hearts
falling like
shells
blasted
to find
love brandished
as a weapon
held tight
as a warm gun
convection's heat
from the
barrel of passion
searing
the handle
of emotion

No, ashes no longer fall
From the sky

Those diamonds are precious
Between your thighs

And that pounding in your chest
Fossil fuel, so indespensable
Can keep someone like me full

I'm a minner ready to fall
Into you, most valuable ore

The mere thought of you
Can warm me more
Than coal or wood

You can heat my heart,
Set my body ablaze
A thousand degrees higher
Then lava consuming land

No, ashes no longer fall
From this sky

You must have come
To save me

How brave we,
Knowing love is dangerous
Knowing it can fail,
Trying with no fear or avail

My manifestation of love,
You rise from the shadows
Letting me know I can be yours

Like warm water dew drops
I see you trying to attempt
To hydrate, fortify this force of nature

No, ashes no longer fall
From our sky

Taking it one precious step at time
If our paths allows us
Like two cells engineering one being
Living one life knowing we have each other

Time makes us feel
cynical, critical.

People make us feel
neglected, unwanted.

Circumstances lead us to
wear masks and we
forget the person
we used to be.

Till an old friend
comes looking for
the friend they knew.
Bringing old memories
and reminding you
... Of you

Another voiceless voice, unseen, unheard;
How then can one begin to understand
Or know a man by just his written word,
Or know a man when all his words are planned?

And if we meet in passing in the street,
And by some chance have cause to thus converse
And share of life's adventures all replete,
Would I bestow thee with some clever verse,

So two lost souls may swift identify
With kindred spirits hidden there beneath
The facets of these strangers passing by
And seek to know the poets underneath?

Dear friend, alas my silence would dismay
And strangers still, we'd go our merry way.

Living life in flashbacks with memories on repeat of the times that we could have had just you and me you say that you miss me and want to be closer but anytime I ask you never come over that's okay another day I said and it's been the same forever inside my head

short legs
patched jeans
kicking leaves
piled to my knees

remembering color
living in sea salt pines
leaves little to imagine
of autumn rhymes

sweetgum sourwood birch
sycamore and dogwood
apple leaves beneath the plum tree
ash hickory maple and oak
mountains afire in Tennessee

eyes closed
smell of smoke-
kicking leaves
to the wind.

r ~ 9/16/14

You taught me to have coffee without sugar.
Only now do I understand what that means.
Bitter lover.

I saw the old man circling the tree trunk
Weather beaten skin, bent gnarled hands
and piercing blue eyes

He seemed to study every knot and crack
in that ancient timber

Then without a word turned and picked up hammer and chisel

The wood chips then began to fly and like confetti on the ground lie soon in heaps some ankle high

Occasionally he would stand back and look but never once a rest he took

Mallet strokes both hard and soft some from under some aloft fell there with unerring skill always busy never still

Long into the night he worked now by the light of an oil lamp and so the tree stump 'neath his hand then became a work of art

At long last he stood and turned to me and said three words " that'll do lad"

I approached to see just what he'd done and there I saw the perfect rose every petal and leaf in place the slender stems in the breeze did sway

With no plan or picture he had made the start
And created the perfect work of art.


So what is creativity? Well that's your next challenge.

No love poems because they've been done a million times. This time something unique