Your tender words caress my face
and seep into my skin.
Soft soliloquies, quiet rhymes, rhythmic patterns,
they swirl in my mind
and are painted behind my eyelids while I sleep
or as I think of you and smile.
The whisper of your fingertips
reminds me of the brush of your pen
and the tumultuous emotion from each word
brought forth from your mind.
Your poems of love impart a sweet nostalgic ache
for the passion I'd never felt
until your words flooded my thoughts
and allowed deeply seeded flowers to grow into a full bloom.

And I think
maybe it is not you I fell for,
but the sweet, sweet, song you sing.

No words
slip from my tongue.
No words
emerge from my fingertips
as they race across the keyboard.
No words
spill from my mind,
trace the recesses of my brain,
leave my lips with the taste of butterscotch.
I have traveled far and wide,
from one pole to the other
then so far west I'm back in the east,
but I still have no words.
No words
to describe this feeling,
the one at the back of my throat every time I speak,
the one tingling at my fingertips whenever I press them against the keys,
the ones zigzagging my mind from dawn to dusk and even after that.
No words
to describe the tightness of my chest,
whether from the way she tucks her hair behind her ear
or the weight of today on my shoulders.
The thoughts --
I chase them, but they always slip away
just as I can feel them in my grasp.
No words, no thoughts, no way
to finish this poem
not when it's ever-flowing, ever-growing, ever-changing, ever-there.

She spoke
with half-smoked cigarettes
and lilting cursive scribbled over last night’s letter’s return address,
her bags packed with only a backless dress.
Nails dripping black and red
blood and paint indistinguishable
in the darkness of the winding alleyways
zigzagging her heart.
She was truly, unendingly lost
in the mazes of her mind
as she traveled backwards with a string
lazily trailing after broken stilettos.
Yesterday’s rain still dripping from empty window sills
and illuminated by lanterns lit with fireflies
found solace in her silent tears
for they were companions,
cut from the same paper-thin cloth.
Maybe a goddess had worn it once,
but those days were long gone
when she lit it aflame with a cigarette
fresh from her lips.
Desire was never a question —
this she had learned from the fire
overtaking her overflowing mind —
and yet it was soundlessly spoken
on empty bottles
not yet broken and swept up by the sea.
Only the blind man could see her now
just as the deaf girl heard her cries
and thus she remained unanswered.
This, however, she did not mind
for being lost was no longer not a choice.

It was a shotgun wedding
and the bullet hit 'em both.

“What is a poem?”
My English teacher asks,
then barely pauses before answering his own question.
Lists of rules and reasons
spill from his mouth,
so many that he’s cut off by the bell.

I refrain from raising my hand
and telling him that anything can be a poem
if you want it to be.

The painting on the wall,
the fleeting peace that comes
from looking at the moon,
the little boy whose hands are already rough
and calloused with use.

Nothing makes a poem
but our minds and thoughts and wishes
for “poem” is just a word
but what it gives us is ours to decide.

Maybe even this is a poem,
though my English teacher would disagree.

That sweet pang in my heart
when I think of you.

The world rains down on this lonesome desert plane
and we watch and wait and go insane.