Let's have an affair over thousands of miles.
I know you through the words you've written down,
Which tell me you are equal parts baffled and fascinated
By the billions of minds that make up this crazy, crazy world we live in.
I'm asking you to take off your work uniform slowly and deliberately
So I can see where you've tattooed all of those nights smoking *** and laughing on your chest.
And I promise not to be intimidated by the black spot next to your heart
Inked in fully with the names of every girl you've brought home
And used as a muse those weeknights you just wanted to love something.
I don't fear your short, crisp lines filled with inside jokes you're dying to share
With anyone who isn't you.
I don't fear a little bit of darkness or loneliness.
I only fear that I'll never be able to feel your breath on my neck as we sway back and forth
Cloaked in smoke laying on a bed of aluminum and grease-stained shirts.
Or I'll never be able to run my hand along your chest as your lungs fill up with the sweet smell of rain.
I don't know you, but I like to imagine that you're a cliche ocean of depth and passion
That wants to do right by anyone who will do right by him.
So let's do this, let's have a cross country love affair of the senses
And feel each other like we're just learning what it means to touch.

She fell in love with words on a page written down like a cry for help.
Because she felt them move inside of her and stop her very heart from beating.
She could feel them hammer into her veins and tiptoe through her brain
As they nested ideas and thoughts into her mind about the man who wrote them.
Like he was sitting somewhere in the dark etching his feelings into the air with his own sweat
She could feel him.
Using only the words he wrote down with the ink he barely had left on the last page of the journal he carries
To and from his days as a student or a business-man, or a drifter. A loner.
Who whispers sweet nothings into the air like a spider's egg explodes into infinity with children
And the wind carries them gracefully to her eyes somehow.
She dreams about the words flowing through her fingertips onto the last page of her journal
That she carries to and from her days as a student, business-woman, drifter. A loner.
She hasn't let one single laugh escape from her lips, or a smile appear on her face.
Not while the words she needs to breathe cling to some forsaken wind across the country
Looking for her in the moonlight, written with an unknown desire to be with her.

I'm going to make
pancakes today
and I won't be grumpy
if they're lumpy

Because I'll know
what's in 'em
and how good they'll be
in me

Along the far wall
beneath the outstretched
limbs of jacarandas
I see him walking
each morning at
his constant time
even when the sun still
half asleep hides behind
overburdened clouds

Sometimes he
waves and
sometimes he
smiles but
mostly he just
walks on looking
down the road to
where I wonder

And I only
watch him briefly
now and again
on days when
I am able and
on days when
I am not I know
that he is there

Until the day when
I look out and see
that he has reached
his destination traced
by constant footsteps
beneath the outstretched
limbs of jacarandas
along the far wall

He put the moon in my hand
     long before I knew
          the measure of its weight

          It felt like almost nothing
     as if floating
above the reach
          of my fingers
    

               It had no special features
          to reward my wandering eyes
     as they continued on elsewhere

And there seemed to be no reason
     to keep it in my grasp
          so I soon returned it
               into my father's hand

                
                       But afterward I felt it
                resting in my palm
          growing heavy and then fading
       in phases without sequence
or boundaries of time

Barely perceptible
     like shadows pulling forward
          it guides me still

               Leading me past emptiness
          lifting me past hope
     rising highest in the darkest hours

I see its face again

His heart does not belong to you. He is a poet.
Don't you know they only love words?
Love, yes love, he lives and breathes and writes love letters
About your brown hair around your neck, and the gold he found in your eyes.
Maybe the way you smile more with one side
Or other things, perhaps, about you he believes he loves.
But it's not you he loves, and you must realize this now.
He only loves words. He is a poet. He only loves words.
He's not looking for any heaven he can spend with you
Because he's already found it in that cup of tea he sipped
At the coffee shop around the block
Where he sat, and listened, and watched, and thought
Of the words he loves more than you.

I am a rock
in the middle of
the Mojave desert

And you
are a figment
of my imagination

If only I could name
My fear, my darkness
That haunting shadow
Measure it, weigh it
With inches, pounds, milligrams
If only I could give it substance
Speak it out, find the words
If I dared break the silence
Woven of silent submission
If I dared shatter the texture
Of this solid web of lies
If I dared bust through this black wall
And come forth to the night
I would still be alone
But would I remain invisible?

All I know for certain is that I lost you.
Somewhere between "hello" and the goodbye that stopped my heart,
My smile didn't matter to you any longer,
And my hand became a world too heavy for you to burden.
Somewhere between "hello" and never seeing your face again
Watching the moon rise over the lake turned into a complete and utter memory
Of a moon that waited on the other side of the parking garage roof,
And love turned from a campfire
To wood too damp to kindle a flame.
I don't know where my accomplishments began affecting you
More than the spring in my step,
Or my tears became tangible evidence of discovering reality
But there was a specific point where it turned.
After so many months, years have passed, the point has left me.
My heart beats again
I smile, and write, and dance,
But for fear of finding the turning point once more
I do not love.