Don't Stop.

Was the gentlest command that ever passed your lips.

My fingers danced across the keys,
Playing to the tempo of your scribbling pen.

We wrote a symphony that day,
Broken to the beat of our passionate hearts.

The arias of my poetry were never enough for you.
You had to hear them played in the form of

Chopin
Bach
Strauss

Anything you could write to.

You know more about me
than any stranger should.
You know more about me
than any friend could.
It's not always easy
to post the things I write
Because they are more of myself,
that I don't like to share.
My poems are me and me alone.
I hope you like them,
but more, I hope you like me,
even if I'm a mess.

I got caught up in poetry.
Her eyes, her hazel, are poetry.
Her hair, swaying,
Languidly left me
With purpose,
The tussle
Of a clumsy
Serenade.

Since she left,
The guitar strings
Echo her questioning.
They move
As though
To flicker back
To her eyelids,
To sway a feeling
Back to hope,
To dreams,
Coming back
To me.

Cruel is a day
So calm
     Without her.

Her soul is poetry.
She got me singing,
Covering
That Bic Runga song
Over and over,
Lulling the sun
To a blue blanket,
To sleep
One afternoon.

Yes, I miss her,
Clear as a sentence
Simply put,
     A ballad.

But there is no fear
     In love.
          I convince myself.

Love is patient
     Before it is kind.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You carried the scent of a heavy summer rainfall with you
everywhere you went,
dropping hurricanes from your pockets for strangers
who have only known spring showers.
I didn’t know it was possible to fall in love with a storm.
Every time your cloudless eyes met mine
I felt a swell in the back of my throat,
as if I had drank too much seawater and you just kept staring
until I began to cough up the entire
Pacific Ocean.
You told me that this is what it meant to be with you,
to be with a nihilist.
You held other worlds on your fingertips
and slipped them under my tongue,
my blood becoming bellicose within it’s own veins.
The parabola of my pupils stretched until they became quasars,
I had never known energy like this before.
Your lips twitched into a most complacent grin at my lack
of self-possession as I writhed in the rapacious wake of the river.
Everything around me shimmered
with the light of 1,000 stars
and I heard centuries of music in your laughter.
I was a foreigner in a different world.
That night we made love with the intensity
of 50 lightning bolts striking an erupting volcano
and it was the first time you told me you loved me.
It was the only time you meant it.
We anesthetized each other so much
that you became insusceptible
while I became hypersensitive.
You carved kisses into my skin
and they were wonderful
but I was starting to bleed out.
But you couldn’t even feel my nails
as I tried to dig my way into your heart.
I had never wanted to live inside a person so badly,
but you can’t make homes out of people.
You can’t make homes out of addicts.