Yesterday I was thinking about you
& it terrified me that I could no longer
Remember what you looked like,
Or who you even were
Before cancer started to erode
All of your loveliness
I knew you didn’t want me to
Remember how you looked without hair
Or how your body became so weak
So I searched the depths of my mind
To find old memories of you
I can remember you coming to
My birthday parties and music recitals
But honestly I couldn’t remember
What you looked like then
And as my heart was breaking
That I had lost all of you
A flicker of a moment flashed in my mind
There you were sitting
At your dining room table
With your auburn curls and
Right before you took a sip
Of your diet Pepsi
You smiled
Then, along with the fleeting moment
You were gone
I wanted to cry
I had remembered you,
The real you

To stand in balance and connection
With the Earth
To stand on one's one
Without depending on anything
Not leaning on a wall for a breakthrough

To breathe on one's own
To breathe fully
Lungs
Blossoming and shriveling
Without the intake of
Toxic fumes
Or liquid rage
Not leaning on a vessel for a
Breakthrough
Attached to now
Love without borders
To be here and smile
Love outside conditions
Or held in the claws
Of expectations
to be here without an excuse
Or a divided idea to fall into

Even if this life
Just spins lives upside down
Simply because it can
Even if after everything
The world has evolved
To explodes in the Sun
Even if life doesn't have
A greater meaning than this
Moment
Even if our legacies
And our pain
Never mattered
Even if we die
And meet death
With blackness
And indifferent regeneration
One day our story will be
Forgotten
And we will never truly know
All the small details
That brought our atoms together

All of our ancestors within us
Encouraging us to stand
And breathe on our own
The animal kingdom
IS
And does not ask questions
All we have to do is look up
To know where it all began
The moon has all the answers
The stars we are made of
Will us to shine
Without illusory fuel
We are stronger than mental reasons
Subject to change at the blink
Of perception
We do not have to give
Our power away
We do not need motivation
To create
We are and it is a miracle
Enjoy the phenomena
That is the all
Expanding evermore
Towards infinity
This is where Existentialism  
Meets Spirituality

You are nowhere to be found
By my side, sweetly,
Perhaps, just for one day,
One night, and one
Dream.

One sweet gesture not for me
Was like a time stopped forever.
One breath- harder than the last.
And they say that jealousy
Is also sweet. I wonder why.

My travel is long and hard,
That even the beauty
Of a female passenger, across,
Feet in front of feet, eyes to sleepy
Eyes, did not bother me, as much
As your giggle bothers me,
Sweetly.

Bread does not nourish me.
My mind has lost its old self
From having thought at times,
I have not eaten with you always.
So what would it be like, as
Your head tilts from there, to here,
To this sad shoulder? What would it
Be like to hold your hand, or
The other, sweetly?
I have hungered for days, beloved.
I like what I do not have.

I have felt the December breeze
Lean unto me, and have not felt your
Arms oftentimes, nor the touch of finger.
I just wish my memories
Has flesh enough, that your forgetting
Has embrace enough, so that
Night by night, I won’t have to dream
Of kiss, kiss, kissing you to sleep,
Over and over.

And yet you will ask,
If I can taste
The littlest of your kiss,
But I'd say yes,
Sweetly.

© 2014 J.S.P.

It’s funny
It’s strange
What things you remember
And what you don’t

If you asked me what I said to my aunt
When my grandfather died
That had upset her so much
Four years ago, I wouldn’t know what to tell you

But I’d know I felt guilty
It was probably something
About how we all knew she was playing it up
For attention

Which she was, but I still shouldn’t have said
What I did

If you asked me for a specific memory
From when I was four

I’d tell you about how
A dog bite me
And I had to get 13 stitches
And how my mom bought me soda after
Which was such a treat
Because I did such a good job sitting still
So they could sew up the wound

I’d even tell you that I bit first,
Because my grandfather thought
I’d understand his sarcasm
When he asked
“What do dogs taste like?”

(Hint: I didn’t understand,
Not at all)

It’s funny how
I can remember the time when I was 6
And I believed full heartedly in demons
And my mom came home late
So I momentarily believed
A demon had replaced her
(Thankfully, I quickly got over that delusion)

It’s funny how
I can remember making my cousin cry
When I was 14
And she was 7
By locking her in the bathroom
With the lights off
As I shouted
“****** Mary, ****** Mary, ****** Mary!”
Just to freak her out

But I can’t remember why I did
The things I have
I just remember the guilt

The guilt when I finally realized I could have
Seriously hurt the dog
And that she had been abused previously

The guilt of accusing my aunt

The waves of guilt
Crashing against me
When my cousin started sobbing

The relief of never telling mom
That I once thought a demon had
Replaced her

It seems
All I can remember about life
Are my regrets

In this world
starry eyed, we bloom
petals silk your lips, sing
sweet violet songs to me
a drifting scented dream
blue sea of you and me

I now dream of just a kiss on the lips
But the real question is
*would anyone even want to kiss me?