I want to lay blankets over your head,
Hold a flashlight while you read my palm, my wrist my elbowmybreasts
I want to pay homage to your chest and
It's many rhythms, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4
Whatever, I don't know anything about timing,
Or I would have met you 6 years ago,
Before she broke your heart so that by now perhaps it may have grown
The size of this room we share
Instead, for now I'll hear you out in whispers

and in quiet
     morning conversations

new day,
old men and

every hour
retains their listless exhaustion;
half-hearts beat in their chests.


"The sky is bright today," I say, making
small talk.

"Don't worry, " he says through a concrete smile,
"we're tinting the windows tomorrow"

dressed in shadowed blues,
ashed hues


you sigh --little whisper of wind from your
caves and you think it is
the deepest your chest
will ever sink

don't know how you sit,     curved in
with that            !sky overhead

like children in church
you make me feel the dangers of
a simple whisper,     heads turn
slow burn

feel it hot on skin, deepening as the stare sets   in

haze    lifted,

lipped oh's, pink
hope and
shiver-syllables,
gone.

I wish sometimes
and sometimes I
forget I have the ability to
wish.

I hope sometimes and
sometimes the idea gets caught
on the way up my
spine

I can re-focus my eyes a million times
and still see only the smile that spreads like butter on hot
toast

you seem a combination of
all the love poems I've ever written      the various parts
of those I have loved, and the parts which
I have not

and you are in every morning, every morning
you have in you; the only reason        for which  
                                                         ­             I wake

I'll take your breath in
my lungs,      have it ready for la petite mort

your many
little
deaths

exhale &giv;; you
la vie     again,