for reasons unknown to me,
the urgent need to commence
this one with the words:

Oh man,

this is, this be, challenging,
but these words were found on the drying rack in my
abattoir, my nickname for my unending Draft Day
filings

and kept poking despite another overnight splash,
the product pool is full of creativity's synaptic junctions,
a wild night of up~writing, from god knows when,
and here it is 7:18, there are obligations, needs that
a demand a face to face meeting, tho the troops are
in their boarded beds, gently snoring…

                      so quick, to the sizable task at hand

the search is perpetual, not eternal,
for no one comes forward, willing
to admit, they have been around
since King David's time, practicing
this verbal chicanery game of using
words to guide the perplexed, unless,
of course, unless someone you might
know might be a big fat fibber

right about now, you're exasperatingly seething,
"where the heck is a poem gonna show its face?"

     well, and now,
     some struggle mightily, to ascertain
     who and what is their uniqueness,
     oft turned and twisted, caught between
          competing entities, asking quests that
           take lifetimes to resolute, and when
           you look at the typewriter roll silently
           choking the white cloud surrounding it,
          you, you want to cry/pray out aloud, who, who

shall I be, to make a completion between
the person inside of me. the person I think
                   I want to be, dream of be-coming,

and yes it is too, eternal, for as long as humans
can think dream, create and anticipate, we all
will nonetheless perpetually search for the other
someone, sometwo
in us…

”Baby don’t hurt me… don’t hurt me… no more!”
A chorus of laughter bubbles in that car—
and in that grey room with no walls
I’m laughing, too. I don’t know why. It’s not funny, but I feel like laughing anyway
”Love you”
I laugh when you laugh, that’s all.
It’s like how I cry when I watch you cry, right?
Look in the rearview mirror and you’ll see yourself reflected in my eyes.
I sit in the passenger seat. I do not drive, but I am the one who chooses what songs our hearts will sing
I choose the song I know your heart sings
I sing it too
I understand you more than myself.

”I love”
I was tangled in my lofty stars
I was in a living room
Alone, together with you
We realized you weren’t my world.
My world was “empathy”and “an inability to hate others”
Is that all it is? My universe is so empty.
I ran away.
I thought,
“I don’t know the words yet”
What great shame for a singer not to know the words, right?
So I ran away from that sofa where all of us could sit,
and into the grey room where I was alone.
Well— I wasn’t really alone.
You were there, too.
I ran from you into your arms.

“Love you”
when there is no I.
“I love”
when there is no you.
We will never be together.
It’s my fault. I’m the one who ran away.
…But I ran to you, right?
No. I can’t blame you. I’m just the passenger.
“I love you”
This thing between us…
It is the equation I will never solve.
It is the eternal quandary.
It is bridge, a shield, a prison.
It is my only hope and power.
It is my despair and undoing.
It is everything I have.
It is everything I can’t have.
It is a path that leads I to you.
It is a wall keeping I from you.

”I love you”
The simplest words to say,
The most difficult song to sing.

I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

when you were born,
a shy summer snow,
they said:
“bear the burden of this world on your shoulders.”

to you,
a sauna in the snow,
they said:
“give us water. quench our thirst.”
and so you brought forth steam,
and gathered humid dews,
and sweat salt,
and wrung water into their maws.
and so they sweltered, and still—
they were thirsty.

you say:
“i bring no water. i quench no thirst. and thus i fail.”
i say:
“give me heat. give me humidity. give me heart.”
“give me whatever you want to give.”
and you do,
and from this heat i sweat,
and from this warmth i cry,
and aren’t my tears water?

to you,
a shy summer snow,
they said:
“give us water. quench our thirst.”
and so you melted,
and dissolved into the current,
lost into salted misery.

you were born not to bear burdens
but to love and be loved
to live, to laugh, to sweat, to cry,
and aren’t your tears water?
my snowstorm, my sauna
the salt i sweat for you
cry for you
is the sweetest nectar.