If you could put a kiss
in a paper bag, and
stick it in a windowsill,
so when the sun spills through
it keeps the kiss warm,
but doesn't spoil its charm. . .

If you could leave the kiss
for an unsuspecting windowsill-goer
to happen upon and
coax a smile out of,
or maybe a tear.
Maybe the slightest gasp of fear
that their kiss will escape
if they open the bag too fast. . .

If you sat in the shadows
and watched their gasping
and frantic grasping at
their lost expression of love,
the broken wing to their dove;
how long would you watch them
teeter on the edge of lust,
regret, and longing?

Until their head was spinning
and you were left grinning
to yourself because you know
they've already hopelessly fallen
despite their elaborate battle
for balance?

Isn't solid ground an illusion after all?
Aren't we all caught in the fall?

As for kisses left in paper bags
and perched in hiding spots, well. . .
Kisses are tricks of nature
designed for those moments
when words become superfluous,
or so some famous poet said.

If I took my chances

& tumbled off the edge,

would you take the plunge with me

or turn and run instead?

If I told you that I had

forsaken love for flight,

would you send your dove

to alight into my night?

I know it's been a while, I know it's kind of late.
I know I'm unannounced, but I swear it couldn't wait.

I just needed to see your face and speak my piece
so I can have some peace of mind. . . so I can feel some release.

So many things go unspoken because they never have to be.
In a single sideways glance you can see inside of me. . .

. . . and pick at my strings, and things.
Things that aren't hidden, yet I'm sure open doors into my forbidden.

Let me reassure you, before you call this off,
I may be caught in my youth but my reason isn't lost.

I'm not looking for love, I'm not looking for lust.
Too many hoops, and too little trust.

I'm not keeping secrets, I'm not seeking answers.  
Just kicking to the beat of life's many dancers.

I don't need to contrive or make time for adventures.
I never sit still and I don't care for lectures.

I just need to taste freedom, feel a touch in the dark.
An escape from the hollow I have in my heart.  

When I see the soul in your eyes, much to my surprise, I feel alive.
Naked and thrown into the sunshine.

Bare to the world and bare to your gaze.
Finally lost in a comfortable daze. . .

. . . mystified under a fingertip waltz and a lingering haze
of dense swirling smoke; the exhalation of all my lost hope.

A comforting voice lets me in on tiny glimpses of his world and
I feel like I can breathe again.

She flashed her carmine smile at me,
lips spread like two blooming crimson petals,
beauty mark perched in a temptingly kissable spot,
just above her immaculate lip line.  
Her fang tooth flirtatiously turned inward
& made her look as if
always brewing intent to initiate adventure,
certain to be pleasurable but prohibited,
& most surely to provide
ample opportunities to escape trouble
after having taunted it.
This minor imperfection served as a reminder that
her beauty was still human,
or else I'd have believed that
she was the product of a profoundly, elaborate hallucination;
that I had not yet woken from an impeccable dream.
She roused me up from my stupor & seduced me into sojourns
through the city blocks that lined our teeming, little hometown.
We stood out as dreamers
in a land full of people with their heads down
like drones, working for their hive.
She kept me feeling alive,
& questioning the complacency of my surroundings
in a muted, Midwestern mecca
where you are taught to accept what you are told
& swallow down bland traditions & institutions
like cold oatmeal.
She made me wish I was a boy
so I could seize her by the perfect slopes of her
statuesque cheekbones & paint my timid, **** lips
with her carmine smile;
but to play in her paint would be to stain harsh red
across the flawless landscape
of our very intimate understanding
of one another.

& so I long for Carmine.

Once I sat,
unaware & unassuming,
on an unaware & unassuming Tuesday
in the far corner of a coffee shop
full of commotion.  
I sleepily sauntered
behind the dusty public bookshelves
where if one were to peruse
they may find philosophical gems
- such as Proust or Voltaire.
I sat enveloped in the
warm vanilla air,
clutching at a cup of caffeine
& hoping to gain some
mild morning enlightenment
or gentle mental stimulation.  
I tucked myself between
the covers of a bent & well-read book,
content to remain unaware & unassuming
& uninterrupted
as I wandered through its printed prose.

Kiss the girl whose hair
is piled atop her head,
like her thoughts;
tumbling down in bundles of curls
as they overflow.

Kiss the girl who drags you out
from beneath awnings &
makes you face the rain,
while she dances fearlessly
in a soaked, diaphanous sundress.

Kiss the girl who insists on
preparing you tea &
pouring it in your presence;
inviting you to witness
the intimacy of simple ceremony.

Kiss the girl who breaks
the stillness of occupied space
to reach out & encompass your hand;
seeking the sensation of your being
to comfort her through silent moments.

Kiss the girl who takes
up into her arms
your scattered inclinations & obsessions;
teaching herself to love & nurture them
as if they were her own.

Kiss the girl who envelops you
with her sultry sentiments &
provokes you with her precocious intellect,
leading you to question
all concrete belief.

Kiss the girl whose
very existence embraces you
like a contented sigh or the kiss of sunshine
one might play beneath
on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Kiss that girl & kiss her deeply,
& with considerable intensity;
as if to break the seal between your lips
would shatter her
into a thousand pieces.

& do not let her go.

I am enveloped in the expanses of your painted sky,
satisfied & glowing underneath your weight as you
lay yourself down across the peaks of my mountains.
You have illuminated my hidden wildflowers with the
golden wash of a new spring & the warmth of your sun.  
You cast divine paint across my landscape
like a canyon sunset brushes every ***** with vibrancy.
I am enveloped in the sultry scent of the potent desert
& your intoxicating masculinity.  
Your perfume is imprinted on the soft pearl of my skin
as you are imprinted in the atoms of my being.
I bit you in a kiss that burned your mouth into my memory.
I taste you every time I close my eyes or pass my fingers over
the petals of my pursed lips,
& spark a hunger that stirs in the deepest chasm
lurking beneath my navel.  
Every fiber in my body is tempered
by the heat of our fervent fever.
I am enveloped in these moments spent:
My lips poured across your collar bone
like red paint caresses a canvas with passion.
My hair entwined & rooted in your lustful fist,
holding me fast & grounding me to you.
My tongue engaged in a dance across the ridges of your teeth,
as our hips meet and our lips meet in a fevered tango.

Fleeting dreams broke away
at the stark knocking
of harsh light on my temples.
I grasp for them as they float upwards
like balloons on wind,
strings swirling just out of reach.
Farewell dream.
I will watch you ascend
from the rumpled landscape
of my mattress.
A memory I can't quite remember
but am endeared to.
No alarms are necessary here
besides the universe
beckoning for acknowledgment
of its emblazoned display.
The birds delight
at their chatter
beneath my window.
Oh, they have so much to say.
Quarrel or song?
A beautiful, contemplative banter
that waltzes up past windowsills.
I smile and hum along
for the morning greets me,
reluctant as I am to answer it.
The dust dances in the rays of sunlight
streaming through gauzy layers of rippled fabric
clinging to my window frame.
Such a shame that I should
seek to bar the sun from creeping in
and setting upon my sleeping self.

I'm not broken yet,
& I'm not giving up the fight.
Yet the slightest touch
sets me on edge
& I take off at the speed of light.
It is a broken contradiction
that such a loneliness could
breed me that affliction.
On the other hand it spurs me onward
to that rare gem of friendship
that turns to love
& then addiction.
I hear the song of distant laughter
& a thunderstorm heading my way.
It all melts together in a  haze of grey.
I'm stuck behind a clouded window
on which I can never seem
to wipe the fog away.
I keep running towards
glimpses of my ever after
to have them crumble
just out of reach
& back into the fray.

I have stared into his eyes.
I can't tell if I am dreaming.
Inside my head,
my insecurities are reeling,
stirring hidden feelings.
He's piqued my curiosity
and left my senses tingling.

I have stared into the darkness
of this endless sea of ceiling
above my head. . .
my insecurities are kneeling,
begging for redeeming.
Is this too good to be true
or can I start believing?

We have stared into the darkness
of each other's shattered past.  
Despite my head
he has stood up to the task.
I take comfort in the feeling of
the sound of his heart beating;
he taunts my desires into bleeding.

I have stared into his eyes
every time that I am dreaming.
He's in my head. . .
I cannot shake the feeling
or understand the meaning
of how one unlikely meeting
bloomed into synchronous bliss.

If I give you a promise,
will you give me an answer?
If you'll be my lover
I can be your dancer.

If I give you a thimble,
can you make me fly?  
If you give me a kiss
I promise that I'll try

If I show my soul to you
please don't **** me over.
I'd rather face the wildfire
than watch the ashes smolder.

If I give you tomorrow,
will you tell me your past?
I pray you surrender
to the spell I have cast.

If I give you a promise,
will you give me an answer?
If you'll be my lover
I will be your dancer.

If I can find your shadow
can we touch the sky?
I have a little pixie dust,
I promise we can try.

Once I've shown my soul to you
please don't **** me over.
I'd rather fan the flames to life
than watch the ashes smolder.  

If I give you tomorrow
keep a place for me in your past.
I can't divine the future.
Love should never wear a mask.

I write because I feel,
and I feel so very deeply that
it seems to well within me and
often can not be submerged.
Repeatedly I seek to purge
through putting pen to paper
or placing fingertip to keyboard tile
and pouring out the tense and vile,
or the timid and tumultuous
confessions and insecurities that I
can’t in good conscience plead ignorance to
but fail to find confidence enough to trust
out loud to other people.
Sometimes I feel I can not even
trust them out loud to myself.
When I write it all out it makes things real
and I can give a voice to the things I feel
without shaking the silent, quivering
(in)stability of my insecure self confidence.

I've taken all the leaps of faith
I care to take
with no one to catch me on the other end.
Something keeps telling me to jump again,
just once more,
he doesn't hold out his arms in vain.
I build up my hope
& I swallow my dismay.
I fall forward & let the wind
carry me away.
I land in longing to feel
the heavy peace of a hand
that isn't mine but yearns
to help me understand.
Eyes that don't see their own reflection on the water
but, underneath, the hidden treasures in the sand.  
A mind like mine that dares
to dive through the stillness
and swim through the dazzling disarray
below my surface;
to frolic with me through the day
without the need
of having purpose.

Tangled up in my hair,

I leapt forward to an abrupt kiss,

nothing amiss.

No sign in the world around me

of anything left to confound me.

I'm surely certain I could die happy

Like this.

Is madness really madness
or the waking scream that
brings us to, keeps us on
the brink of realization
that we are alive?
I feel most alive,
on fire inside,
when I am near you.
When I lie beneath you
and you dive inside to
hold the pinnacle of my
being in your fingertips,
I feel completely safe in
the embrace of my vulnerability.
I have complete faith in your
adept ability to complete me
without eclipsing me.
Doves were never meant
for cages anyway - nor was love.

I drag pen across paper
and watch the ball point
linger,
as do you,
ever present on my mind,
still after all this time.

You are a flower that blooms
in my center
and I catch glimpses
of your sweet fragrance
with every move I make.  

With each deep breath
I take
I long to hear you echo it.

You are the sun that
kisses my temples
and dances on the mountaintops
that make up the peaks
of my cheeks.

You are my temple
because the thought of you
is sanctuary.

And yet, the thought of you is scary.

A wild and powerful creature
you are
that I sit and watch from afar.

Never would I think to cage you,
only to engage you
for you are much too fierce
to lock within my rib cage
next to my fragile heart.

I long for you to coax it from behind is bars.

I am much too lost
in your wilderness to
remain tame.

All my stoic efforts are
soon to be in vain
because you are a racing river
that has swept me away.

I find myself speechless
with so much to say
and an idle tongue,
as though my voice has
been carried away
on the butterfly wings
that softly hum
anytime I feel your presence.

But how could one fit your essence into simple words?

You are beyond so much more
than words could ever speak,
especially for a meek mouse
who hides behind her rosy cheeks
and tendrils of copper hair.

You tie my tongue,
yet it dares to delight
at every chance it has
to bite at you and
dance with yours.

I long to dance with you
as two become one,
such as the hummingbird and the flower.  

You are the flower,
vibrant and graceful,
and I am a bird who can't keep still,
for my mind does race
and my heart beats with such insistence
at the thought of your existence.

In everything I do I am reminded of you.

Your face leaps forth
from the landscape of my life,
and in your eyes
I see divine light.

If I only ever get
to watch you from my hiding places,
I will revel in my heartbreak, but it will be alright.

I am honored that your light
shines on me
for you are an amazing being
to behold.

You are my muse.

What should I do?
I want to be naked for you.
There is nothing here to hide.

I just need some time
to get used to your eyes
taking in every detail in my design.

I have so much rushing through my mind. . .

What do I do?
Standing here naked for you,  
holding my breath as I try to read the signs.

I don't mean to seem preoccupied
because I'm really feeling you.
I just can't stop from running through
all the things that could change your mind. . .

I could reach divinity,
go swimming in sublimity,
or the beauty of simplicity made intricate by you.

If I could only let it go
and take a leap of faith.
Bring myself to risk the chance
of crashing into empty space. . .

What should I do?
Now that I'm naked for you,
arms thrown open at my sides.

No more secrets left to hide. . .

Namaste.

Bring yourself into my circle
so that your light may shine
my way.
Allow us to delight in
how two kindred souls
do frolic & play.
Exhale all worry
for it does dance our peace away.
As my light now shines with you
we both illuminate the day.

Namaste.

I'm not thinking clearly, still I'm holding on
but only nearly.
At the end of this long and lonely day,
when I've got no more left to give to the people
who can't seem to find their own way,
I'm left cradling the pieces of my fractured mind
that I have to put back together on my own time.
No one wants to hear about my hurts
or talk about my scars.
I guess that's okay, because they wouldn't get it anyway.
I'm walking around with an invisible world on my shoulder.
A world of problems and questions
that have forced my mind to growing older.
My mind is so much older than what they see I am.
They could never comprehend, but it's not like they really give a ****.

Pearls sent slipping from the string
& in that moment they sing like raindrops.
Monsoon pours red lust across my bed.
He provokes the thunder instead
with a dance of lips & fingertips.  
Pearls ripped from the marble hollow
of intrepid breast, at my taunting behest.
They clatter to the floor
like my last shrouds of innocence.
His heavy touch does breathe
sweet incense
through the thick air of this precipitous night,
dark with wild unknown.
He comes to seek refuge in this storm,
& implores me to soak him to the bone.
Pearls tumble like sea foam
across the angles of my alabaster collar.
Crash to the floor like a wave to a beach.
Pearls, & tangled limbs & biting kisses
dive into delirious bliss & sweet remiss.
My ivory blushes with peach
blossoms opening to welcome his reach,
as we amble through a valley of pearls
& silken sheets.

My pillows
echo soft and lingering memories
faintly entangled in your scent.  
You are woven into my linens.
Left as a reminder of time,
in Heaven spent.
From this waking slumber
never shall I shake.
Intoxicating inhalations,
of our first impressions,
shy confessions,
laughs and tousled inhibitions
all left in between these sheets
. . .do keep me captivated
every morning that I wake.

The sun could shine or rain could fall

in a slow pitter-patter against my wall,

& I wouldn't know the difference.

But I know there comes a day

when I'll stand naked & feel the rainfall,

& how I've missed it so. . .

As a boat takes to water,
I have taken to you.
I yearn to hold you up
and carry you towards
wild adventures.
Yet I feel as though
you are the sea
and I am just me.
I am blissfully lost
in your blue and rolling waves,
content to be shipwrecked
by you.
You have the power
to effortlessly crush me
in an instant,
but I would gladly sink
into your depths.
After feeling your hands,
I could never dream of
returning to land.
For now I delight
in all of the sights
of you,
dazzling and vast.
Tentatively, I have cast
my feelings to your waters,
waiting for a bite.
A sailor I must be,
content to wait for
the rest of my life.

He dances around me

in circles that crowd me,

moving inward, like the walls.

Butterflies yearning to burst outward,

no one to answer their silent calls.

Butterflies are in my eyes.

They dance around my head

in hovering halos &

make it hard to disguise

my nerves, while words spill out;

tripping over one another

in my seldom uttered stutters.

If I had to wait a while
I would
but time would linger for so long
I feel I'd turn to stone.

Put my back to the place
I learned to call my home.

If I had to run for miles
I would
but I feel like I'd get farther
if I could
somehow shake the weight of
my foundation.

The echo of a flawed creation.

Recollections of uncertain
shrouded misinterpretations.

Should I go or should I stay?

Set down my feet or fly away
into the depths
of my own introversion?

I'm cemented in submersion.

You were as temporary
as the incendiary
summer heat
that baked our skin to golden brown
& sent us seeking shade
to simmer down.

You were as temporary
as the indulgence of our inner child,
time spent sprawled out in our sheets
watching Saturday cartoons
without a care or central air,
entangled in our underwear.

You were as temporary
as the cherry
popsicle stains melted into my skin
with our summer sin.
90°.
Sticky & sweet.

I remember pretending
we were wearing lipstick
or were deranged carnies
on the run.

We laughed at our absurdity,
drunk on our fun,
composing insane scenarios
to shake up the inane existence
of a small town Midwest summer,
languid with little other entertainment.

I'd wield an empty wooden stick
& read one-liners from the side of it.

You were as temporary
as the tattoos we got together
at the dusty county fair
that were sure to wear away
with sweat & sultry August air.  

You were my summer love affair.

I suppose he thought I needed to be tamed,
or required reprimandation & obedience training,
because he could simply never
let me BE...
myself without an open invitation for some harsh admonishment
or crippling criticism.
I must have painted a target that begged for his attention
on the core of my soul
because he loved the thrill in taking aim & shooting to ****.
He still colors my characterizations of the men I meet,
who ask me for insight into my mind,
& he leads me to question the intention behind
any stranger's simple gesture.
He told me he loved me, but he held me much too tight
like a petulant child who refuses to share
or suffocates a butterfly clutched in between his hands
- because its beauty inspired a selfish need
to seclude it away for one's self.  
He told me he needed me, that without me he would be left
to falter blindly through a nebulous black night,
yet he stood so close to my flame that it was inundated,
& he smothered his source of warmth & illumination.
A fire needs to breathe if it is to rage & be magnificent
- he knew that & he feared it tremendously.
He taught me to fear myself & undermined my capability
to silence those who shook my confidence.
In doing so he left me teetering on a decrepit foundation
& he so delighted in kicking bricks out from beneath me.
He pushed me down & taught me to be terrified of falling
dreading the arousal of self empowerment & ambition
to welcome an opportunity to pick myself back up again.
He tried to tether me to land,
like a flightless bird
- inert & with no purpose.
He thought he had me hooked like an inhumane bully
who allows a fish to fight his line
until it believes it has once again attained liberation,
then roughly reels it in, relishing in sick indulgence.
He thought he had me tethered,
but I am not worn-out & weathered
like an old leather ball
& I am not to be beaten round in endless circles,
the obsolete plaything battered by systematic violence
made into child's play.  
I said no & walked away.
I broke my tether that day.

& I never looked back.

Let me show you the world between my hands.
Delicate, tender palms cup your doubting cheeks.
Let me chase away the fears that linger at the edges of your mouth.
If I bite your ******* frenzied kiss,
let it bleed passion into mine.
I yearn to taste the sweet elixir that lingers on your lips.
Let me show you the world between my hands.
Seeking eyes meet your daunting brow,
and I wonder if somehow
you don't see the beauty in what you are.
Let me show you the world, you need not look far.
The beauty of the world dwells
in the bottomless wells of your eyes,
freckled with glinting greens and glimmering blues.
The world is you.  
My world is you.
Let me show you the love between two hearts.
It grows in between the spaces in which
we breathe in the beauty of each other.
It sleeps in our naked souls and wakes when they entwine.
Let me show you the deep valleys that lay
unexplored in your heart.
Let me run through your fields,
as the wind ripples wheat like a sea.
Let me dance with my bare feet on your raw, damp earth.
Let me show you my heart can be your hearth.

Let me show you the world between my hands.

We house a soul
from time to time,
but often find our corridors
left empty.

No house can stay full forever,
lest those filled with zany dreamers
who seek thrill beyond their own
four walls.

Souls do travel
from time to time,
like old visitors who leave tips
on the breakfast table
of their favorite inn,
shortly before seeing themselves off.

Souls may stand
on our back porch while they torch
a cigarette
and quietly ponder on minute,
existential mysteries.

Souls may seek comfort
sprawled at our fireplace
or perched atop a kitchen bar stool,
seeking to feel the comforting
complacency of domesticity.

A soul may find
that cozy comforts are ever elusive,
exceptional to an existence in which
the most stupendous feel bewildered
and insignificant.

Alas, such is the nature of a soul:
from time to time,
a soul might not recognize
its own might.

A soul will fight to find a home
and seek comfort from its peers,
but a soul does not often hear
the invitation to call a place one's own. . .

Home.

We are not souls, we house them
and from time to time,
if we are lucky,
our houses open their doors for more
than just one stray soul
to invite himself in.

If your home can house many
it houses the greatest of things,
above all else:
Love.

When I was young,
& dumb,
& drunk,
caught in that summer between teenage rebellion
& shipping off to towering landscapes
begging for rigid responsibility held
in the embrace of adulthood,
I sought to sharpen my wisdom
by dulling my senses and searching
my timid teenage soul.

When I was young
& dumb,
& drunk,
trespassing on the high school roof,
staring out over an empty parking lot,
I told myself,
and beside me
the fellow undiscovered,
misunderstood teenage dreamer,
the basis of the harsh reality we face:

Everybody is looking for
the right person.
But no one is trying to
BE...
the right person.

The silent gasp of sudden
drunken realization
elapsed his lips before he could lasso it.

The realization that neither of us
could claim we were just,
or striving to be
anything beyond bewildered and lost in
the confusion accompanying coming of age
kept us company through
that dusty summer night.