I like your handwriting
and particularly the hand
attached to it;
swooping and curving
delicate as a fingerprint.
Pen touches paper,
the sweat droplet escaping,
accidental wrinkles
and coffee stains
intimate as
meanings between lines.
I imagine you
concentrating deeply
and I see from afar
this blissfulness
and capture it
in my mind
until you,
smudging ink
along your brow,
seal and stamp
the words that
no longer belong
to you
alone.

Sun drunk on early Spring,
Pulsing veins of years of light;
Warm skin, damp grass Earth;
Softest blue and still wind;
If you listen close, listen far,
Packs of birds make flights
In figure eights around the trees.
Splash of a landing, calm and smooth,
Upon the water, beyond the sand.
Endless day of sky and sky and sky.
Time upon time upon time
Cannot find us here, in our
Secret place, here with all the world,
With us and for us, only.
The stop-motion set unwinds,
Fades out to unnumbered days
When hours had no meaning;
Timeless time and ageless age.
The gnat in our minds reminds:
You will have to return;
The buzz of reason.
Not yet, not here,
In this infinite pause of life.
The sight, the touch, the sound.
The premonition of rain
Draws us back to the indoor glow
Of glazed fog window panes.
Two depressions on the ground
Beneath the twilit atmosphere
Signifying us.

Wanted: v.; to desire, to lack

I wanted you to be the stars to my sky --
I would have let you form
galaxies and constellations
to the edge of infinity,
in whatever shapes you pleased.
I wanted you to be the pen,
while I, the paper,
let you write across me,
telling me your story,
blending it with mine.
You were the avalanche
to my echoing heartbeats:
unstable, unstoppable,
a snowflake turned by rage
into a force incomparable.
You were the thunder
to my summer storm:
inconstant, intemperate,
a distant reminder
of things worse to come.

I wanted you to be a sonnet,
but instead you were an elegy
for a love unrequited.

And I would hold your hand,
but I can grasp a pen;
and it makes me free to know
that unlike you
the pen
will not
let go.

Sometimes interpreting the look on your face
is like peering through a fogged-up window pane --
your eyes illegible; a million unknown signs.
Your eyes appear as shadowy figures pacing aimlessly
in the space between here and there,
making their hurried way to the next destination.
So near and yet so distant;
your words, blurred and indecipherable
leave things unsaid out in the rain
until meaning gets smudged away.
By the time I reach Dormont Junction,
I have just enough time
to pack up my belongings
and take a last glance -- a last guess --
before heading out to face the cold open,
a burst of wind full of shock and defiance.

The fallen pollen is reclaiming the oxygen,
Suffocating the rain until its soggy tendrils
Devour the world's sickness and plague.
Gunshots pellet the windows,
Booms of the ostentatious cannons
And blinding flashes of electric bombs.
Screaming birds; tumultuous ponds!
Overflowing and impenetrable.
The aggrandizing mushroom cloud
Envelops the sky into opaque nothingness.
With a bang not a whimper
The unending symphony
Self-destructs
Into clamorous silence.
Cries of the vulnerable innocents
Brought into the season of life,
Full of the absence of color
In chill, white hospital rooms
Where even the purest souls
Can sense the lies they are being told.
Oh nameless sadness, oh forgotten song,
Oh unspoken elegy
To the hidden
Stigma.

It is an acquaintance with space --
The placement of surroundings
In relation to yourself.
Wooden floor; feet upon the floor;
Exactly forty-three steps
To your bedroom door, no more.
Reliable inherence in presence;
Learning your every last line.
The distinctions that separate
Fade, melt away -- and what remains:
Limbs intertwined; hands which align
Perfectly with mine.
There is a certain comfort,
Felt yet undefined:
Breath on skin; indistinguishable
Where you stop and I begin
In our non-empty silence.
When the lights go off,
There is unquestioned reassurance --
A sense of home in knowing
That even when blanketed in blackest night,
I know where to find your lips
In the dark.

it was like walking outside the day after a windstorm.
The chill remained, but no remnant,
no sign showed where you wandered.
What you left behind offered the only reminder:
scattered leaves, road signs askew,
an overturned chair.
When you were here your presence was a feeling,
a touch against the skin, a stroke of hair, a breeze
intangible to grasp, insubstantial as an unasked question.  
Not wishing to go off-kilter
I altered my balance, strode forward against
the current, brushed the hair
away from my eyes.  And now –  
the emptiness is non-empty.
The absence recalls
what was once there.
The space between cause and effect
was only a pause.

I asked a woman for directions;
she said, go down Forbes Avenue
and turn left where the 7-Eleven
used to be.