There are two half-full cups of coffee on my desk
(and one in my car).
But you'd make me more in the morning
If I asked.
Like how you would drive my car in the rain,
Because I can't see the road
(even though I never told you I couldn't)
And then make me watch bad movies.
You're better than the rain,
You're the whole monsoon season,
Shaking the whole world up with yourself,
And making it better every time.

I live in a desert
My Dear.
With a loopy-eyed cat who bites
and a roommate who might as well.
All of my clothes are ripped and stained
and I don't know where I'll be working tomorrow.

The other vagrants and I
We can't afford to stay,
but we can't afford the gas to leave,
either.
The summers are too hot--
the winters are too cold--
and the days and the nights are too dangerous.

But we're here
and we're young.
And someone has to feed the cat.

She wanted him.

Not the him who calls after midnight
from a diner off the freeway
Because he doesn't work for another 12 hours and if she wants to have dinner with him this week
she'll come

But the him who drinks coffee with her in the morning before work
after their alarm told them
they'd slept tangled in each other,
again.

He's still new.
Sipping on the same soda from the same restaurant after two years
Wearing the same shirt, same colors, same car. Two years later.
He has a new job-- new watch.
But the same haircut.
The same drunken goodnight kiss on the same mattress we've slept on after going to all of the same bars.
Paying with the same credit card, ordering the same food.
Falling asleep the same way.
But after two years
Every good morning feels so new, every good night so wonderful
And he still looks at me like I'm brand new every time.

Our hearts don't break
For lack of love.

Plenty of people do not love me,
And I lose no sleep.

Perhaps your heart breaks for those who do not love you.
But mine,
Mine,
Mine.
Breaks into pieces every time I realize that
Love is not enough.

He knew--
Not well, but he knew--
What she was.
That she was the steam coming off a cup of coffee
No cream-- no sugar--
Bitter & Dark.
And she would rather drink alone than drink what she wasn't
What she didn't want.
But little by little he added
Some grains of sugar.
Some drips of cream
Until she was cool and light.
And now he's sad to see there's no steam.
She lost who she is, he forgot what she was,
And they just don't know each other anymore.

I like the taste of old coffee between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
Just how I like the blast of the a/c on a hot June afternoon.
And sitting on the porch looking at the city when the sun finally sets on these summer nights,
A tea in one hand and a book in the other,
With a mosquito swarming somewhere near my ear while its friends nibble at my ankles.
I like candles and hot showers and waking up after the sun to find out it's still only six am.
But even if you don't like all of these things too,
I still like you in the summertime.

The words sit
on the tip of my tongue--
Bubbling up from my chest and
Threatening the bust open the seams of my lips.
And I can't tell you how much it means to me
That you're feeling the same thing too,
And I get to be the stubborn one.

Despite the fact that he doesn't drink coffee--
he hates the way it smells--
He sits in whatever coffee shop I am,
And watches me sip my coffee black.
So my soul has decided that this is love,
That this is truly love,
And I never had a say in the matter at all.

The thing about love
See
Is that it can be everything, and nothing
Everywhere, and nowhere
Too much, and not enough.
All at once.
And it's hard to remember the beauty of the fire
After it burns and maims your skin.
But oh, but oh.
The beauty was there. The fire was there.
And the burn will never truly heal.

I fell in love twice.
The first, a glorious trip over cheap champagne and the dreams of youth.
Tremendously child-like , desperately adult.
But nothing that burns so bright dies slowly without notice.
And I swore I would never love again.
The second, greatest love
Happened without intention
And saw into the future. And saw reality.
And was a great, great love.
Subtlety spread from an ember to a wildfire,
And I've learned that love hurts more as an ache
Than it ever could as an explosion,
And sometimes feels like loneliness.

I fell in love twice.
The first, a glorious trip over cheap champagne and the dreams of youth.
Tremendously child-like , desperately adult.
But nothing that burns so bright dies slowly without notice.
And I swore I would never love again.
The second, greatest love
Happened without intention
And saw into the future. And saw reality.
And was a great, great love.
Subtlety spread from an ember to a wildfire,
And I've learned that love hurts more as an ache
Than it ever could as an explosion,
And sometimes feels like loneliness.

Oh to be loved by you.
To hear the whisper of the words slip up your lungs into your throat
And out of your lips.
And into the air around us, crawling into my ears and nestling
In my heart.
To be held safely, cherished in your arms.
Oh, to be loved--
Actually, honestly, loved--
By you who I love with an honorable, cherishing, true and unfailing love.
To be loved.
To be loved.
To be loved.

Because there's no silence in my world
Or peace,
It does not stop here.
The noise, drops of rain and
Screeching tires,
So visibly loud
I can't sleep in my own bed,
Do not
Stop
Growing
Living
Existing,
Here.

"Do I love her?"
He laughed
As if you'd just asked the bird soaring above your head
If it was flying.

"The sun rises
At the sound of her voice.
The whisper of good morning hiding
Beneath the covers."

"And sets,"
He said,
"When her eyelids close, and I can no longer see
Her smirk shining through the starlight."

"I do not love her."
He sighed
He bellowed.
"I need her."

It is nonsense to think
That reason
Has little to do with loving a person.
But it is far more nonsensical
To abandon love
Because logic and reason
Because any logic
For any reason
Told you so.

If she could grow up to be anything in the world,
She'd be the last thought on his mind before he falls asleep at night.
Or maybe the last person he danced with to the sounds of the winter evening.
Hers would be the last lips his taste,
The last goodnight he whispers as she drifts to sleep on his chest,
The last hand he holds onto
She'd be his last first date, his last first kiss, his last first dance
The last, greatest love of his life.
If she could grow up to be anything in the world,
She'd be his last choice.

He's a California hurricane.
The sunset over Venice Beach.
He's the lights of Los Angeles,
The summer sun
And the gentle rains that blow across to Arizona.
He doesn't need coffee he just wakes to the breeze coming his way.
He's an earthquake and a soda, a busy freeway after morning yoga.
He's 40 million people laughing and crying and building and dreaming all at once.
And he's all mine.

She's a mess.
The smallest fall of snow is a blizzard in her mind
And the cold is incurable.
So she sleeps when she can,
And wakes when she must.
Until, of course,
The day she can replace his old t-shirt
That she wears to fall asleep
With his strong and kind arms.
And she can replace the cold night air on her lips
With his.
So her dreams are stuck in euphoria between goodnight and goodmorning kisses.
That's how she'll survive the snowfall.

The past will always be written on our faces
In moments.
Left for us- and us alone-
To silently acknowledge
With fondness and with longing
Before we let them pass over us
Into the futures we've each chosen
For ourselves.

She woke up
And she could feel
His chest
Rising and falling underneath her fingertips
And she thought
She'd fall back asleep
Over
And over
And over again.
Just to wake up
Draped in him
Over
And over
And over again.

What I know is that rain will fall
Some days when I don't have time to grab a coat.
But I get to decide that your arms are warmer
Anyway.

No, I will not blame the explorer,
Because I have been there.
Because I have sailed my broken ship
Through rough waters
On to the rocky shore
And watched the harsh winds tear to shreds what I'd worked so hard creating.
I remember the heartbreak-
I still have the bruises-
And I could not leave again.
But I remember
And because of that I am certain
Of what you could not possibly know.
And that's worth travelling the world for.

I searched through every word
In every language spoken and unspoken
Spanning continents
Through time and space
And couldn't find one acceptable enough to replace
The one you took from the tip of my tongue
When you kissed me good morning
And left me breathless.

If moments between breaths were made of pure
Raw
Unaltered distance,
I would have cursed my own skin for standing between us when we had the chance.
Because now that the miles are filling up my lungs
My heart won't beat in rhythm
And every muscle aches to run back home.

He would stand in the doorway every morning if it meant he could
Memorize the way she cradled the coffee in both of her hands.
And how her mouth kissed her cup hello, still too hot to drink.
He hated how the sunrise always ran over her face before he could even open his eyes to watch her breathe in the day,
But she made up for it in how her feet never truly touched the ground
And her perfume took residence in his pillow so even when she left
She was still there.
It wasn’t hard for him to realize that she was as much a part of his home as the socks that always found their way back under the bed.
And he’d never be able to look at that old, goodwill coffee machine again
Without thinking of the weight of her presence rising and falling on his chest.

How could it happen that you meet a person
And in one short moment
You can feel them rattle every bone in your body
So the rest of your time is spent dousing the flames they sparked inside you
And hoping they're doing the same.

I'd like to think that one day you and I
Could sip tea out of mason jars in my backyard
Under the light of the stars
Just enjoying being in each other's company.
All we have to do is listen to the acoustic beat of the night air
The tap tap tap of feet walking down the street
Or the howling of the police siren as it blares through my town.
Our town, I suppose.
Cause see I've got this patio, and this little gate that barely swings open
And a bunch of chairs I can't occupy by myself.
And you've got that guitar and that smooth voice.
The eyes that won't quit and the laugh that means something else.
You don't even have to dance with me,
I'd just like to sit with you. If you'd take my company.
I would love to watch you hang the moon.

I got this idea in my mind
That the moon hangs right up above your head
And the stars **** through your eyes.
So when you're not there, the sky turns dark and lonely
And not even a strong cup of coffee can wake my sleeping heart.
So I guess what I'd like to say is
Don't go anywhere for a long, long time.

He's the cigarette that makes me want to take up smoking.
Because he'd be so good with a cup of coffee on a lazy Saturday morning.
He's every line I've crossed out trying to put to words how I'd like to breathe his poison
Over and over again.
Until he's nothing but a pile of embers and my lungs are black with ash.
He's two strong arms hovering around the waists of girls who already know they're beautiful,
Cause he doesn't have time for girls who don't realize it.
He's a tall, strong whiskey on the rocks.
Sharp as a knife in a New York City mugging,
Cool as the Los Angeles breeze,
Deadly as the Arizona summer.
All I want is to inhale deeply and let him slowly
Stop my breath.

I was just wondering.
If I stay the night,
Will you still be here tomorrow?
Because there's not enough of my heart left,
For it to break one more time.

I'll be your Roseanna
If you be my Jonesie.
Let's go outside to the edge of the river.
Where the television hides behind a thick sheet of glass
And the water stays cool.
Keep the lights off
And we can let the moon take care of
Everything.
We'll stay by the pool where we belong
Dip our toes in the chlorine
Shimmy down into whatever we've got left
And dive right in.
The Lord can see us.
But no one else can.

He's thinking about
His book.
And how he's going to write her into it.
She's a shelf that doesn't hold anything
But a few memories here and there
And some day dreams.
Her eyes sting
And her voice just sort of floats above everything else.
Like a sheet of clouds on a hot July morning.
There's really no place to acknowledge a power so fierce
Using just the ink from a couple of pens.
But he's going to try to capture the way her lungs give out
During long drives down busy highways
And her dark glasses always seem to be locked forward.
Her toes curl in her flip-flops
And she never opens her mouth too wide.
How can words describe someone
That only the pounding of a heart can imagine?

Maybe
It's the 6th cup of coffee
I drank at four this afternoon.
The diet coke I bottled and sipped throughout the night.
Or the fact that I haven't eaten in two days.
But I haven't missed a single second these two days
Without the thought of you sprinting through my mind
And dropping my heart into my lungs.
And let me tell you,
It feels kinda nice.

It's hard to be a hopeless romantic
In a sea of hell-fire and friction.
Maybe I'm in the wrong place.

We're two feathers from the same bird,
tail and wing.
You can't tell when we're floating together
Which fell first, and which followed
Or even
What happened to the bird.
All we know is that some young thing will grip us in his tiny hands,
Pick us up from the ***** ground
And hold us together in-between two pudgy fingers
Imagining he can fly because of us.

First, an introduction
As you know my name is Kasey Shores. As you don't know I'm a student at the University of Arizona. I'm fairly studious, love to write and am a serial intern. I love to work.
I have been so blessed to have so many wonderfully talented people on this website follow me, like my poems and encourage my work. For that I thank each and every one of you.
Now, a note.
One of my many jobs is as a campus representative for a great company called Serengetee. They buy fabrics from around the world and sell them as pocket shirts. "Frocket shirts" as my good friend calls them. This company is charitable, supporting over 50 causes in 50 countries.
A Request
As a representative I'm asked to complete a rep project. I wanted to do something I could excel at. I wanted to incorporate poetry.
So I've created the collection Words of the World, which is under my collections and is entirely public. Each poem I post is inspired by a fabric and a cause.
I would very much appreciate if you would all consider following the collection and contributing based on your own Serengetee inspiration or any act of kindness. It's a collection about the world, for the world, helping the world.
Thank you all!

Arrows raining down on our feet,
And yours aren't covered.
None hit our heads but the bottoms of your feet blister.
So take my sole to save your soul,
Because we can't control these arrows or how far we have to walk.
We can't tell our feet to stop blistering and moving
When there's work to be done in places
That aren't here.
Thousands of tiny arrows make their way from our feet to our shirts,
Just over our left *******,
Where we thought our hearts were no longer.

We floated down the river with aluminum in our hands and the sun
burning our hearts.
Left the day roaming the streets in heels and shorts by the light of the moon.
Jumping off cliffs and laughing at the stars lighting up the sky.
How silly we were.
To have loved like we were sixteen again but with minds knowing that we're not sixteen anymore.
And that summer will end. Bills have to be paid. Work has to be done.
Love is not a priority unless you're sixteen.
But everything feels so real floating down the river in the Arizona summer.
Even dreams.

I'm not sure whether it's your name
Or the voice surrounding it that makes it so beautiful,
But it is as close to perfection as I've ever seen.

You, with your bed of thorns,
Broke the fall from my throne
And tangled me in your chaotic glory.

We always leave before the sun leaks through the faded curtains
Throwing clothes over our raw skin so the sky doesn't see us.
And you mostly pretend to sleep soundly on the bed, inching towards to crease where I fall asleep.
Because you're okay with leaving.
And because I've done it enough to prefer it.
Dances like ours aren't meant for the light of the day or the twinkle of the stars
But for the pitch black, utter, endless darkness of a windless night.
You are a cold breeze on my otherwise warm afternoon, giving me goosebumps and making me shiver.
Something I haven't decided if I like or not.

You are a rainstorm in an Arizona summer.
I don't know whether I should hide
Or bathe in you.

She just can't play with words anymore.
Everything is coated in a dreary layer of tired eyes and nostalgia.
Every word typed for a different person under a different name
For a different rhyme or reason.
There's no more feeling coming from those fingertips that once felt
The skin of someone not there. The sun when it wasn't shining.
The wind when it refused to howl.
There's only reality.

I am made up of an entire soul
Completely furnished with potential and with life.
That can love with a love that love has not imagined.
And I have thoughts that rage on like the rain beats against a window in the dead of February.
As the rain greets the Valentine's on their way to their nights I listen to my heart
Beat.
Beat.
Beat against my chest.
The strings of the violin I left at the church play on and on like a love song barely out of tune.
As the G and the D and the A and the E tell me to go
From the church that's too far for me to visit after so much wine.
I might sleep.
I might do a lot of things.
I might even write poetry.
But one thing I'll certainly do is love
with a love that love cannot even fathom.
And my heart may beat out of my chest.
And my lungs may collapse.
But I will love
until my heartstrings tear apart with yearning.
And then I'll drink more wine and pretend.
I don't love anything at all when we all know
That's just not true.

I like
Coffee
As a motif
For reasons I don't even know.
I think sometimes it's because wine comes and goes
But Coffee.
Coffee.
Coffee
I have every night.
To keep me up thinking about the
Bitter taste
That life leaves in my mouth.
Sometimes I think that it's coffee,
The one thing I have in common
With the rest of humanity,
That keeps me alive.
Maybe I need to be awake to feel
What coffee does to me
What you don't do to me.
You should do to me.
Coffee.
Coffee doesn't confuse me.
And coffee tastes the same.
And coffee comes
And coffee stays.
And wine.
And people,
They just don't.

See there's this guy that keeps me up at night.
He sits in the corner of my room-
Not on the floor, not on the ceiling, but just hovering there-
Just above my dresser.
And he just waltzes into my dreams.
And he says to me "Kasey, you know why I'm here."
Sometimes he looks like a woman without a face.
Sometimes like a child.
Sometimes he's a soldier or my father or my mother.
So I wake up. And I think.
About my Grandparents being married for sixty years
About working for that long at loving another person.
I think about who I am and who I want to be.
And where I'm going how I'm getting there.
All the while he's still hovering in the corner of my room
Telling me "Kasey, you know why I'm here."
And I won't leave you alone until you understand.
That to the left there is a path and to the right another
And one above you and one below you.
Through you and throughout you.
And there's no medium for which to make a choice
But your own two hands.
And you'll get up and write at three in the morning
For people who just don't care.
About things they don't care about.
And your migraine will not go away.
You know why I'm here, Kasey.
"You know why I'm here."

We're all lions here
And we're comparing the size of our teeth as if it's the teeth
and not the bite
That's the most deadly.
We're all swallowed by our pride here.
Apologizing left and right to make ourselves feel better about mistakes that aren't ours
We don't own them.
The moment the "I'm sorry" escapes from my lips it takes with it a
Solid and measurable piece of my soul.
I am waiting.
A lion in a pride of my own bounding on two feet
Looking down at your barred teeth grinning.
Because I will not be owned
Or enslaved
Because adolescence is a stage and I am not an actress in this play.
When the king of the jungle gives up his power where does it go?
Not to the juvenile. Not to the child.
To the one who hunts for it. Who grins while others growl and feasts while others sleep.
I will take it.
And you will whimper before me.

February is tomorrow
Is October and is yesterday.
The winds start to chill and I can't find sleep.
So I'll walk down the dark streets to the corner
And wait for nothing and no one.

Silence greets the drifter as she steps lightly on the cement
Hoping to create a footprint deep enough to leave a mark.
But instead creating a slight wind that taps windows of sleeping scouts
Dreaming of leaving. Waking to nothing.

Sleep can't find the wicked and the wicked can't find sleep.
Insomnia strikes again and this time
It may stay.

I just wanted to tell you
I wrote everything for you.
So when I leave
You'll still have these words of mine.