Don't let my absence take you by surprise
I promised I'd wait for you
When you wake up and open your eyes,
And turn to your side
But I'm gone.
Never to return again.

Without the April wind to send their song,
The mourning doves of Middlesex are singing
And will be heard never again from long
Away, if graduation bells are ringing

And now November rains erode the nests
That mourning doves assembled in the gardens
From where their mild and wind-warm coos caressed
My ear, to quiet earth that cools and hardens

Injecting poetry and high on the verse in me,
I am ****** on the edge of free
and I want to jump.

I’d pick the Pacific any day.
Its crazy crashes and harsh cold splashes call my heart.

I’d pick the Pacific over your calm grain blowing in the wind.
Though there may be beauty in the simple, I want to feel the fight of the waves, through the rocks and shells, and feel my stomach ache in fear at the depths and strength of the water around me.
I’d rather drown than shrivel up. I’d rather go out fighting than meekly falling over.

I was silly to think I could be anyone else but the storm I am.
The manic shift of tides, the pull of forces beyond my control send me shooting back and forth pounding my fists in the sand, crashing into the rocks head first, beating myself up against things that seem impossible to change. I could pretend for a while that I was mild, but then you ran away in the harshest storm we’d seen in years.
I lost my bearings and let go of what I was holding onto. Watching your back slowly fade as I drifted waiting for you to turn around the water wells up in my eyes. Silly me. Silly me for thinking I could ever hold back.
I swam away, diving deeper, letting bubbles tickle my sides, feeling my brain float back up to the surface and up into the clouds, I knew it was time to come up for air. But what if I didn’t?
I’d just return to that place of calm waters, and stay stagnant and unchanged. I fought to find the surface. I fought back against every doubt, every fear, every insecurity, and found I was better in that salty mess.
The air above tasted fresh and clean. I felt every limb tingle. I felt every breath burn. I was alive.
The shore was distant and I wondered if you could see me. I wondered if you were looking. Maybe you’d see the grandeur you left behind. Maybe you’ll finally understand the cost of sitting back and only watching the waves. I can’t go back to that place of silence and of calm.
So go off into the fields. Go sit and lay on your back with your hand in someone elses. I’ll be beating against the shore until I find my answers. I’ll be there.

Dear Poetry,
Please be gentle.
I’ve admired you for years, and despite all of my tears, I’ll never forget the way you caressed my heart. Warming it and patching it word by word and verse by verse.
But this will be my first, and this is not very well rehearsed,
So
Dear Poetry,
be gentle.
Let me stumble and tumble through the first and second lines but don’t run towards the concubines just yet.
There’s hope for us right?
Dear poetry, don’t go so quickly.
Come sit with me by the window and tell me what way the wind blows.
Whisper to my soul all the things I need to know.
Lift my hair with your metaphors and beat a rhythm so deep I have to feel my heart beat to know I’m alive, because you -
you are the only thing that makes me unique. I can weave through words and sing the similes until I get too dizzy, and when I look up, there’s no eyes I can’t meet.
Dear Poetry,
be mine.
Let’s sit in the grass and laugh on our backs
Let’s wade through the creek bed and read thoughts in my head,
Let’s skip like my heart when he played his part.
Let’s drown scorned love with ciders in a pub.
Let’s be silly and really, really- -
Dear Poetry,
I’ll be at your door every day. Waiting for a hint, a taste, of what to say.
Line by line I’ll build you a castle, stanza by stanza add a rung to the ladder, and poem by poem I’ll make us stronger until I can no longer see the ground and all we have is bound-
Dear Poetry,
Let’s do this again sometime.

Tall Towers above with gleaming lights
Beautiful hotels, and beautiful girls,
But what lay in the streets is from our fights.
Those innocent people with scars and limbs,
Helpless and homeless but hoping for rights.
They walk the streets, they give us tours,
But can we ever really rebuild what has been ruined?
They have such courage and such despair
But underneath the damage and the scars
They have something of a kind heart.
The wilderness muffles the battle cries,
She hides the dead and the broken,
But in the city there is no escape
From the terrible people who have been *****
Of their skins, of their limbs, of their lives.
Museums, Memorials, and Memories
Scatter this beautiful land,
But deep inside the heart of it all
Lays the millions who were doomed to fall.
Americans were here
Standing tall and strong, but weak in the knees
Not ready for war, not ready to be ****** so far
From Home, from safety, from the comforts we are
Deep in ourselves we are full of ourselves,
But these men want nothing less but to forget the hells,
They witnessed, they practiced, they created in the land
So they marched together arm and arm, United we stand,
But for how long until they return in boxes or worse,
People ready to quit the lives and cursed,
Thoughts that haunt and taunt pulling their brains,
Farther from their own to create a horror of images
Strewn through their vision, unable to get out
The picture of the women
Running away from the big metal monsters
Children, burned from their big bullet bombers.
This was a beautiful country I’ll say to others,
But I’ll know what lurks in those dark dark corners.