Can my soul mate come swooping
into my life
Around my early twenties?
Serenade me with Ed Sheeran songs
And kiss my knuckles.
Become familiar with my brown slopes.
Nod his head to Biggie & Cole with me.
Eat me with the tongue game
Only a poet could have.
Put a glistening rock on my left hand
Before I'm thirty?
Could he tuck in our perfect jewels & read them
A bedtime story
Before enticing me with **** and sweet tea
Then ******* me to sleep?

The bar was closed,
the dawn approached
like a grey and threatening sea.
He placed two glasses on the bar
one for him, one for me.

Black Bush shimmered in each glass
golden in half light
We proposed a toast to you
thirty years ago tonight.

That day We'd brought you to the church
and the graveyard just beyond.
Larger than life you always loomed
hard to believe you're gone.


They say that when a father dies
a boy becomes a man.
If it didn't happen right away
I hope you'll understand.

I'll never hear your voice again
or share a hug and kiss.
I'm drinking to remember
It was such a night as this.

I'm not blaming you.
Please don't let it come across as that.

Today I saw a picture of you that a friend posted.
You were at the river and you looked beautiful.
You told me to forget about you.
I did.
For about 3 hours.
And they were nice.
But then I saw that photo
and it drove me crazy.
I used to have you.
You used to be mine.

What I really need to forget is how much I love you.
All the good times we had.
All the love we made.
I need to forget it.

It's not your fault all of this happened, really.
I don't know who or what is at fault and I honestly don't care.

I just want to know why.
We were so good.
We were so happy.
We were so in love.
Now we hate each other.
You hate me.
And I hate you.

I'm not trying to blame you so please don't let it come across that way.
Please.

I want you to forget about me and be happy. Like you were today, if that picture is any indication.
So please
forget about me,
move on,
and be happy.

I'm addicted to cigarettes
I'm not even addicted to tobacco
I'm not even addicted to the rat poison they contain

An oral fixation, as Freud would say
An unbreakable habit
But it's always my choice, right?

Yeah, right
I choose to go outside
I choose to think about it

If I control my own mind, which I do
I can do anything
I can be anything

Unfocused and totally distracted
I thought about it again
I want one right now

You make me burst out in tears.
Joy, sadness, and love.
I am overwhelmed
each and every time
I see you.

The Butterflies return
Time after time.

Your chin so prominent,
Your smile so bright,
Your eyes so entrancing.

An embrace like no other,
Warm, filled with love.
Awkward and uncomfortable.

Kisses soft, hard, slow, fast.
Intense.

You pretend to be, things you are not,
But inside I see your love, compassion,
Fear, sorrow, joy.

Giggles like a child ring true from your mouth,
as I softly tickle your tanned, speckled belly.

Wrapped in your arms,
a caterpillar in a cocoon.
Safe, sound, secure.

We yell and we cry.
We kiss and we smile.
We hurt and we heal.

You are mine,
I am yours.
No matter who has loved you,
or who will love you when we part,
The love that pours from my heart,
for you,
Will continue until I cease to.

You make me laugh,
cry,
scream,
shudder,
in joy, anger, despair, love.

You lift me from the abyss that is my mind.
You remind me why I want to be alive.

I just wanted a couple hits off your cigarette

Didn’t know what I’d end up with next

Definitely didn’t bank on loving you

Or undoing all I thought was true

I only wanted one night of pleasure

I never intended to surrender

Never knew where this would take me

Or how I’d feel when my heart was breaking

I just wanted a moment of your affection

Instead it brought me misdirection

A fleeting glimpse of happiness

Something that would not last

I want to dissect the space in between growing up and being an adult
I want to see the heart as it beats its desperate beat of not enough
I want to see the lungs that save their breath because the worst thing to ever happen has not happened yet
I want to see the brain that has just started to question the belonging that was inherent in every held hand between friends
And I want to see the vestiges of the tales told to children that made them believe that growing up was wondrous
But which shrunk in the face of an evolution that explained away the magic in the world and told us that real life was good...
enough.
I want to dissect that space and see it before growing older starts to feel like growing colder
I want to dissect that space after falling in love is only about unscarred hearts and tiny little steps of faith
And then I want to keep each piece
Cultivating and grafting to get the perfect hybrid of knowing that things sometimes don’t work out and believing that anything is possible
Making my monster out of childish this and adultish that
And I want to give it life
Flinging it out the window
And then maybe wondering if it has wings.

Some minor character in a TV Sunday play
Was asked to pick a day, (just one mind you)
That he would wish to live through once again.

And, do you know what?
Even though he seemed quite sane
He could not think of one.

Yet, don’t think this odd,
For even God (speaking on a late night show)
Was slow to answer.
And when He did, admitted that the question
Had outwitted even Him.
“The past’s been grim.” He said.
Adding, that the question was an unfair test.
But that, if pressed, He guessed
The best was still to come.

©James Rainsford 2010

freezing rain is not frozen rain.
that is to say,
my breaking heart is not a broken heart.
my breaking heart is not yet solid
is not yet solid ice.
the air around the muscles is not thick
is not too hard to cut through
is not suffocating.
the soft edge is just beginning to glaze over;
the thin air is just beginning to grow heavy.
that is to say,
you might be going,
but you are not yet gone.