there’s solace in syllables,
humming as you write them,
their slight vibrations signal warmth.

fondness gives it life
and, in turn, is mountainous
in splendor.

this might be what love is.

this essence has been boiled down to the nearest nothing
and deep down, it feels familiar—

a bird too grown to only now learn to fly,
its wingtips creased the wrong way,
nearly featherless, and weak.
nowhere to go but down
and even then,
impact doesn't promise
resolution.

a poem with too few metaphors,
too much “telling”— we get the point
but SHOW us—
as if listless anger and sadness
it's just a clear-cut visual,
crystalline in memory against all odds.

this essence had been boiled down to the nearest nothing
and deep down, it feels misunderstood.

pin-pricked, the deep drip
spelled cacophony,
mired in chaos.
the human brand
of serially unkind
contradictions.
relatable

and distant.
far too nebulous
to satisfy your craving
after a long day of wanting.
those words silk-spilled
into some odd pile,
creation adjacent to intent,
and skewed from some cliff
hoping for release.

the truth chained itself and,
grimacing, he followed.
each star he eyed blew past,
one by one, and perched
themselves within him.
he picked, prodded, pleaded,
sleep smudging the night's corpse,
and optimism left him.

bit by bit, he read her heart
and lost it in translation.
her energy was effervescent,
and warm. inconsistent.
--
her energy was eclectic-- fierce,
and her words: silken, undisturbed
--
he lost himself in her songs,
the playlists of past hurts, wants, haves-
and happiness. rhapsodic
--
pain is a telegraph,
a tactile sensation that sounds off,
telling stories of past mistakes.

night slept when she spoke,
creeping  back into its ceaseless
void in reverence or awe.
day paused enviously
at her brightness.
the winds fervently whipped
as she moved, and caressed
her in a motherly wrap.
she viewed this beauty
in nature as it viewed it in her.
taking aim at sunset,
she set herself
to become the beauty
she beheld.

The soul has as its sextant the ribs opened wide,
The heart its compass in fluid circuitous diatribe,
When each to zone the geometry of Greek sky  
With its powdery fabulism of centaurs and jars
From Aesop’s wine of words, the untimeliness
Of sundials to Charybdis’s bloom of giant watery eyes.

To know oceans by the dry riverbed of my pulse,
To scale only as high as the sparrow’s tomb of my heart.

night and day— a unison
in serene dawn,
entwined in hope,
lust, fun.

then flecks and flashes of flesh
and light snare souls
with optimism
and choke with reality.

until night and day, crossed
at the harshest bit of twilight,
are dead.