.

I love the warmth of heart as a home run is hit in the July heat.
The simmer on the weathering skin by the Carolina beach.
The grilling asphalt beneath the feet of the inquisitive kid.

But above all of this, both prestated and said.

I love the old worn wintery ways, the weathery, the cold and gray.
Where the days are as short as the ticks of a clock.
And the words turn slower somehow in due time.
Like the mirror's edge, I end and yet, know that I age a little less in the wintertime.

Sitting on a mountain top
On a sliver of rock
As jagged as the pointing edge of the west
Indefinitely, is the earth beneath me
For I do not know how long this will last
But I know that I will sit and wait
For the sunrise of my youth to finally pass
Not because I fear the day that’s been or will be
But because I am smarter than the shadows
Which will not outlast the light

We remember heartache for a spell
Not because of the significance of those who have cast us off
But because it's the brightest color red
On the first of many canvases
That is until
The permanence of togetherness
Bring together both pen and quell

Cool blue turns calm dusk
To hopeful still and quiet
As warm well lit dawn
Arrives in full force of arms
To carry tired lovers torn

The moment when you think about
The way it must begin or end
To rhyme or flow
It’s there that you’ve lost the original thought again
For the sake of format
For the sake of style
For the sake of trying to relearn what which you already know

Sometimes when I look at the ground
And see it round
I want to dig so that it's not there
So that what's beneath it is revealed
Is extracted and laid bare
Sometimes when I look at the ground
I want to know evermore so
And in my desire I do not care

Ask me not
The question I most want to ask
The letter never sent which flies
And falls apart between the lines
You think I'm scared of you?
No, not scared...
I'm terrified