Does it count when she changed her mind at the last moment
that she whimpered no over and over, but you couldn't here over the slapping of skin on skin.

He says "Don't tell anyone,
he says, people don't want to hear poems about things like **** and death and the ugly."

But why, it is the wrenching truth?

No one wants to hear about another woman's body being violated
they say, "It happens all the time, you were asking for it."

Does it count that he had a girlfriend?
When he pinned her on her stomach with arms over her head
forcing the innocent from her body, slapping used on her forehead so she felt like a piece of trash

Does it count when she took months to tell her mom why the lights had shut off in her eyes?
When she couldn't look her dad in the eye because she was so ashamed,
when she retracted from the slightest touch.

Does it still count?

I am talking
At walls and mirrors

I have deleted
Your number

I am trying
To forget his name

I have been shutting
Everyone's existence out



This is how I need to be
This is what I need to do
I need to focus on what I have now

But
Work still does not get done
And I still cannot focus.






.

~

Maps are folded and re-folded into pocket sized
destinations of our own heart’s desires

Routes become numbers and numbers become moments
as the planning cycle, with yellow highlighter in hand,
presents a “look forward to” scenario

Well beyond windows of curtained belief
and hedges shaped like poetic scribblings calling to me

The sidewalk of chalk marks in hopscotch etchings,
faded from the sun and foot smeared play dates,
leads to that place of affection filled dreams

and I see over the next sunrise a highway,
empty of detours and beckoning Winnebago wanderings

to this heart, from another, on windswept invitations
penned in frilly fonts and colors of imagination,
reaching deeply inside and holding tightly

A glance back at what is left behind brings a smile,
for what waits ahead is now everything new

In the grand scheme of things, what is found chiseled in fate
proves that destiny is a destination of dreams, of hopes and
*of love… . when that journey brings me to you

His intrepid mind
His weakened heart
His boxed out life
He's losing sight

His charismatic thoughts
His empty soul
His losing spirit
He's growing old

His thought bewildered
His thoughts were quick
His winning mind
He's lacking life

Wanted for his mind
But not for what he is
He spends his time alone
With only books

He now reads about love
The one thing he doesn't know
Trying to fill
His empty soul

It is a start
To the heart
This man of brilliance
Wants love in his heart

Where does the time go
When your holding those
You love?

Time flows out of you
Into the love. And the love

Only grows
As your time
Goes

In this dream

  you're walking in a wood
  stopping sometimes
  to pick up sticks

In this dream

  you're making up bundles
  tying them with twine
  to carry them home

In this dream

  I'm a couple of steps

  behind