In my heart sharply
these words are etched:
'you struggle as a writer
you are not quite yet'--

an exhortation, a reminder
so timely, so true, so appropriate
just a searcher, a sojourner, a learner
that I vow to take heed, never to forget--

does it matter at all
if I should fail to reach the gate
of the masters and the sages?
I have no cause ever to regret--

a few close fellow-travellers
at my dying hour would come near my bed
my simple happy epitaph I would leave them:
'  I am the dreamer you well knew--the writer 'not quite yet' '.

i wrote you
a letter every day
letters to tell you
just how i feel

written in neat, curved
writing i told you
just how sweet
i thought you were
how you made my heart
glow

letters in which i wrote
with various colors of ink
pouring out my whole being
to you

i wrote you
a letter every day.

i wrote you letters in which
i told you how you made me
bloom.

eventually
i found myself
pressing harder on
the paper
than i had before.

creating tears in them
similar in shape
and size
as the ones
inside of me.

i began to send
letters
with creases
and bumps
and stains
splattered with tears

pouring
from my eyes

as i wrote
the anger
bubbling within me.

my last letter
addressed to you
contained
no words

but was blank.
because
i had none that

could reach
as far

and deep

into the cracks
of my
heart

to describe
just
what you

had left
of me.

There is no love in my life
No one to hug and hold tight...

-

I don't feel that presence
To know they'll be there
I'm not warm and secure
By somebody who cares

-

I am empty; alone
Only hollow inside
On my face show a smile
But just want to cry
I am trapped in a cage
My one wish; To be free
Can't escape my own skin
Life's a joke played on me

The pen seeks
         A new ink
As we jot
A new thought
         And think
What needs to be said
Caught in the web
Of our heads
   Spider spun sync

        The fly gets caught
And we prey a new plot
Devouring this meal
         And the reader
Gets wrapped up in our knot

The pen hungers
A new thought
A new ink
A new jot
So we feed it
To please it
Like a pet peeved
For another meal
And the readers get fat

As the audience gets big
Words fill the pig
And they joyously
Roll in the words slopped

The pen seeks
And it finds
What the readers won't let stop

Hunger

I painted some poppies a year ago,
long-headed, red as the watery sun
that floats in the Bay at evening.
A girl I knew asked for the painting,
and I said yes, it was hers.
Then her silence gulped months away
in great raw swallows.
One day my phone shook in my hand,
and the girl who wanted poppies was there.

By then I was alone, in an abyss,
so I was ready to answer a voice
that drifted down in flurries.
She sang jazz across the city
into my pressed left ear,
and I opened to her
like a drawer full of old knives.

I tried to embrace it
but it wasn't two weeks
until I was in bed,
staring at the wall
where the poppies hung,
long-headed,
red as the watery sun
drowning in the Bay.