The softness of your shape
My love,
I wish to finger paint your picture
I long to sculpt your every inch
Leaving no detail lost
For I love them all
And I see you all in all,
Now and then and to be
And for every new detail I’ll paint again
Create a gallery of you
My muse

I write so many silent poems about you

The words swirl and mix and create their own life

As quick as they come, they leave also
To make room for the next line
The next paragraph

Of a kiss or a whispered word
A tear welling up or freely falling
Fingertips on my back, water droplets running down to the floor with gravity

The words feel like a river, breathing in
Flowing down and around the bend
Gallons of water and pages of thoughts

Feelings rushing in warm and swift and pooling

Before they rush to the next basin

And on and on and on and on

You can never stand in the same river twice

And I can never remember the exact words I want to write about you

Because I just live in them in that moment
They pool around me. Your fingertips like little water droplets on my back
Running down with gravity

And this is a very disjunct poem because after-the-fact I just can’t pull the exact words I felt

Because you can never stand in the same river twice.

soul like the first warm sun of spring
Eyes open and shut
Clouds cover and uncover sunbeams
Blue skies and eyes and soft touch
Like the baby spring grass shoots
new every year, a perennial flower
Sprout, grow, blossom, bloom, wilt, shrivel,
die, freeze over.
The ground is hard, the sun isn’t warm
The wind cuts your skin
Even our star doesn’t want to be here, the days leave us sooner and sooner.
Sleep now, lay in the ground and wait.
Feel the gloomy rains slowly get warmer,
Patiently remember what you are.
The spring returns smiling and so does she
Thaw, soften, sprout..
Use your roots to stand up again.
You’ve prepared for this, you know how to do this.
Grow, blossom..
Reach your face up to the sun, warm again
The wind graces your cheek, soft again
And she stands again, sweet and lovely
Born on the first day of spring

Show me your face and I know what love looks like

Touch me and I know what love feels like

Speak to me and I know what love sounds like

Kiss me and I know what love tastes like

It wells up inside me

Pouring from my chest through my eyes and down my cheeks

Trace it with your fingers a moment
Paint on me the very feeling and thought of the moment

Then kiss me a moment too long
Salty tongues and warm cheeks
And sink down into something a little too strong

I know, for because of you, what love is

You are it and
You are mine and
Who am I that I’ve been given this?

you can tell a lot about someone from their shoes

the well kept,
shiny,
new looking dress shoes.

the unkempt,
raggedy,
hand-me-down tennis shoes.

the classy,
black,
high-heeled stilettos.

the scuffed,
well loved,
well worn work boots.

you pictured a person in each pair didn't you?
isn't it amazing
that given only shoes
we can create a character.

Living from day to day by opening cold every morning;
The comedian, in no mood for leisurely reminiscence
how ironic

constantly caught
in contradiction
the want
to take in everything
and never close my eyes
and the longing
to keep them shut forever

i guess it's the affection
for two respective distractions
one conscious
the other not
i wish for silence as i wish for anything;
a sliver of hope
and a hefty helping of pessimistic realism

distraction from what? they ask
oh i don't know
but if i were to ponder a guess
id say mere existence
id suppose, perhaps,
a distraction from everything in me
everything in my mind
which is me in essence
what is a person without mind?
an entity of nothingness
molecules clumped together haphazardly
and meaninglessly
~

it snows and with it comes the quiet
quiet little town gets even quieter and snow, see
it's like a warm hand clasping mine in the middle of a deep
sobbing cry
sits down and soothes with a whisper
and a misty breath that shushes till the fit fades
snow softens the blow of reality
and as it freezes the tips of noses it does so with time

I am,
nobody’s something.
Nothing special, and yet to know if I’ll remain so. I play an extra in everyone else’s movie. There’s brighter and more beautiful. A more catching story, a slyer smile.
I am,
anybody’s nothing.
They pick me up and consider me for a moment, scrutinizing my rosy eyes and cloudy head, then deciding I’m simply not for them, and set me back down.
I am,
Somebody’s anything.
Sometimes I catch a second glance, a look of possibility and care. I’m taken and toyed with, told I give tunnel vision. But only for my storefront view. As soon as the buyers remorse kicks in I’m blamed for my own heartache.
So what am I?
I’m a cloud in the fog.
A tear in a rainstorm.
A flashlight next to the sun.
I’m there. Here.
Just not significantly existing in a way that makes me
Somebody’s something.

Only
Lonely
Little town
Little lady
Little bit of shame
Lot a bit of longing
Big fear
Bigger desire
Lost a while
Found even more
In the mountains
On the road
Sorta stupid
Sorta smart
Young mind
Old heart
Contradictions
Commonalities
It’s all a little silly
Life
The world
So much more
Than I thought it would be

to see the love of your life
Sleeping with afternoon sun beaming in
Making dust glitter
Making you breathe deeper
Making a smile slip on your face
You realize this is life, it’s simple and good. It’s not all its cracked up to be, sometimes it needs to be much less. And it’s better that way.
It’s silly too,
That you craved spaghetti at 11 weeks,
Griped to yourself about going alone to the store as he napped

(and how dare he!)
(and doesn’t he know you’d like a nap too!)

But you go alone

(Because spaghetti was more important in the moment)
(and don’t we truly pick what’s important when it comes to?)

And you realize your moments are less quiet and alone than they used to be
They’re filled with a beautiful rhythmic music of life— of which I’m sometimes off-beat—
But the alone ones, moments, leave room for yourself.

And you come home with your ingredients,
and a lot less anger
And you see him, napping in the dust-glittery (sometimes rather messy) home you share
Yes this is life;

It should be a little slower.
with a few more of those alone moments
Where you can feel the beat
Of the music and your own heart a bit better .
And you can eat your spaghetti.
And your love can nap.

slowly
he plagued her thoughts less and less
the painful process
of recovery
of finding her breath again
from a love that made her feel less than she was
her thoughts of him
fewer and farther between with every sun
became muted
irrelevant to her life
sore still
and a little bit achy
but standing up
with shaky legs
and a healing heart
falling in love with herself
and her God
even more

On my knees
I worship thee
You whisper slow and sweetly
In summer dress
And I confess
My soul is yours completely
Flow and dance
Grin and glance
And kiss in fields of green’ry
Til evening comes
And softly hums
The music of your breathing

On my knees
I’m begging thee
To see me full, completely
All in all,
all the rest
And I confess
My soul slowly depleting
Stern our stance
Hard heart glance
And sighs of sorrow deeply
Til evening comes
And sadly hums
The heavy pain of hurting

I wish you knew
How much it hurts when you
Address me in such a casual hue

I choke and a writhe and I cry
There in my mind
But outside I’m doing just fine

I wish you missed my touch
Even a fraction as much
As I feel that you’re my crutch

I guess that I’ll have to learn
That it’s pointless for me to yearn
For someone I cannot earn

And I could go on how long who knows
About how very little care you’ve shown
And how very little it seems you’ve grown.

she walks with grace
and a deep, earned sense of place
she smiles
and as laughs tickle at her waist
others around can't help but follow in haste

she has no nickname,
no joke or snicker surrounding her frame
no clever breadcrumbs
to tell the story of how she became
she simply is, and exists as a flame

she has an air of peace,
and a soft, subtle feeling of ease
she opens her lips
and as she speaks
tears from his eyes begin their leaks.

The human experience:
Beautiful! Well...
Beautifully packaged and
processed into
unattainable story book ideas and
Impossible poetry and
Left with loose ends that
Feel broken and wrong and incomplete without
Any real feeling of closure or
Completeness leaving us with
Discontent about our reality chasing
A simplified and perfected ideal that’s been
Tweaked and changed to fit what
We think would be considered lovely but.
Really
We’re just reaching for disappointment.
We’re looking to be completed
And perfected
Putting heavy expectations on the phenomenon of
The human experience.

a musician
a symphony
he can feel it                 finger by finger.
when he plays it he is singing it inside his mind.
          he said
"There's a pretty good chance I'll never get anywhere."
he puzzles me. he seems to have forgotten already
that he ever was such a person that may have significance.
no concept of him as he was; valuable.
          Well,
just for fun I wrote about the details of him
quiet and humble and letting the music speak for him
though he thought any voice of his small
whether from his mouth or his instrument
but I could hear him just fine

solidarity of man

forces of will converging together
in awesome power loudly,
creating a ruckus and smashing the windows of
souls

solidarity of man

cheerful exclamations for
another's achievement
however so small yet
so largely celebrated in glee

solidarity of man

tears of camaraderie fall to our knees
raindrops mix with sunshine and God reveals promises
sometimes the world needs to crumble and crack
to reveal

the solidarity of man

the stars
otherworldly and untouchable to i
brought me to feel insignificant and far
from worthy enough to look at the sky
and yet
i feel also chosen by
those beautiful unknowns to me they lie
they evade my gaze
staying only peripherally mine
twinkling, flickering, reminiscent of a child
innocent, lovely, and wild
shadows of those jewels is all i see
of the distant stars avoiding me

I would be led to dwell too heavily on
elements of wisdom or anxiety in         a
thought.
                                            well aware of the
world's enormous fund off misery, yet even so it
looked as though the status quo

is                                to
              rid                         all the hard to
understand.

but we have a long way to travel before we approach that.

wouldn't you know it but I
oh I
a little girl wouldn't know it either would I?
no no but I think I feel it
or rather I feel my thinks
can't decipher any of it but a wink
and my thinks think
shouldn't I know it myself?
but nay I keep it all tucked on a very rather pretty little shelf
my thinks didn't label my feels so
im learning the things I didn't know I didn't know
a mystery
even to little me
so how should I be able to answer how do you be?
and I stand here on the edge or the brink
for I can hardly barely breathe as its all coming at me
give me just a moment
to breathe in my feels and my thinks
and perhaps the moment after the moment I'll be
just a little bit more free

miles and miles and miles
of blue ocean and all her secrets
places no one will see or touch
even her own inhabitants dare not reach her depths
many are too afraid to look

God only knows, only sees
God only knows how many of those secrets
are folded up in her waves

perhaps He has a name for each
perhaps they take up some space in His mind
perhaps God sits in heaven,
watching the tide roll in with us,
takes deep, salty breaths with us,
and full contented smiles.

waves crash, a hello
from the far-off reaches of the world
from those little unknown places
those terrible depths
just between the sea and God

The singing of their tunes
had the very accent of a peculiarly subtle and forbidden zest.
Women did a great deal of desirable ways to kick up dust.

Members of mischief,
In the business,
Just for mischief.

Enjoying a cigarette,
“Please,
Tell her I’m thought to be a
Bad Woman”
She used to smile to herself to think how much worse than that she really was.

Water washes over from my head and I let it in my mouth to fall down
And words wash down with them
Maybe
also down the drain
As these words taste little like the water that touched my tongue

My loving and sun-beaten father;
Calloused hands but the most tender arms.
I often felt those calluses and thought “how do you even get calluses like that?”
You love your family. And over 20, 30 years of loving your family, you get calluses like that.
I love those calloused hands.
Those of the man whom is maybe the only one I doubt never the love he has for me. And whose embrace I’ve yet to find a competitors hug beat,
That of my father; sun-beaten and callous-handed.
Yes, the man who taught me what love was.

Eyes were bright and strong,
a fire.
But those words,
they turn the sharpest wit a flicker.

You ever see much esteem in the world?
Here, at the height of the ornamented, luxurious actress,
representing the varied arts of impersonation.
Here, attention before the other side of the story.

Follow the symbolic whiskey whisper.
Gently evade the central thought of the world,
so
tragically human.

Silky whispers slip
across the soft hairs on my neck
So, almost too, warm and yet?
Goosebumps all over
And over and over again you say
“I love you so”
And I, we, sink down into something
So unsavory to speak of candidly
But I will and I wish
Sink into me more, press down and say
“I love you so” some more
Again and again and over
It builds and swells and breathes with us,
This feeling, this warmth
And it pours from my eyes
And you kiss me in a way that I never knew was real
Deeply, softly, firmly, kindly, dangerously
Divine contradictions that coexist
in a little two-step tango

“Love always” really means “love anyways”
To love always you have to love anyways.

Ugly and confusing and ragged and silly and stupid and irrational and infuriating
but

I love you anyways. And I will love you always.

Sometimes
the only way to describe the sky
is that it looks like a dream

Undress from your sundress
And let me sit in the warmth of you
Let the fabric fall with me
Let it and my hands grace your skin softly
And let us stay like this for hours

i love you, my dear, in ways without words
in ways without concepts and describable terms
it doesnt make sense, we've still been through hurts
but being without you, now that would be worse.

air out your grievances, hang them up to dry
but be careful to whom you do,
because a tenderhearted girl I knew
grew a shell, an exoskeleton of caution
to guard herself from heartache and exhaustion
the important things in life are painful to learn
and if it isn't important then what would we earn?
a life without depth, in cold two dimensional existence,
the hardest fight is with your own self-resistance

painting
there are so many different kinds and
so many different artists with respective training
let me tell the story of one
she liked to let go
she didn't like lines
the cloudiness of watercolor she found no woe
flowing with ease
the water went where it pleased
without tedious thought
it took the 'pain' out of painting
she was able to feel the art and the thoughts and the feelings
that art should inflict on a soul

When I think of love  
I think of the tiniest nothings of things that you
Will be or speak or think or do
And driving on Madison Avenue
With the moon in your eyes
And your hand on my thighs
And the sound of our safe and casual sighs
When I think of love
I blush at your perfect peculiarities
like when you grin and tickle my knees
Or grimace at my habit of drinking coffee
With one dimple on your cheek
My tickled knees go weak
Realizing love is such a casual mystique
When I think of love
I think of ours
How we share each others powers
And that I’d be content staring at you for hours
With the ups and downs
The dimpled smiles and rough-day frowns
Cause since you I’ve thought of how
I didn’t much think of love
Real love
before you were around

sweet i felt when i saw the lights
twinkling with feelings of love and romance
draped everywhere within my sight
i watched the people dance
evening set in and brighter the lights glow
beautiful all looked among the snow

winter is warm within my heart
the brick walk greeted me kindly
the whole place was a wonderful work of art
and it loved me unconfindly
the music played as i strolled along
unfamiliar and foreign but i felt that i belong

the lights shined as stars in the sky
twinkling soft and consistent and calm
they glowed so strongly yet so shy
they sang to me a song
they danced just as the people did
and from these lights reality hid

so when i think of calm and bliss
and my mind wanders away
i dream of scenes and places like this
and the smell of the warm cafe
tempted i am again for a dance
for the mood of the night that had me in a trance

you know it hurts,
{like gut-wrenching, ab-clenching, breath lynching hurt}
when you sit in the shower and silently sob.
tears melt with water
steam clouds your sight
gaze up, let it fill your nostrils
drown in water and your plight