The hospital
room's aglow
with sickly
yellow lights and
greenish hues

and your hands are folded
under your blanket
under your scratchy
hospital
blanket

and my forehead lives
on the metal bar
that keeps you
in your bed

and the yellow
trees are glowing
out the cement
window panes
where my sister
pinned a plastic
bow to hold back
my greasy bangs

I would live here
for eternity
if it meant
saving you
go to sleep
peacefully
and someday
I will too.

Tall thin girls
and Madrid
and burgundy
red
velvet curtains
and candles
that don't go
out
liquor d'amour
liquor d'amour
tall thin
legs
and freckled
red hair
the sun,
it won't go
out
liquor d'amour
liquor d'amour
Every time I
hop the
pond
I drink
liquor d'amour

I pressed the flowers
from your funeral

I pressed them
to my cheeks
where I could smell
the hyacinth
the sweet honeyed
smell of hyacinth

I pressed them
to my fallen
eyelids
my dampened lashes,
my eyes that
hold the reel
of the last 24
years.

I pressed the flowers
from your funeral

I pressed them
to my chest
where my heart
wouldn't stop beating
and where yours
wouldn't begin

and finally,
into a book.
Into a book with
maps and
artists, with
paintings and
with
so many
words for reading
where you'll
always exist.

This heart has been
The smallest boy in the
Schoolyard.

Picked on, punched.
Called names, pointed at
With raw laughter of the

Cruel, cruel kind.
Grew skin as solid as its
Ability to draw

Lines, and stand for them.
I will not accept.
Sometimes pulse

Is the heart
Beating
Back.

I play blind.
Take you in with other
Senses.

Read your every line with my
Fingers, taste your
Sweet salt,

Smell the cotton and sleep
That held you, before I
Woke you up with

Hands and whispered kisses,
Craving to hold you
Myself.

I love you in
Moonlight. I love
You.

Your scents and flavours.
Your heartbeat escapes like
Poetry from your ribcage.

To write food in the stomach
Of every hungry child.

To spell war as peace,
Metaphorize flowers into the barrel

Of every gun on Earth.
The poet has responsibilities

Beyond those of mothers,
Of kings and presidents.

I refuse to give up hope;  
This could be a poem world.

Come on, write your worst piece
Of literature.

Even misprints may give other
Meanings to a word,

Write me a green sky, blue dirt,
Trees the colour of air.

Sometimes the best poets
Have the least to say,

So keep writing, write until your
Fingers fall asleep.

Write until you havent slept
For weeks in search of that word,

That one right word,
Then rest on a notebook pillow

And dream the world right.
Write the world right.

There is no such thing as
Wasted poetry.

Has the sweetest flower shriveled up and died? Has the greatest riches been cast down to the mud so the swine trample upon it? Shall the strongest horse fall, weakened, never to regain the pride it once had? The prayers of an unholy man are found, just as a man finds a friend in whom was once an enemy. Loss is but for a moment, and wealth isn't measured only in possessions.