A poet is the cracked spine of your favorite novel. As you begin to peer inside, words fly out from every direction. Sentences you can't make out and phrases you can't even begin to recognize. His mind is a dusty dictionary of all sorts.

A poet resembles the tide that rises and falls just as your heartbeat does with every syllable he breathes out. Corals scrape your legs and fish nip at your feet yet you linger in the water.

A poet is a pastel picture frame. Amazing how 4 corners can freeze the sparkles in your eyes and the grin on your lips. Feelings do not last forever so we tend to keep anger, sadness, joy & love sealed in glass, sitting on our night stand.

His mind is a factory.
Gears & wheels working late night shifts, making sure all periods and commas are in place.

You see
Poets are
Tear jerkers
Risk takers
Shape shifters
and
Heart breakers

And I should admit
Falling in love with your cracks & crevices
Wasn't exactly my cup of tea

But your gasoline filled veins
Were just about enough
To create a fire in me

A blank canvas stares right through me
No colors on my palette
None splattered on my apron
What has become of the beautiful brush strokes I once used to draw?
All my eyes gaze upon are smeared zigzags and uneven lines
There were instances where I could sketch every inch of your face and draw every corner of your heart with colors borrowed from a sunset
Now I cannot bring myself to map out the dimples on your cheek nor can I doodle the sparkles in your eyes
Guess what I can do?
Nothing because I am an artist
Lost without her muse

- J.Q

Do not fall for the plucked daisies & the sweet smelling roses
Just yet
Do not let your mind wander off to places even out of your own reach
Just yet
Do not fall for the tousled hair boy with poetry on his skin and a heart as soft as clouds
Just yet
Do not unlock your heart for someone who tells you you're cute
Hand over the key to somebody who focuses the camera on you and not on the sunset ablaze in the distance

Don't rush Love
Ring Love at 2:30 in the morning and you'll get him, half asleep and drooling on your nightgown.
Wait for Love and he will arrive at your front door with a grin on his face, a rose free of thorns, and a ring in his back pocket.

You decide.

I think Death aims to surprise us
It can do so much as erase someone
With a click of a camera or
a bolt of lightning

As we drag ourselves onto grass,
still wet from rainfall last night
We tend to forget that
someone we once knew,
Beating heart and all,
Is buried beneath our very own two feet.

Death does not warn us.
All he does is ****** loved ones from between our fingertips.
No matter how hard we grasp and no matter how tight our fists are clenched,
Death will claw open our hands and force us to let go.

Take note, Death grabbed you from me.
I know Death is inevitable but he needs to understand I was not ready for tears and heartbreak.

I was not ready for the Last Good Day.
The flash of the worn out camera and the constant ringing of our dusty old phone.
There are so much things I could have said to you and your gray locks.
But alas, I did not.

Now, I stand here above your grave;
Red roses in my bare hands.
I tell you how much you mean to me and
how I will never face your smile again.
I cry out I'm sorry for not answering our dusty old phone and for not telling you how much I love you, present tense.
Kneeling on my knees, I beg you to come back so I can feel your warmth spread through my veins one last time.

My voice gets lost in the wind, I realize.
So I set down the roses we picked for you
And commend Death on how easy it was to take everything and leave me with nothing.

one day
when the sunlight
stops playing hide and seek
with the clouds

i will set down my worn out pen
and stop scribbling about you
the tears streaming down my cheeks
will not be for your benefit

someday
as the trees
shed their leaves
the color of the summer sunset

my pen's ink will have dried up
and my sappy poems brown at the edges
i have learned to pick myself up
one discolored piece at a time

as the waves
start to calm
and the tides
start to quiet down

i start scribbling
i start scribbling about happiness
about how the stars are all in place
and how i have taped and colored in
my once shattered heart