it will start

as a dream

slowly rotting to

a memory that

you can’t burn

from your mind

it sticks to you

like it did to your skin

and no matter how

nice life is right now,

still it will swell and show

that you are

a basket for shrapnel

of things you survived

but

don’t worry,

there is more

than just surviving this,

there is also the joy

of just knowing you aren’t dead

and that maybe life can be great

despite the fact that you’re still in it

say you’re at risk of becoming a partial optimist

just rest assured that this likely isn’t a terminal case

No matter how many
love poems I write,

Or times I try explaining
all of it to you

None of it would be as effective
as if I were to simply
place my heart on a platter

and that would be an act
whose gruesomeness
would be profane,

no statement is proper
no statement is effective

and you tell me that I don’t need
to try explaining it ,
but then sometimes lying next to you,
I am afraid that I am draining too much
and not opening my own floodgates

something
stays here,
in the broken
glass world
of my memory
my blinking eye
looking back
because all
the sharp edges
of the past
keep my walking
ignoring wounds
I move forward
only because
looking back
proves that
I never should
have been there

I will avoid the ocean waves of epic love poems
and just say she is a small fire that burns,
providing the carbon base that makes me a life-form

poems come from the abyss
one always hopes to fill,
at least for me ,
no lines from heaven

behold the joy proposed of being an artist
worrying that you really did fail
in turning your soul to statements

the true nature of what we do , unknown to us
letting the decay of sanity sink in,
we hunt beauty by way of letting logic fall to abstraction

close your eyes, let the right line and word and image be a piranha
hand goes in the water, hoping for a bite, for something to
latch on so hard you can pull it away with you

the loving breast of an artist allows eggs to be planted inside
it, only for them to devour till fat and mature, to burst away
and take flight, as far from you as possible

keeping yourself alive
by believing in
the gorgeous cause ,
the idea that justice is real
and that you can see it

But then, you actually pay attention
and these things you hoped for
become stained glass portraits
in church windows
as seen by Atheist eyes:

dedications, so very pretty,
likely to nothing at all.

Poems sometimes
aren't enough ,
just
a hunger falling
from fingers  ,
hiding in paper

pretending to
be a statement

the less you write,
the more relevant
it is