Your lips curved like a crescent moon
Your hips also
Will it be soon
You ask
My reply
It will
Then when will we leave
Soon I say
Again
With more force
And yet we never left

It was with the sun
that they drove eighteen miles to every quarter of an hour
to the port
where they put down the car and started like petals from every dead flower they saw together.

Up the steps
he tried to steal her waist for his own,
willing his arms to stretch around widths they weren't made for,
only to cement the idea that they weren't alone.

In the cabin they fell asleep to familiar films
and woke up to see the sea out of a round window
and the guarantee they won't hit land nor port
until the captain's say so on the inbuilt radio.

They came back from a grand meal
that was of Titanic proportions, tidy suits and surreal women in waistcoats,
they made love in a bed that wasn't theirs,
and he witnessed it and saw
her new print dress that caught and tore and was reduced to shreds upon the floor.

When I was 16 I almost drowned
I swallowed enough water to sink
Any ambitions to become a sailor
The water tasted a lot like my pride
It left an after taste bitter enough
To humble a King

What we take from the world
Is simply a reflection of
Who we are inside
If you feel like the sun is avoiding you
Like your ex-girlfriend
Then visit the dentist and make your smile
Bright enough to get by
The crowded streets of downtown
Aren’t filled with inept *******
Just you, who isn’t willing to see
That everyone has pain in their eyes
No matter how well they disguise
Their recent demise with ties and lies
Bought online

We fall into the chasm of doubt
That high-fives gravity because
They got you to fall
Change who you are and you’ll
Literally change your world
Because everything reflects
Our character instead of our appearance
Except for cursed glass that
Became a mirror

When you’re tempted to doubt
The goodness of life
Remember that life is what you make it
When God writes your conclusion
To your life’s dissertation
It will simply be a story
Of the dreams you had the courage
To chase

You have nothing to fear
Not even fear itself
Because you are the owner
Of happiness and peace
Enough for yourself if you’re
Willing to share

When I was 16 I almost drowned
I was resuscitated and spit out
My pride and coughed up my ego
To breath in the world
Through unbiased purity
Now I can finally see
I left that ignorant part of me
To fend for himself
I was never a good swimmer

Magnolia leaves, the
thick wax coating

(this was always meant to be sweeping, the kind that
rips apart continents, scrounges
mountains from crumbs)

always meant to borrow your breath, stolen away like
fingerprints on eager skin and then brought back,
wondering where hearts fell in, the
luster of warmth

meant to learn the
magnetism from colors and
preserve proximity, stretch
away solitude

(and I have found none of this to be
anything short of a miracle)

Falling off of the wagon is
The most painful thing in the world
Because of all the hurt and effort it took
To get on it in the first place
And the pride one feels
When they can honestly say
I am clean

So I would like to apologize
To God, my family, the universe
For letting you all down
Because I promised I was better
Swore I had moved on
But an addiction is forever
And I am hooked once again

Wrapped in a white towel
you bring life to my grandfather's empty home
It's been three years
but now you're gazing up into my eyes once more
A chaste kiss, a reminder
You take a shower and I go down to make breakfast.
Too many options in the cabinet
you make your agreeable executive decision
I adjust a piece of your garment
and realize, we could go back to
how we once were
before the deception and tears
But then I awake
and realize, I should believe in
second chances

She says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Baby, I want to see what I look like through your eyes.”
And immediately,
Like ripping through each word Webster put in his book,
I strip my vocabulary of every cliché about love and beauty
And loosely string them together with shaking hands,
Which my hands have grown accustom to.
I want to tell her how every time she enters a room
My stomach does this funny thing where it ties itself into knots
And my heart seems to start beat-boxing
Like it grew up in the grid-locked street blocks.
But I don’t tell her this
Because if I were to let these words out of my mouth
I know that there’s a good possibility that I will look like a crazy person.
I want to tell her that I just want her to be impressed.
To look upon me with longing in her eyes
And I’d steal her breath away like that no man ever has
And keep it in a locket concealed in my buttoned-up back pocket.
But I don’t tell her this
Because, honestly, I can’t impress with they way I dress
Or my white boy dance moves,
And the only time I ever stole anything I got caught.
I want to tell her that if her toes go
Somewhere that mine can’t follow,
I’ll sacrifice my eyes to the sky
So that I can see her every day when the sun sets west.
But I don’t tell her this
Because I couldn’t hold her with my arms dressed in flames,
And truth be told, one dose of her a day isn’t enough to get me my fix.
And so we sit in that teasing mix
Of fixated eyes exchanging
A lustful desire to unlock jaws and collide our lips,
In a beautiful disarray of tongue and teeth.
And the calming restraint to let the moment linger
Just a little longer
Because in just a little longer
This moment will be perfect.
And I am silent.

And He says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Brother, I want to see what the world looks like through your eyes.”
Time and time again I’ve humbled myself by denying the fact that
I am extraordinary
For reasons that only clear eyes can see,
Like this man,
He seems to be more fed up with the repeated routine of each and every yesterday
And envies my hope in tomorrow so he asks to borrow my insight.
I want to tell him that on those days when nothing looks familiar,
I wind up fasting;
Eating nothing but my passed down last name.
See, that’s how I meditate on my individuality,
But I don’t tell him this
Because God knows I can get starved for company
And borrow philosophies from question marks.
I want to tell him that there is beauty all around us.
It’s in every breath that’s whispered through pursed lips
And it drips down from the sky,
That’s all rain is.
But I don’t tell him this
Because sometimes even I watch the world
Through eyes filled with acid.
I want to tell him that the only thing that limits us
Is the shackles that we keep strapped down
For safety’s sake
But if we want, we could break free and run towards better days
With our heartbeats pounding in our ears.
But I don’t tell him this
Because maybe we are just two people
Who have nothing more to offer than sparks
In a world taken with fire.
And so I retire my voice
Since I don’t want to make a liar of myself,
I’m no street corner gospel
False profiteer
Selling twisted rapture to any lonely ear
Willing to empty their pockets out of desperation.
And I am silent.

She says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Baby, I want to see what I look like through your eyes.”
And He says,
“Speak to me in poetry.
Brother, I want to see what the world looks like through your eyes.”
And They say,
“Speak to me in poetry,
We want to see what life looks like through your eyes.”
But since my tongue is tongue tied
And I currently don’t mind going blind for a little while
The only thing I can think to do
Is smile and hand them my glasses.

In a hologram
I am the man you would like me to be
not real
but you see
it is me,
so
why do you want to know
who that I am?
but the man that's an image
a man you would pillage
and keep for your own.

Pictures that grow up and slow up,then show up just who that you are
an image that's far too inconstant
a solent
a side by the sea
aside from you and me and the oceans that we see
there is only a halogen lamp which tramps out these scenes and in the inbetweens of our dreams
I will be forever
the screens on the doors of the more that you want, and the more that we need,
the more we will seed the cameras with film.
and developed could it be
that we see so much more?