Easy flow the waters
of the river passing by,

though we straighten them with walls
and narrow them in time,

and lace them up with bridges
to bind them where they lay,

still the waters, like a lifetime,
slip their bonds and pass away..

[A prose poem]

I see a palm reaching out for me, from the pitch black.
     I try to sleep and close my eyes, but I still see this palm, trying to cover my face or scratch the skin it hates– I close my eyes and I still see it.
I know where this palm came from.
     I know it from the time the backdrop was not dark, but a horrid party at a lonesome house where I had too many shots. I know this palm will try to take whatever it wants, and it’ll crook its fingers and slide wherever it pleases, without caring to come back to my face when the tears roll down; it does not care to treat them, it does not care to wipe them. It does not care.
     Its been more than a year now, and still I go to sleep and think of hands. Of the word “no”, and how useless it is, just like trying to get some good sleep now. I close my eyes and try to forgive every one of those fingers.

In the vague tones of morning,
before I find the weight of the day;
I lay.
Lay and watch.
She kneels on a lamb skin,
doing her make up,
in a mirror
perched on the end
of the bed.
I pretend to sleep
so that she doesn't realize
that I am watching her;
she's more beautiful in voyeurism.
In those moments
I am calm and she is beautiful,
The finality of slumber
the pregnancy of morning
the vastness of that mirror
sit together for breakfast
in my small dusty room.

Is your heart still wild;
I wonder,
as fog silently lifts off the Potomac.
I am not sure when
the rains started,
but the noise
falls into the fog.

The district seems sleepy,
and I am tired too.

When is it time?
When did the food lose it's taste?
When did adventure
get replaced by routine?

When all around you saw darkness,
you gazed at the stars.

Everyone wants to paint their pain,
but only you, Vincent,
channeled that awful torment
into beauty
immaculate and sublime;
only you, dear Vincent
saw the beauty in the shoes, the bedroom, the weeds, the washers,
only you saw the beauty when it wasn't pretty.

To suffer is human.
but
to find ecstasy in the ordinary
and transform the banal into the magical
is something only you could do,
my dearest Vincent.

Merci;

He sat watching as the love dripped out of her,
like broth dribbling off the spoon back into the bowl;
each drop of pho causing ripples of warmth.

He wished to plunge deep inside of her soul,
to penetrate her mind and pause briefly, but
long enough to see how much love remained.

He watched as her hands became a swarm of bees,
her brown eyes turning to fire as she spoke,
and in this moment she was still beautiful.

His heart writhed while slowly realizing that,
it doesn't matter how much you love someone.
Sometimes love just isn't nearly enough.

A garden full of sweat and tears
The weeds have choked what once was mine
  Each blossom that manages to escape the dark
   Have learned to make a difference

A graveyard filled with rotten years
Enveloped by forgotten memories
  The night guard keeps watch on the nothingness
   On the heavy and solemn eternal embraces

An abandoned swing hangs from the oak
That sits in the backyard filled with heartbreak
  Everyone as left and the windows are lacking light
   Even the moon cannot break the shield of ivy vines

Through that small window in the top left hand corner
A shard of hope still lingers with the perfume of life empty
  One eye is all it takes to glance out and see the landscape
   Not a single soul remembers the occurrences in that house

The night guard makes his way as dawn breaks
He's weary from watching over those awful tombs
  Up the paths, through the garden, to the front door
   A stench floods his nose, but that stench is long gone

It is only a memory of a promise he could not keep
Up to the top left hand corner window
  Well, Mr. Gravedigger, bury me soon,
    He smiled at the bottle he should have put down

But that was why his beloved family
Rest in the ground behind his house and his garden
  The teddy bear in his dead daughter's crib
   Reminds him of all the **** that he once did

He screams at the bottle as if it's somehow its fault
That the night guard could not watch over his life
  He opens a cabinet and places the barrel
   Pressed to his head, then pulls the trigger, but he isn't dead

What cruelty is this? I want my wife back!
The night guard lay bleeding on his sweet daughter's carpet
  The sirens started wailing as the sun peeked through
   And poor Mr. Night Guard descended to Hell