I want to wrap myself around you,

My entire self, my spirit, all my life,

I want to cradle you in the arms of my galaxy,

Serene in the timeless embrace of our fusion,

The rest of the universe spinning around us,

Starlight fireworks dancing to the beat of our heart.

Song of love, twisted by welling darkness.

Vengeful art, practiced with vicious subtlety.

The softest lips whispered the hardest lies.

She exhaled an evocation of ethereal dreams,

Whose only prophecy was eternal sorrow.

I remember learning about Japanese culture in elementary school.

They taught us to say a few words, told us some Japanese stories, we learned how to fold Origami, and we got to try sushi and some Japanese candies.  

It was one of those cultural-week things.  It was cool.

Anyway, I remember at one point the teacher was telling us how every inflection matters when speaking Japanese, and that saying a word with the wrong inflection can turn it into a great insult.  

I remember thinking, "Wow, it must be really hard to speak Japanese."

Only now, when I'm almost 45 years old, do I realize it is literally no easier to speak American English or any language for that matter.

Every inflection counts, every word counts.  There are uncountable ways to insult someone, and indeed to be insulted, and the path to speaking (or writing) without unwittingly tossing out insults like candy (don't throw sushi, it's very messy) is a narrow one.

This is especially true when writing about something painful.  I try (but probably still fail) to be sure when I write I [attempt to] take that into account.

So, anyway. I just wanted to say, that if I have said something to offend you, such was not my intention.

Just sayin, y'all be careful with that thur 'Murican English, it's loaded!

Let nostalgia and what-ifs,
Should-of, would-of, and could-of,
Be no longer curses, but gifts,
Not the pain of loss, but the memory of love.

Let the years seem kind in their passing,
Let me revel not in the present but celebrate in giving,
In helping, in loving, in laughing,
Not just one closer to death but another year of living.

Let these words ease angst,
And soothe long-suffering sorrow,
Let the past be wreathed in lights, not pains,
Not days passed but another chance at tomorrow.

Today I've decided I've outgrown these tears,
I'm yet younger than the mirrors wrinkled clues,
So here's wishing you all the best of my years,
With a wink of these birthday blues.

You enchanted the moon, didn't you?

Or bribed her?  Maybe you promised her a star or two?

She hunts me with Orion's bow, pacing behind shadowed cloud,

My celestial stalker ridin' low, warily wrapped in misty shroud.

She whispers stark and yet, soft as a breeze on an April afternoon,

Press on now, my pet.  You've done so well, we'll sleep again soon,

But we've a fortnight to go if we're to come full circle by month's end.

So many dreams still to sow... To reap those lupine howls once again.

She waxes and I wane, she mystifies with madness then soothes me sane.

Serenity to insanity, delirious depravity to moon-magicked majesty,

A cosmic clockwork cycle muddling my mind with lunar gravity.

She pushes me to righteous malice and pulls me to solstice solace,

She masters tides in her caprice, what hope has a malcontent apprentice?

Worn photograph clutched
Tightly in the mind's eye
Faces faded, edges rough
Light preserved by hopes lie

Lush garden terrace
Woven through with thorns
Soft smile turned sharp grimace
Scarcely healed scars torn

Fairytale truths delude
Poison apple dreams
The really-real world
Seethes behind the seems

Dark mirrors reflection
Bends reality
Echoes of connection
Charm eternity

Cord our arms with steel
Bolster our hearts with fire
Fill our minds with light
Drag the veil from our eyes

We have endurance and strength to fight
We have mercy and we have passion
May we learn the wisdom to choose what's right
May our eyes weigh, measure, and ration

Call it hope, poem, spell, or prayer
May it be a boon for those that care
To rise and challenge, to stand against
Control by precedent and ******* by consequence

I take a whole week to celebrate my birthday,

Just to make sure I don't sweep it under the rug.

And I've worn a mask what feels like my whole life,

But October is, by far, my least favorite holiday.

If I were to tell me
My much younger me
That I'd be a druggy
Well, I'd probably believe
If I were then able to see
This handful of boring
Well, I'd think I was crazy

The plains-stretched sky soars sullenly,
Graceless sans hills, lonely less trees.
Starkly exposed tending swept-grass streams,
With naught but sparse clouds to mask modesty.

Let me glimpse the sky peaking playfully behind arboreal eaves,
Branches breaking blue monotony with autumn-bright leaves.
Show me a valley mid-winter-doze, cozy between mountains steep,
Sleepy sun-shadows shifting on snow as the sky climbs for her peek.

The most fun I ever had
Was making you laugh

A garden trowel in a patch of irradiated weeds

An odometer in an endless maze of MickeyD's

An encyclopedia in a pawn shop full of tweakers

A love song on a boombox with broken speakers

May I present several examples of useless things with nothing to do

Now if you think those're bad, you should see what I'm like...

I curse like a drunken sailor with a stubbed toe and an eye full of Tabasco.

Expecting my hands to be soft,

Is understandable,

Not seeing the scars there,

That's classic.

I got this idea I would write you a poem,
One you could read sitting safely at home,
Or keep with you out and about while you roam.

A poem about all of the memories I held sacred,
Laughing, singing, kissing, and cuddling in bed,
One to remind you our time wasn't wasted.

So I laced up my heart and I shrugged on my soul,
I popped open my noggin and I went for a stroll,
Right down Memory Lane and left at the Rabbit Hole.

I kept on goin' 'til I hit a velvet rope with posts of brass,
But I musta gotten too close to the bulletproof glass,
Cause a big grumpy guard threw me out on my...

I realized, still rolling, it's all one massive museum,
Motionless memories mummified so I can keep 'em,
Lined up and locked away, as if someone would steal 'em.

Arduously ordered, organized for instant access,
A mental palace fit to make even Sherlock jealous,
That Dewey Decimal dude don't got nothin' on this.

The slide shows replay every minute on the minute,
Time-compressed and Tetrised-in so each moment fits,
Bio-digitally encoded on neurode and inked onto skin.

Tear-rusty gears grind waterlogged cogs in reverse,
This melancholy machine made to reflect you in verse,
Is a planetarium perpetually projecting my universe.

Caution: Objects in poems are deeper than they appear.

The more shallow it looks, the deeper it is.

Please wear your life vest at all times,

And may we take this moment to highly recommend the buddy system?

We happen to have one available if you are unable to locate a buddy.  😊

There're always consequences for you,

But when you really love someone,

You'll make consequences for them too.

Ya know...

If that most famous pair of star-crossed lovers had only possessed cell phones,

Things might have gone much differently.

Ah shiny approval,

Warm and soothing on the skin,

Absorbed like a lizard,

When one is hypervigilant.

I was never sure if she was
locked away in a tower somewhere

Or if she was the dungeon master
and I was the one on the rack

Though my heart was dead long ago,

This ******,

Through my chest,

It is as the first.

Though I knew long ago,

The break of trust,

Denies me rest,

Heart smoldering, mind cursed.

Be careful
I forgot to mention
my heart
is proximity-activated

I took myself down a dark road,
I strode into the desolate cave at its end,
I found, deep within, a still, cold pool.
I sank below the surface of the subconscious,
Past the primordial muck of this life,
I dreamt of nothing.
Devoid of even the concept of darkness,
I did not reach out to it,
Because I did not exist,
For that tiny eternity,
I felt nothing.

When one's life has hit rock bottom
At the ripe old age of nineteen
When the apple of life has gone rotten
And hopeful plans wither to faded dreams

When one's confidence is shot
And one's hope has slowly waned
When one's faith in love is all but lost
And one's self-esteem's been drained

When one's spent their life to overcome
The pain of losing their one true one
When one's reached out to touch only ice
To be judged and rejected once, twice, thrice

When one's messages are deleted unread
And pictures cannot fill the hole in one's heart
When the only chance to hear your voice is in one's head
One begins the onerous process of falling apart

When healing has begun and the dull throb doesn't beat one jaded
When the sunlight breaks the clouds for the first time in dark ages
When the black hole ***** a little less and the stars aren't so faded
One will still be here waiting to hear an answer sought by fools and sages

Love is bitter from age and neglect
Chains to bear breaking my back
Eyes deceive, thoughts betray
Tongues lie, souls decay
Words, like fire, torture and burn
Fire is soothing, pain must be earned
Ears distrust like lifeblood flows
Time is unending, destructive, and slow

There's something amiss in my desperate laugh,
A misty, wistful wish, an algid disparate draft,
Finest thread of dread winding its way throughout,
Vines, verdant, spread, binding my hope to doubt,
Booming drum shaking foundations made of sand,
Tinkling of breaking glass creations out of hand,
Spilling out and over, released lest the dam burst,
Consuming as if lover, heedless of best-verse-worst,
Best nightmares, worst dreams, in the end, it's all the same,
Unheard cares and thoughts mean, play the grandest games.

Pooky,

I love you
I miss you
I want you
I need you

You are every hope
You are every dream
You are my only wish

For someone like me
being told you're getting
exactly what you've always wanted
is like being told that you have
24 hours to live.

Because nothing I've ever wanted
really, actually, down-deep wanted
has ever worked out.

The more important something was,
the more ****** up the eventual outcome.

This self-fulfilling prophecy has been
more reliable than any family
member, friend, or lover has ever been.

It's never let me down.

At least
If you're holding
A beer
You can blame
The beer
By asking someone
To hold said beer
While you do something insanely stupid.

"If you get down and you quarrel everyday,
You're saying prayers to the devils, I say.
Wo-oh-ooh!
Why not help one another on the way?
Make it much easier
(Just a little bit easier)"


-Positive Vibration - Bob Marley, Bob Marley and the Wailers

They'll tell you how beautiful are your wings,

While they bind your pinions and strip your feathers.

"So graceful and so precious!  Such lofty, ethereal things,"

The words like rusty chains, cracked leather-sentiment tethers.

They'll tell you, "Rise above the sorrow, fly from the pain,"

After they teach you to clip your own wings so you won't fall,

And when the confusion sets in they'll be the first to tell you you're sane.

"People can't fly," they'll say, and point to the wings nailed to their wall.

Religion watered lies with cultivated fears
Pure liquid guilt methodically poured down ****** ears
Harnessed young thoughts to grim shadowed years
Harvested dumb belief in blood, sweat, and tears

Constant torture over the soul's fate
Hideously murdered that innocent state
Contrivances uttered with no trace of hate
Whose venoms still stain now balding pate

Taught to fear what we fail to understand
The devil himself possessed the idlest hand
Preferring instead to let us hang ourselves
Ironclad morals dragging us down to our hells

She wanted all the benefits,
But none of the responsibility.

She needed me to love her,
But didn't want to care about me.

She expected me to follow her,
But she didn't want to lead.

She hoped I would decode her riddles,
But she wouldn't take the time to see.

She extracted a promise from me,
Then hid behind it like a tree.

She left me to live in chains,
But I am human, and I am free!

If she were to do all the things
That she expected of me,

Maybe she would swallow her pride,
And finally begin to understand me.

In the story, Samson is said to lose his power when his hair is cut, breaking his vow.

I think he was wrong about his hair, and the actual source of his power was his love.

I think he lost his power the moment he realized Delilah had betrayed him.

Not when she betrayed him, nor when she cut his hair, but only once he realized what she had done, see?

So at the end of the story, when Samson gets his strength back, it happens not because he grows his hair, but because he forgives Delilah.

His hair was only a metaphor for his faith (in God, love, women, and Delilah in particular)...

Anyway, I'm growing my hair out.

You are the reason I fell in love with the light.

You are the reason I sought a way out of the darkness.

You are the reason I stayed.

pocket puppet
people in power
hands in pants
razing the tower
climbing thoughts
clinging ivy
emotions a-twitter
prey for thee
my country
'tis of these