Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

We sat around a campfire talking
we laughed till we cried
we argued till we were lost
and it was a while before you noticed
the fire burning the marshmallows
but oh how I wished you would notice
the fire burning me
from inside and through
warming me up at first
then excruciatingly torching me whole
inside and through
leaving nothing behind
but a couple of hollow eyes
that wouldn't dare look at you
that sat there staring at our fire
so you wouldn't notice yours.

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, "O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

In her dark eyes thou canst see thine own mortality
And with her white arm in some imperiously indolent gesture,
Long fingers carelessly pointing -- rosemary, rosary,
Rose petals rotting on a Sunday -- Baudelaire would like her,
With her nightshade beauty and red lips in a frown.

"Fier et nonpareil," like some rue-flowering queen
And not even the dark red of the faded rose
Resembles the color of her voice, a color which can't be seen
Morbid and beautiful and indolently morose
Et son visage serait celui de Baudelaire ***** rêves...

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"
The difference, my love,
Is that when you laugh,
I forget about the sky.

The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

No, you're wrong.

Everyone is as beautiful
as they can possibly be

Particularly at lunch
in a laughing restaurant

Everyone is as beautiful
as they can possibly be

And they are moved
by their own beauty

And they shed tears for it
in the back of the taxi home

I was waiting here, for that woman who gave me love
I told them she was my star shining from above
I waited and waited till the midnight bell rang
From my disappointment I sang
"Everyday I wake up from my dream
And say that was sublime
I wish the clouds could hear
And then they'd cry my tears
Those tears of regret
Just because you fell down and left
And destroyed our dreams and hopes
And all those empty roads
That I had given up just for you
Who made you leave tell me who
I guess I was living in a bunch of lies
Before I ran out of retries"
We used to walk to a church a couple of miles away
We admired the beauty and kneeled to pray
We liked to visit a park in early spring
I'd push her while she sat on a swing
I don't know what was on my mind
It was her love that kept me blind
The reality, I could not find
With her, I left all my problems behind
I remember the first time we met
It was at a party at sunset
We gazed into each other's eyes
15 years ago, how time flies
The memories pass in my head
I can't remember how many times I've said:
"Oh Lord, gracious Lord, tell me why
Why did she have to fly
I can feel her spirit crossing seas and rivers
Would you tell me why she left her lover
Without her I'm a blazing sun without calming rain
Without her I'm a man without the blood in my veins
Oh well I wanted to take her to Spain on our honeymoon
And maybe serenade her under the light of the moon
I turned her frowns upside down
She made me wear a golden crown"
And one winter I remember well
A first lovely snow fell
And after it had covered valleys and mountains
We went and hid in a small cave
Shared our love like we never did
And that ended our story forever
But I'm still waiting for her
Even after the midnight bell rings
I still need to tell her things
Still need to push her on a swing
Still need to gaze into her eyes
But I'm not a god and I have no power
So at her doom stone I placed a flower
                                                          ­      *p.t.