Your voice remains
and it echoes through the canyons
of my mind,
it would try to take me
from absent friends with hollow smiles,
still I listen and use the needle of my compass
to sew up the pieces
my broken heart.

It’s easy to forget
but I hope you never forget
my silhouette.

Angry
tormented
but more than
half in love
I’m so sorry
I turned away.

Crashing like a wave
tears resting upon your lips
they fall into me.

I thought you were the boy
with faraway eyes
and then I discovered
that you were
just dumb.

Today will end tonight
but memories linger
taunting and teasing
like the dying embers
of a stubborn flame.

When you grow up
you never know
what you’ll remember
of a lost love.
But now
I remember everything
about you.

Like cheap cigarettes or wine
the sour remains but the sweetness reminds
It should be easy to turn back time
But it’s lost like tears in the rain
like cheap cigarettes or wine.

Between night owls and early birds there are spaces in between
Staring at the infinite indifference between a hello and goodbye
Falling through the gaps of recalled experiences
Those memories dance about
like dreams studded on transcendent celestial clouds
They echo and fade into the abyss of time
those who are left to reminisce
Tickled in suspended animation
Making us more then what we are
Blow them out one by one
Blow them out.

Your eyes have little specks
that look like stars
whirling together
galaxies and solar systems
planets and the unknown
secrets kept
hidden behind heavy eyelids
in them I am lost
like running across a beach of diamonds
and if I was ever searching
I’d think I found
my infinity in you.

There’s a silence.
Eager eyes look to me for wisdom, a sound bite, something to keep in their file of ‘things to never forget’.
Don’t you know I’m clueless too?

In the fleeting moments of pleasure
we find happiness.
For we can’t have everything we want
without effort and suffering and problems and tears.

The smell of dust lies heavy in the air
like ***** boots in muddy waters.
The pull of the moon is grasping and clinging
as melodious songs drift soft and sweet.
Gently stirring
as lovers heave and sigh in the midnight heat
like pink blossoms on a silk tree.
What is embellished and what is left out
when in the woods we return to reason and faith.
This measure of life is a transcient game, when
an absurd proposition relatively considered reveals
  the moist
   the wet
    the warm
     and almost indefinite ethereal imagination of you is appreciated by all.

The silence that vibrates in the soul
touches all those brave enough to feel.
Like the writhing body of a restless dancer
forced to move to an unheard rhythm.

Oh to sit and watch the sunset reflected in your eyes
as the moon and stars swirl with delight
Nothing seems better than this night
but for the end of today
I will be your cliche
as we settle like dust in this town.
But his ambitions returned
dissecting the winter of lucid insights
as a doubting painter before his death.
Slipping between fiction and reality
the heart is a twisting motion belieing itself, wringing itself.

He granted her one more day of life prepared and served with anticipation of phantom caresses amidst the tickle of spices that teased the senses.

Feeling useless after those embraces
rapt in a nightmare dripping in gold.
The dark is tempting like the allure of sphinxes
as a nervous insomnia keeps me in the cold.
Levels of hysteria begin to boil over
with the same gravity he becomes her obsession.
This shadow play is replaced as a new lover
take my heart and begin its castration.

Somewhere between the giddy of wake and sleep I thought I heard you whisper that I was the poetry in every conversation you’ve ever had. I smiled because the things I want lose out to the one I love.

To her, you’re the spirit that lingers in a house after everyone is gone.
I’ll bet you’re even the nervous insomnia that keeps her up at night.

Those memories
burn it to the ground
and sear your name
across my heart
ne m’oubliez pas.

Black velvet
is draped
across the night sky
and shimmers with studded jewels.

As dew drops sparkle like diamonds on the grass, the morning mist descends blanketing the ground and making me dream. I see the sky burn the the colour of a subtropical twilight and beyond the horizon are mountains devastated by harsh winds which work on the nerves and leave you a trembling wreck.

The pleasure of the text is that once it’s out there, it no longer belongs to the author. It’s now owned by whomever reads it or in some ways, is touched by it. I suppose that now, it belongs to you. Maybe everything I have ever written and will ever write belongs to you. And I hope that you find comfort in these simple words. Because it was only ever meant for you, whoever you may be.

There were dandelion wishes carried gently in the wind. I think I even saw crimson birds dance with the butterflies as the sun was split into a million rainbows reflected in their tiny wings. I kept thinking that there must be someone out there who still believes in making wishes. Someone who believed that there were things worth wishing for. Beautiful things such as those that cannot be seen or touched but instead felt within the heart. I closed my eyes as I let the smell of grass and sun kissed flowers envelope me like a friend.

Don’t be so harsh on them. We are all secondhand treasures. Each of us bruised and battered in some way or form. We’ve just gotten really clever about hiding our dings and chips. In the end, we’re just looking for somewhere soft to land. And you know what…living in reserve can be so exhausting. So go on and smile. Who knows, you may just brighten up someone’s day.

After ten million years of solitude don’t you want to lay your head down somewhere soft? Living in reserve can be so exhausting, I know. But if reality only exists in the human mind, come take some comfort in mine.

Like breath on a windowpane the people you meet leave a transparent mist on your soul. It’s like that orchestra that doesn’t want to be silenced. Because in the infinite spaces of your mind no one really leaves. They just lie and wait for the right time.
They’re like light; it doesn’t bend and it doesn’t break.

I knew you’d be lovely. But we’re only here now, so in this moment please stay with me. Because you see, I can’t get a handle on time. There are seconds which feel like forever I find myself watching the words spill like wishes from your mouth. And there may come a time when you have to tell me to leave. But right now, what we are is a thousand miles apart and swirling in a moment of dizzying stillness.

For the fifth night in a row I find myself fully awake and staring at the rafters of my bedroom. There was nothing to show for the sense of tiredness I felt a couple of hours ago except for my eyes still heavy with sleep. I prop myself up on one elbow and find my cat curled up in between my legs. The predictability of my nightly routines is somewhat comforting. My curtains are drawn as they always are when I sleep and the sky is unusually bright illuminated by a spatter of stars and a silvery moon casting a blue hue over everything. It is a quiet night but it isn’t silent. For silence does have a sound, the sound of stillness. Soon that moon will be gone and I rub my eyes as I marvel at the subtlety of perfection in the impermanence of time.

I went shopping today and bumped into an old friend from school. She’s all grown up now and that slightly-on-the-heavy-side ugly duckling with thick glasses, oily skin and pimples has blossomed into a lithe, olive skinned, sashaying vision of femininity. I asked what she had done and she gave me the usual but glib answer of “sensible food and lots of exercise”. But I know it takes more than that. After all, I was her shoulder to cry on when the pretty people needed someone as a verbal punching bag. After a few cups of coffee she confessed, “I may have changed on the outside, but my confidence still needs firming up. I still feel like a loser on the inside.” I guess we’ve all been there; on the wrong side of the tracks feeling like a steaming heap of something a cow just left behind. But if we only get so many trips around the sun, remember that there’s over 10 billion people in the world and every second you waste on an idiot is one second you could’ve spent making really good friends.

A night like this, staring down a white line and it feels like I’m not even moving. And as the headlights slice the endless sea of dark, the engine hums to the malancholy that keeps calling me home. Memories roll by with every lamp post I pass and the windshield wipers seem to beat to the rhythm of my pounding heart. The could haves and should haves punctuate every memory until there’s nothing left but a cold emptiness and a dark stretch of highway. I’m trying to forget but the poetics of space will leave an aftertaste of everything that used to be.

The world is littered with words unspoken; missed opportunities and and wasted chances. And in those rare and quiet moments, if you still your racing heart and really listen, you can sometimes hear what should have been spoken.

Sometimes you don’t know why you gravitate towards certain people. It’s unquantifiable, something intangible. Like the way they smile and what was once gloomy suddenly seems light and airy. Or maybe when you see their name on your phone, you can’t seem to answer it fast enough. Perhaps they just fill your heart with colours that don’t exist. And when they leave all you can do is trace the outline of the human figure that used to fill that void within your soul. So don’t let them leave. Be the reason they wake up every morning…even if they don’t know it yet.

I think you’re completely insane. But that’s alright because personally there are not enough like you around. All you longshots and dark horse runners. You hairbrush singers and dashboard drummers. All you wild magnolias just waiting to bloom. And yes, I lifted that straight off a country song but so what? If a song says it better than I ever could, I think we should all don cowboy hats and start line dancing right here, right now. Wouldn’t that be insane? But I’ll bet it’ll be a memory to remember and come back to on days when your heart needs a reason to smile. So come on all you free souls and firefly chasers. All you porch swingers and air guitar players. Let’s put our dancing boots on and shake down the walls that around us. Thank God crazy dreams come true. And thank God for Carrie Underwood.

He saw her and tried to look away. He didn’t want her to know he was interested. He was resolved not to be like all the other boys who unashamedly tried everything to get her attention. Instead he acted cool like he couldn’t be bothered even though she was invading his brain like the mist that descends from the mountains on a chilly morning. She was everywhere. She was like standing out in the hot sun with your eyes closed, he could feel her, heating his skin. She was everywhere.

Every kind of language is pleasure hidden in a paradise of seduction. Words ghost over iridescent moments as the poet becomes the object. And as the willing soul turns pleasure into a poetry to be hungrily consumed, seduction becomes the very heart of language.

A mystery woven into the fabric of memories and unfurled as experiences like the strangers that appear in the background of old photographs. Sleeping with the windows open and listening to the wind chimes dance in the night air. The thunder rolls, the crickets cry and somewhere in the darkness an owl keeps watch. All that’s left are words to drown in. If I had to, that’s how I’d describe you. So don’t look at me like I have the answers. Because when the world walks out, you are the map and I keep getting lost on purpose.

I want to listen to the night rain with you. We’ll sneak out when everyone’s asleep. Creep through the woods and over the hill. To that spot where noone knows. I don’t care if it rains all night. I just want to pick daffodils and waste wishes with you. Watch them fly to the moon and dance among the stars. Let it pour, let it rain. You can be my ‘dancing barefoot in the wet grass’, I’ll be your ‘t-shirt hanging on a limb’. I want to listen to the night rain with you.

She was brilliance, colour and strangeness wrapped in a neat package. Without speaking she points upwards to the Heavens and you strain your eyes to see translucent stars and galaxies playing amongst the secrets of the Universe. And in that fleeting moment, you realise that perhaps you have found your infinity in her. It was time to finally come home.

Remember that night we stood awkwardly in the cool night air? The half moonlight bathed the streets in a desolate hue as we clumsily tried to appear like we knew what we were doing. So we walk back in silence; both of us lost in our own individual selfish thoughts. Your gait comes off comedic as you try to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk and I nervously pick at the frayed edges of my notebook hoping you don’t notice how my hands tremble each time they brush against yours.

You leave impressions on everything. Like fingerprints on misted windows. You welcome each raindrop that kisses your face but ponder the purposeful aimlessness of the rain as an image of immense fragility. Your words like dappled sunlight peeking through the trees are like thoughts, planted in the heart, growing too fast. But the secrets that are kept hidden behind thoughtful yet precipitous eyes are as intense as a love affair. The silence, the raging, the zest for growing older, the abstract shadow you cast on a hot sidewalk, the air you breathe…all point to a quiet type of bravery.

He was unsure so he looked at her more intently and it seemed like the stars burned a little brighter everytime she blinked. Her lustrous eyes held the shine of a million galaxies and when she moved she swayed to a private melody in which she danced for someone yet unknown. No one could understand why her tender brows embodied a slight worry or sadness that begged for him to stay the night and cradle her head in his lap as she fell in and out of slumber. Staring at her was like a dream, and he could spend his waking life asleep if she’d continue to be the muse of his nights.

It starts as a pounding heat in the depths of your tummy which radiates out to the palms of your hands. The type of heat that develops into a flame, one that burns and marks your soul with the perfect scent of another person. There it stays and lingers. And that’s when you know you’re ruined for life. Noone else will ever come close to being as perfect.

And there she stood, her head held high above the luminous cirrus clouds of ecstacy. She had been here before but there was never enough time to luxuriate in the feeling. Not until this moment. But now, those memories were distant like the stars you observe through a telescope. A whisper of a dream like the pretty echoes of those long gone. She closed her eyes and stretched out her arms as she exploded into a million tiny fragments. The wind carried her on its wings and scattered her among the emerald trees that glisten like diamonds in the morning dew.

Waiting in the spaces between seconds is like being set on fire but you can’t stop dousing yourself with gasoline. It’s an unexpected rain on a blistering hot day. It’s forgetting about tomorrow because you’ve only got today.

"One wild and precious life", he says as he shows me the skull he had impulsively tattooed on his ******* as a symbol that things should not be taken for granted. I’ll sit with him in a diner as he sips his weak lemon tea and talk about the reasons stars twinkle up in the sky. Some made-up story I’ll likely believe about constellations and moonbeams and how nothing is what it seems. And when it’s late, he’ll call me and tell me he needs to share something cool he just read. I’ll wonder if he ever sleeps as I doze off listening to him drone on and on and on about poetry, social revolutions, communism and the art of keeping sketchbooks. And in the morning I wake to a phone under my pillow hoping I didn’t embarrass myself by saying something I shouldn’t have. I’ll bump into him in the library reading some tattered old manuscript and he won’t mention anything about last night. He’ll just look up at me for a brief moment, smile because I did say something embarrassing then quickly bury his face back into his book. Red faced I’ll sit beside him and slap him on the arm as we burst into fits of uncontrolled laughter, hidden between rows of books.

People fascinate me. You fascinate me. But what really interests me are the parts you keep locked away. What I see is the Image but I want to see the Real, the Object. But that’s almost always kept well-hidden in a secret garden behind high, high walls. It’s in a room where everything is stripped away and what’s left is just a naked, pure form of energy. Once in a while I catch glimpses of it. Hidden in a place where words become fragmented and superfluous. Where the rhythm of your soul fills my cavernous heart with a beautiful sound.

He was the boy with matted brown hair and bright blue eyes who sat alone on that solitary bench almost every day that summer. He was picking at the guitar planted firmly in his lap and there were pieces of scribbled note paper strewn all around him. I asked what he was doing and he said he was writing a song. I asked for whom and he said, “I don’t know yet but it’s for when I meet the perfect girl”. He was searching for that secret combination of twenty-six letters that would make her at least think of him now and then. And maybe someday even call him hers.

You taught me to love things especially when they come by as infrequently as the twinkle you get in your eyes when you’re really happy. So here’s what we’ll do: we’ll pack some lunch and take a walk on this perfect afternoon. You can pick out a grassy patch somewhere beneath the shade of a Mimosa tree and there we’ll talk about silly things. And between the witty banter and stupid jokes we’ll fall in love all over again to the soft soundtrack of the city humming away in the near distance.

Those freckles on your back
I’ll trace them
and map them
my very own constellation of stars.