how can i not crave
for crumbs, a thin slice
or a delicate bite
when in you and with you
i discover a garden of gentle hungers
in full bloom and fruit,
like when daylight comes to wash away
the dust and regret of lost chances,
give every shape and color a fresh coat
of promise so that starlight and moonlight
may find refuge for one more day?

a hunter for words yet i cannot
find the metaphors to trace and keep you,
you move, you smile, you glance
always forward forging to greet the sun,
the light on your skin tracing and caressing
your feminine form burns away
the desire and despair to be blind
from these tired and dying eyes

distant as you are from the kisses
of my eyes and my touch
i could not forget you, nor wish to
and so i will stalk the wind for scents
follow the stars and touch the earth
until the last blade of light
to savor the words, color, and shape
always emerging when i speak your name.

between the syllables
of your every word, the sound of your voice
there is enough silence
in the words we speak and those
we never allow to be born from our lips

just as when our fingers
brush by chance or sharing a seat
on a tricycle, there is enough
distance in our nearness
to rival those among the stars

there is more than enough silence and distance
in the coming and goings of things
in the transport of time and chance
this may be my madness,

so let me be mad than to be
distant and silent from you.

because it is not my lips
you seek for your own
so you may savor the day
that is being born as promised,
laced with the aftertaste
of my ashes and yesterdays.

because my hands are scarred.
and your skin bristle, your flesh
shiver at the contact of its strangeness.
your skin detects but would not believe
the possibility of ripe and sweet fruits
from the seeds i gathered
coated as their shells are in grime,
washed out traces of something red.
and so you dare not even discover
what twigs we could gather
for little bonfires to blaze in your darkness,
to melt your shields,
your daggers and armor,
and forge them into spoons and forks,
into a clean goblet
to hold the wine.

because my voice is not his voice,
my eyes are not the stars
of your blued skies,
in daylight or dark.

in the false half darkness,
your delicate fingers
trembled and transformed
into a fist

your face was just a shape
against the soft white pillow
my eyes were blind, I do not
know the colors or the forms
yet my flesh grazed
by teeth and claws of the jackals
in your sleep

i wanted to be a predator
in the grey sky of your cold memories
so your petal fingers could bloom
fingertips seek, trace, and claim
the five points of my own
waiting so we can ignite,
in between,
a star.

i did not seek to intrude upon your garden
to plant seeds for violent thorns and dark vines
take root upon your cheek and drink from your tears
nor a trojan horse for my starving madness
to feast upon your thoughts and rouse your own
yet i confess when i lost my innocence of you
i found myself clawing above the cold earth
where i waited the claim of roots and worms
blood in my veins decanted with gasoline
ignited into a desire to savour again the sun
raise my fingers to trace words and fires

does something remain
when one is leaving?
what goes away, from and to where
when one chooses to stay?*

lost in these preoccupations,
between drowning in coffee
raising hope like blue smoke
twirl before blown and fade,
i find myself seeking refuge
in secrets and mysteries:

i discover a world born
between leaving and staying:
the shape  of words spoken
and thoughts hoarded more than gold

every day i find new questions
whose answers belong to the night

i know that i do not know
while daylight dims, pressed,
until there is only everything
holding nothing.

synapse and nerves, signals  
fire fingertips to claim
the points of a star
to burn with friction
between pen and paper  

but since desire craves
no longer nor again
for warmth and affection,
slender fingers transform  
into a fist trapping
black holes and deaths of suns
for the rhythm of wrist.

i did not wish to be asleep
lost in a dream like a bus
bound to go places and spaces
far and farther away
until it arrives to waking
where you would be absent

because you are not a dream
i am awake and i wait

while waiting for your goodbye
silence takes it roots and blooms
in every stone, leaf and flower
as if the seeds were planted yesterday
and with each breath waiting
you go far and far away

with only this silence to remain
a graveyard to each of our names

i have been having longer
conversations
with Silence

not lovers but we
will share the same bed
she will slip under the blanket
claims in the darkness her own pace
will talk while the moon outside
walks naked waiting for her lover
while stars burn their strange fires
the nocturnals with their nocturnes

even now, she is
a downward spiral vine
over my shoulder slithering
to my naked chest
that wears the cold like a cloak
until her kisses traces
the murmurs of my heart

she tells me i am alive
and so i smile before
she reminds me of what it means
to die.

in the ruins of our disagreement,
digging the rubble for pieces
that we might still patch together,
she tells me
that the reason why
all those women of yesterday left me
is contained inside the shape of my flesh

and having heard this,
and this was last night
and still hearing the echoes of it now
like church bells tolling
for a funeral, i ask myself
why is she still with me?
why does she still stay?
perhaps, the answer is that
like all those women
of my yesterdays she too will,
one day, one night, or one afternoon
or perhaps even without a sigh,
abandon me.

and that is why
immersed as i am in this sea
of silence and loneliness where i hear
the sobs in my head,
i fold my clothes and tidy up my things,
pack them into my travel bag
and with my pen i chart
the roads and highways of my map
where i would soon be walking
with my shadow
the only one following me.

my tongue did not taste nor trace you as a rainbow
because you spawn hurricanes inside my chest

you have always been thus, and so much more
you are of fire and earth, wind and water
the elements and minerals gathered in you
transformed like carbon into diamond
revealing your reflections under light
sought by poets or lovers when comes night

i do not love you*

only that when thought strays,
transforms into a hound
bound to trace the path to you
it could not seem to forget,
you remind me of sun’s
first fingers i indulged before
to stroke and kiss my eyes.

on its last day
we murdered last year*

with our lensed eyes
named with a new gaze
our voices flayed out
with our mismatched knives
designed and sharpened
to cut, gouge, and bleed
with the gifts of new poisons
and fresh deaths.

i do not know
when my eyes will cease
witness the sun with her light fingers
caress my naked flesh warm and gentle
like when you first traced your lips
ripe and sweet against my own

flowers in full bloom
after the cold night
with the pregnant moon
what new blossoms  
will perfume the air?
will they even dare compare
to the rare harvest
savoured full and deep
in the valley of your breast

i do not know, love may be too short
yet i want no rest or seat with regret
nor wish the long and lonely road to forget

your eyes will cease without
kissing my shape and form
i know, yet allow these eyes
to be hunter, spy, and lover
seeking you and only you

until my lost sunrise

you used to share
only the distance and silence
until one of you decided to break it:

your voices began as awkward pairs
until each found its rhythm and began to dance

you gave tables a reason for its sides,
your gazes lingered and held mirrors
reflecting each other, shared lips
as you kissed the same cup
even rose from the same bed

now, your eyes are naked daggers
quick to gouge any new color and shape
seeking refuge in the pages of memory
every word, every sliver of voice
you once allowed to caress
deep within and between your ears

why is it that two strangers
can perform the miracle of welcome
yet everything between two lovers,
each brick, wood, and stone of the bridge
built in the wake of the broken silence
now lie in fire and ashes, the earth salted,
in the air a certain kind of stillness, a quiet
that makes even darkness weep and bleed?

my eyelids kiss, seeking refuge
from the memories of you.

but you are the sun,
your light always cut me;
in the blanket of night
naked are my desires
under your moon and stars.

there is no denying
the passions rediscovered
unrequited and true

with you.

silence was a language
whose words we borrowed
to be whispered by our eyes
when we had to say goodbye.

fades in the distance to blink us a bridge
whose pillars, arc, and breadth,
each stone and each step designed
as inspired by our first night vow
to bind us more than by blood
across the garden of stars and night.

so that when the light finds us,
the words of silence will be spoken
again in our smiles before we shape
each other in each other’s arms
where our voices births a warmth
to rival that of dawn’s first rise.

now, in your absence that is bleak
as my sighs that even darkness denies,
has silence always been this barren?

when i breathe as if with dust and ashes
gathering so it may reshape my mortal heart.

because silence is a mouth
gaping wide with sharp teeth
and little by little she feeds
on the memory of your voice

your voice that wove my name
between far away cities and strange skies
between houses without lights
empty snake streets and dead hills
a string of white light in the dark
stretched out so i may find you

then there is a silence
forged from unknown materials
darker than black
wide like daylight and night sky
full of constellations, comets, stars
burning bright to dust not just eyes
nor ears, memory, or hope:

your silence.

you rarely spoke my name
because there was always your smile
who took the place of your voice

born after so much waiting
after crossing ***** streets
to soothe the hunger of silent mornings
with the sweet and warm memories
of caramel and cinnamon afternoons

when you spoke my name
it was full of longing
laced with a certain sadness
as if i was going away, or dying
your tongue and lips traced
each syllable like an incantation
to bind me to your desire
to be with you

bound i am now to you
even in these fresh hours of dawn
when even sleep has taken her bed
my far away eyes set
to where you are
without me

as i am without
your smile, without your voice
with only the syllables of your name
to match the twin wet trails
born from my eyes

the flame shivers
dims and suffocates
as it burns the oxygen
in the silence of prison

and then came the words

*laced with your madness and joys
your voice a stray wind  
with a perfume i could not name
whiffed by the fire, my fire
stroked with a new born desire
from the first house of delight

when you snuggled through cold distance
for the memories of fire in my arms*

to wake into this morning
where you greet me with your goodbye
the wind became still with their feet

my chest the steel cage for hope
who with every breath exhales into exile
the memory of how to fly

and though it aches
with a certain sweetness i indulge
when a flame has lost its glow and warmth
of what is stolen, or replaced,
i do not know-
i cannot find the shape for words
nor the proper name for the silence
for the fate of friendship
forged from strangeness
when time comes for the harvest
of what was found that has been bound
in this lifetime to be lost

i remind myself of what i know:
of the fate of things,
the price that must be paid
in the barter and trade
for the joys and sorrows of living
yet even as the pieces fit and shape
the balance struck between the scales
i could not find aything as i go on
not knowing if regret was born
with a different voice and face

as my memory shift
to drift on towards sleep,
tired as aching bones
wrapped in numb flesh
from too long waiting
in the soft places you
now claim for your absence,
i wonder at the memory
of memory:

of the season when and if they forget,
if longing’s swift and silent arrow
find its mark true and through,

and if they know of regret.

if one day you would wonder
why i kept on breathing, proclaiming
more than just your name and memory
french kissed until the moment i could no longer
may you remember the reason
why i loved you

in a lifetime struggling in the dark and my own lies
with you i wanted love to be simple: truth
so with more than just open eyes
i sought to see your darkness and your light
and it happened, the taste and textures of you
the colors and shapes unfolding in the wild
orbits of your lust for life matched
the empty pockets and spaces within me.
in you, with you, because of you
i learned to measure, mix, knead, and let rise
the recipe for a life of love for you.

on this day
if you remember my love for you
please, do not let tremors of regrets
ride with the beating of your heart
to break the outlines and shape of your face
i once held soft and gentle in my now absent hands;
please, do not let lost time brew poison and flood
the twin delicate shores of your eyes,
and please, not even a sigh for sadness
for not loving me like i have loved you:
for though i may have loved you first
loved you long after your own had died
in between, you did love me
with a love that was all your own,
born from your choice, in its own time

just as i have done for you with mine.

you have touched me woman
with more than just your delicate hands
my form you traced with not just your fingers
nor felt as faint lines and shapes on my skin
nor you kisses were mere contact with my lips

even after the last of my tears
fling themselves, sacrifices for what must be
falling to the earth where they will die
even after the last word of our goodbye
cast into the wind where silence is a hound
with sharp teeth and an appetite for each syllable
there is a reason why human love has
always been chained to a mortal heart

i could not really explain but you are in me
the blood that flows from and into my heart
carries scents, sights, and sounds of you
to each and every province of memory
in the republic of my mortal body

as long as i live
i am yours
and you i love

even when you lust
for the strokes and licks of tongues
laced with the seasons of ashes,
why do i still desire to wash your feet
with my soft and gentle kisses?

even father time could not measure
nor mother darkness swallow
my desire to meet the dawn
where i might find you again,

because with you;
sun rediscovers the secret kiss of light
winds birth a caress
of gentleness thought forgotten
stars and moon light embrace
with the warmth of the first fire

i open my eyes
to breathe your name.

you would be
an apple

you are both red and green
the hot blood passions and emotions
contained in your feminine form
dawns and springs from in me
these mint desires for touch fires,
your hand locked with mine under the rain,
the surging floods of our joined
subterranean volcanoes exploding

woman of the south
daughter of the full moon
with your tongue and its grace
to give words their colors and shape
i find myself hunting for you
in the jungle where i know nothing
without my traps and arrows
naked for your distant gaze
to touch my shade.

i bear witness
to the birth of your smile

for each new day
i will bleed my eyes, sever
my soul as humble offerings
on the altar of hope
to see your smile
like a butterfly whose wings
carry away the pain and anguish
of wounds and the wounded,
as it is your passion.

soft and gentle
aflame and intimate
like our last kiss.

to share the sky once more
with you before you leave,
sear the colors in thought and memory,
lace and wrap it along muscles and veins,
your perfume the oxygen for blood,
your voice the lullaby for the long cold dark.

so i can endure, and wait
until the next naked moon.

godless as i am, your name
will be the prayer traced
by my serpent tongue and sinner lips,
may moonlight and starlight show you
and may your eyes find me:
with my bad penmanship
my awkward lines
my occasional typo
and grammar woes
imperfect as i am
worthy to be
your Poet

my Mousai.

only in this new world
where ones and zeroes define
each word and color to take shape
can a farewell be born to remain
without touch, sight, or hearing.

for this reason perhaps i cling
to when the same light and sound
halved so they may join themselves
in full and equal new measure
between and within, for us.

passionate as i am, please

*let your distance and silence stay true
even as thought seeks to close its eyes
to the memory of you while each lung
stifle and choke the air so my tongue may
never again shape nor taste your name.

let me be the sole inheritor
to the memory of our last night
whose slivers i will feed  
to the mouths of forgetting
while i live on dying.

it is not the rain
fall on my skin
nor the howl of the winds
embracing me
thus i cower and shiver

but the memory
of your fingers tracing my back
as if writing a love letter
of your soft cheek pressed
against my left shoulder
like a first kiss
while your nose draws
to breathe and savor deep
my sweat and scent

that i miss
in your absence