In Florida sometimes it rains so hard
that you believe that it can't possibly stop,
that it will just rain and rain forever.

Sometimes I'd wake to a storm late at night,
and I'd sit out on the porch.

You could smell the lightning, and the coolness of the storm would
make your hair stand;
I'd feel so alive.

Some nights I'd go out, and my father
would be sitting on the porch already.
Lost in the storm
or maybe
called to it.
We wouldn't talk,
but we'd be lost together
in the rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder what of him
is left in me.
I am not sure
if I am more afraid of there being
very little
or of there being a great deal,
but when it rains
I think about him on that porch;

Some women belong to the Spring.
They're meant to bloom,
but they were never yours to keep.

She fell:
into my arms,
like raindrops
at my feet,
but no:
not the tiny type
that proceed the storm,
like the plump generous kind
that fall,
and let you know
that you're in the beginning and the middle of the deluge
half way in, and you can't go no farther -
type of rain.

Lighting up the night sky
of my life
with spiderwebs of purple lightning
she rolled like distant thunder,
while her waves of water
made everything brand new
again.

I met her in a cold cemetery
somewhere in the south-side of Chicago;
raindrops foreshadowing snowfall
fell delicately on her tanned face.

Her embrace warmed me throughout the winter,
and her laughter soothed my damaged mind.
I wanted to travel to Paris,
yet she so dearly longed for Indiana's fields.

I decided that I'd like to be a lion,
and she decided that she'd be a lion too.
Nights kept passing quickly, until they slowed.
Suddenly the weather was too cool for lions.

We parted upon the promises of Spring,
both of us agreeing to remain quite close friends.
Off she went to her muddy mid-western fields,
yet here I stayed longing for cold rains.

There's opportunity in the ashes.
Tell me; do you see it too?

Lead me away from this place,
and let us speak no more
of this failure
this disgrace.

Teach me how to feel
as I stand here cold -
my shoes soaked,
on a boulevard
where no one knows my name.

He sat watching as the love dripped out of her,
like broth dribbling off the spoon back into the bowl;
each drop of pho causing ripples of warmth.

He wished to plunge deep inside of her soul,
to penetrate her mind and pause briefly, but
long enough to see how much love remained.

He watched as her hands became a swarm of bees,
her brown eyes turning to fire as she spoke,
and in this moment she was still beautiful.

His heart writhed while slowly realizing that,
it doesn't matter how much you love someone.
Sometimes love just isn't nearly enough.

When all around you saw darkness,
you gazed at the stars.

Everyone wants to paint their pain,
but only you, Vincent,
channeled that awful torment
into beauty
immaculate and sublime;
only you, dear Vincent
saw the beauty in the shoes, the bedroom, the weeds, the washers,
only you saw the beauty when it wasn't pretty.

To suffer is human.
but
to find ecstasy in the ordinary
and transform the banal into the magical
is something only you could do,
my dearest Vincent.

Merci;

I picked my emotions
out of the night sky,
and dredged up my guilt
from the wine dark sea:
packed them into a suitcase
with socks,
and that old wool sweater.

I stepped off the plane
into the Miami swelter,
but for the first time
in to
a Miami
without you.

I watched the life fade out of you
like a tide slowly receding -
- inexorable, cold, without mercy.
I could sense you from afar
as your body fought a civil war
down in the depths
where it was too dark
too dark to see.
I am not sure if I want to say the bowels of hell
or just...
your bowels -
- I am not sure if there's a difference.

You waited there.
In a room filled with neon lighting
charts, beeping lights, and cords:
with nurses and strangers passing by
until life stole even you
from yourself.

"No!" - He protested
Yes, he had said that she was like lightning,
but he meant that she startled him
with her randomness
and thunder,
and not that she pulsated
writing a spiderweb
into the nights sky;
it was that she filled him with a certain
nervousness...
and no, that nervousness was not
like an electricity.

And while the argument continued
it was brought up that he had also compared her to a storm.
It wasn't because she climbed with a certain
inexorable quality
like the tides
or that she was the perfect mix
of calm pretense
and wuthering looks.

It was more because she reminded him of the rains
lightly dancing on his bedroom window
making him dream.

Love is tacky.
Love is cheap.
Love is scrolling through an endless amount of ****** online dating profiles
on a Saturday night.
Love is not subtle.
Love is two people bargaining,
lying to each other,
lying to themselves.
Love keeps track of every misstep
so as to hold it against their partner in an ongoing war of attrition
so that they get to pick what to watch on Net-Flix.
Love does not rejoice in itself,
but does so on Facebook,
so that you can rub it in the face of your ex,
and all those friends that just really want to watch you fail.
Love is cheap.
*** with a price tag marked to sell.
Love is dead.

Your love is addicting –
like…
******* in my beard
on a Tuesday night.

Teach me to see
as an infant:
I need everything to be
for the first time again.

I want to watch you bleed –
into the subtext and margins
of my notebook
so we can dispense with the periods.

Your sweat is bitter
like dreams deferred,
but I still long to lick
your mind and taste your voice.

Our humanity does not lie in our goodness,
but rather it exists within our flaws,
for it's our flaws that make us interesting,
and it was because of this that I found
my aunt to be the most interesting person in the world;
for she was flawed in the most exquisite ways.

She was nothing short of a legend in my family.
Her deeds were not spoken of in day-light,
but whispered about late evenings
amidst closely clustered kitchen tables.

I remember hearing lurid tales:
she's been married twenty times -
she's been arrested before -
she's knocked out a boy's front teeth.

I never knew if these tales were true or not,
and I hope to never find out either.

I'll believe them; I'll believe in HER -
as she believed in me before:
as she believed in love and excess.
We talked shortly before her death,
What good is a life without regrets?

Beholding you would make Venus blush in her garden,
madly jealous of the curves of your lips,
and there she would smolder
like some jealous rainbow
unable to be content in her own shimmering
because she still revolved around the sun,
and not the other way.  

I'd wait there -
under the moonlight
- among the fragrant petals
with the gurgling of some small fountain
somewhere off in the distance

She was the finest of vintages,
and of her love, I drank deeply-
-knowing that my drunkenness
would be worth any hangover,
for a sweeter wine
I have not tasted.

My foot sinks deeply into the snow.
The boots leave giant holes in the land,
while I follow the smaller fox prints.

Stumbling, for I have lost my way.
The sign for Bethlehem snow covered;
perhaps it is somewhere in east Vermont.

The trees are all barren from the cold.
The fox’s glare is often pitiless,
as pitiless as winters frozen touch.

Prophets and apostles migrate south now
along with the fowl of the air and Jews;
to where the signs are not snow covered.

New England longs for the warmth of spring,
but I pine for the deep Florida heat.
I want to watch the heron rise steeply.

Does the migrating duck truly know
what it is that he wants;
or is he caught up in peer pressure
when he conquers indecision,
and spreads his wings to fly
south?

Is it possible that as he soars,
like Icarus,
that he is accosted by doubt
while the late autumn sun
baptizes him?

And when he finally crashes down,
in some forgotten pond,
warmed by a tropical clime;
that he wonders what might have been,
and is overcome by regret?

The waves tossed about in her soul
while I drifted perilously in the deluge
all the while wondering what monsters swam below.

With thunder in her voice
and lightning in her eyes
I knew that the blood of the gods
still pumped through her veins,
but I was still just a man adrift.

I longed to calm her tempest,
but I wanted it to rage just as bad.
Her lips were salty and solid,
and gave no hint of the hurricane within.

She was a storm destined to be wild.

Is your heart still wild;
I wonder,
as fog silently lifts off the Potomac.
I am not sure when
the rains started,
but the noise
falls into the fog.

The district seems sleepy,
and I am tired too.

When is it time?
When did the food lose it's taste?
When did adventure
get replaced by routine?

She had lips
that whispered
the possibility
of forever,
and eyes
that looked
like home.

She tossed the kindling:
twigs, dried leaves, and an old piece
of tattered fabric,
at the base of the bridge.

The wind whipped her lace dress,
as lightning flashed,
and she gave a secretive grin
before the thunder raged at the night.

She hummed something;
not quite a song,
but not not a song either
while she longed to laugh
like the people in a painting
or cry like a widow on the news.

The flames danced gracefully
under the angry sky,
and she danced too;
small feral motions,
and twirls,
as the structure smoked,
and more dancing,
always dancing...
until the lovely ruins smoldered,
and all that she was left with
was a faded memory
of what the smoke
must have smelled like.

It was nights like these:
where the summer chill swept off the lake,
and brought me to the low crackling fire
in the stone den,
competing tastes of
pond **** and pink champagne,
when I wondered
if her mind was more beautiful than her body.
When I'd contemplate the fire in her eyes
as they lit up
like an army of lightning bugs
in a desolate field at dusk
as a storm swept in,
I'd wonder at the friction moving her heart.

She decorated her soul with dreams:
the kind that can't be stolen,
not even by the inexorable march of age
which eventually robs you of yourself.

Her love was a massacre;
savaging everything in it's path,
but with a beauty that you forgave her
before she apologized.

Her eyes were lilly pads,
and her voice
was the crunch of snow underfoot,
and while you couldn't believe that she could be hurt
you knew from the moment you met her
that you'd be her unneeded Don Quixote

Sometimes I imagine myself
strolling through a museum
of my love life.

My soles click on the cold stone
and it reverberates
through the grand halls.

My relationships are there.
Stuffed to mimic real life,
and safely behind glass.

The idea is that I can study them.
Learn from them
in a detached kind of way.

But I never do.
I stroll, and I pause, and I admire,
but I never learn.

We're breaking ground
on a new annex
next month.

I drank you deeply at dusk,
and that,
is where I'll wait-
drunk on your magic
grasping at your ether.

So mud splattered
His armor tattered
In darkness and in shadow
Had journeyed a bit
The same old ****
In search of a Cadillac Eldorado

His beard long
This knight so wrong
His heart became a shadow
Closed his eyes
Still heard the cries
But not of a Cadillac Eldorado

And as his morals
Lost their quarrels
He came upon the wandering shadow
“Shadow” he croaks
the one with the spokes
the beautiful Cadillac Eldorado

Over the ghettos
Of Pompano
Into the field of the shadow
Ride, boldly ride
The shade replied
If you want a Cadillac Eldorado

I remember the summer
that my parents crumbled.
The anger
etched upon my fathers brow;
the shame
on the end of my mothers
quick clipped sentences.

It was two years
before the affair came to light,
but the August sun blazed
never the less

I haunted the halls after dark
quietly creeping along the walls
silent specter
adjusting the thermostat
as low as it could go.

I didn’t know what,
yet I knew;
it was all wrong.
Mother knew it too,
and father just waited.
Waited for it to catch up.
Waiting as the tired marsh hare waits,
knowing that the alligator is near,
yet too tired.
Too tired to fight the inexorable.

My family grew cold,
and all the while
the night sweltered
leaving the Spanish tiles sweating
as the faithful air conditioner
chugged on.

She tossed the kindling
twigs, dried leaves, and an old piece
of tattered fabric,
at the base of the sturdy bridge.

The wind whipped her white lace dress,
and lightning flashed
as she smiled a secretive grin
before the thunder kicked at the night.

The flames danced with so much grace
under the angry sky,
and she danced with them;
small feral motions and twirls,
as the structure smoked,
and more dancing
always dancing...
until the lovely ruins smoldered
and all that she was left with
was a faded memory
of what the smoke
must have smelled like.

I watch you rise
out of the foggy banks
of Lake Michigan;
I can see the love
running right
out of you.

It's late winter now,
and the sun isn't shining,
but soon...  

You returned the diamonds;
they weren't precious
at all,
just shards of glass,

This is me at 11.
Scared.
Alone.

The ice is breaking.
I caught a fish yesterday...
Well, almost;
she slipped through my hands.

This is me at 34.
I can still see that boy
or...
at least the idea of him
he's hidden in the fog.

I keep telling myself to not look back in anger,
but I wonder what I'd even look back to.
How much of you is left;
or has your Chicago been built over by a more Chicago?

Sometimes you can't see the stars
because the constellations are in the way
in the way that only your love
can be more you than you.

Some day that tea cup
will put itself back together
and it will all start to collapse;
hold me closely then?

She had a beauty that boomed like thunder,
distant on the newscast- while some family
stood by the wreckage of their lives after
the storm (somewhere in Oklahoma) and,
it made you want to cry, like a newly made
widow, who’s story would follow at the top
of the hour: people described her with -

vibes a lot, but nothing vibrated, it was more
like an explosion, but not like a backpack in
Gaza, more like the Fourth of July, in Ohio.

It was hard to see her by looking directly:
you had to find her in angles and moonlight,
and even then you weren’t sure in the same
way that sometimes you can’t see the stars
because the constellations get in the way.
She made me think of Miami, but I couldn’t
say if it was more Miami than Miami, or just
what was left …

…of imperfect pictures painted by a sculptor
that wasn’t always paying attention at the
right time.

It was early July when I kissed my father Daedalus goodbye.

She burned so extravagantly under the stars.

I soared through soggy summer air.

All the while the love in her faded.

My fall into autumn was triumphant.

Dark notes of cinnamon,
and smoke
from your lip gloss
radiate off my tongue,
piercing the night.

I close my eyes
inhaling deeply,
to hold the specter of the scent
closer.

I yearn to breathe in your body,
but you had already
slipped through my grasp
fading like fog
softly into the moonlight.

We reposed in the long grass
sweating,
as the scent of gunpowder
lingered in the air.

I rubbed my sore shoulder,
and sipped sweet bourbon
while we wondered after
the ghosts of deer.

Walking back to the road,
there were tourists wanting to
have their picture taken
in front of a sign that reads
"Matanzas Bay Next Exit."

They look happy in their
bright polyester shirts,
and sunglasses

“Do they know that Matanzas means massacre?”
Sheeeeet.  That what that means?

An armadillo lays dead by the truck.

You wanna eat it?
“How long do you think it’s been there?”
Wuddn’t there when we parked.
“Can’t we shoot a live one?”
Shoot the dead one if it makes you happy,
But lets eat him.

I held you in my arms
whilst we writhed
caught in the embrace
of love, of love making
the makings of love?

We waited as long as…
We could to leave the house.
Your suitcase pink and heavy.

We stood outside the bus station
silently holding each other
not knowing that we would
never again be in one another’s
arms, embrace, love.
That our time had passed
that WE had died.

I watched your bus drive away
whilst the snows were melting
and I longed to melt too.
To melt into the porous earth.
To melt into you.
A you, that was already gone.
Gone forever.
Yet still I longed

It was there that we sat as summer simmered;
Autumn, a shadow off in the distance.
I slowly nibbled after a bitter quince,
as she sat in the shade softly,
a wicked grin upon voluptuous lips.

“Can you share it with me?”
What is there to share with anyone?
“The reason for your smile.”
But the smile is already shared.
“I want to know anyway.”
I smile because I hate him.
“You should smile for love.”
They are the same currency really.
“How exactly do you mean?”
The other side of the same coin.

The Brazilian sands became too hot,
and we strayed into the town for dinner.
Bosa-nova narrated our meal,
yet we departed earlier than expected,
our love turned suddenly brutal.

I sat alone in the orchard as fall lurked.
In the vagueness of twilight I saw.
I saw her feral smile while she sambaed.
I remembered her untamed laugh.
I shed a tear for her lost artistry.

I met a girl once,
from some distant
antique land,
and she told me
that sometimes
Chicago winters burn brightly.

Her silent snows fell softly
on my sandy shores,
and her skies saw hues
that she hadn't known.

I wanted so badly
to take her hand,
but you can't really care for anyone...
until you've lost them.

I buzzed around her heart
for she had honey in her core
but it wasn't ready,
and when we said goodbye
I wondered if our paths would diverge
once more.

You were a summer snow,
unexpected and electric.
You warmed me
in the depths of winter,
so when you fell
into the ether
no bitterness resounded.

Should you chance
upon these stony shores again
you’d find me on the wuthered
cliffs
where I wait for thee.

You saw my slumbering
washed out in the rains
wisps of hope veiled
dreams I couldn't remember

And I saw you too then
alone amongst the wreckage
the embers still smoldering
but with light in your eyes

Give me your hand now
let us turn south from this place
with warmth in your lungs

the thunder storm is breaking
and it doesn't matter anymore
that no one here knows my name

Dusk brought in the tides.
Small waves broke upon the shore
in muted hues of blue and grey,
as night began to gather in her eyes.

Yet even in the darkness light remained.
The wine stained her lips a dark crimson,
but when she smiled
everything seemed beautiful.

The air seemed to change with her smile.
Her facade forever locked in sfumato,
ethereal and lovely;
daring me to dream, and oh
what dreams may come,
but why dream
when she had stars in her eyes.

To chase the sun through the desert
one must follow the wild horses,
but the dust gets in your eyes.

It's hard to truly see that land;
the barren plains are the other -
they are not the absence of life.

I thought it easier to find-
her in the city amongst
the soulless testimony there.

One could see her in the darkness,
her love gentle like a lone doe
in the vagueness of the morning.

Her name boomed wise like thunder
reverberating sublimely
all around the rain scent lingered.

And it was in April,
that she first arrived
with the bloom of flowers, and the scent of rain.

I was never sure from whence she came;
some high rise, or maybe from Spring herself,
but I knew,
from the first moment she grasped my hand
that she was so many things that I didn't realize
my soul thirsted for.

I knew then, that she would be worth the
heart break,
and that in those shattered moments
I would love her still.

We silently strode
the streets of Babylon;
Revolution in the air,
but my eyes were shut.

It was late autumn then;
the nights turned cold.
It felt like yesterday
had been the equinox.

The walls were crumbling,
but I was unable
to think for the dogs –
forever babbling.


I grasped your hand,
and you squeezed back,
but we already knew
our garden had withered.

She awoke in the clouds
bright, light, and ethereal.
her cheeks the color of...

The April breaking dawn -

She moved in beauty,
like darkness within a shadow.
Pinkish skin like that of a new born,
and hair kissed by fire.

The corridor came crashing down
as I longed for her being
while trembling at the hint of her oblivion,
slowly permeating like winter's cold.
The clouds gathered, and Vesuvius rumbled
in the distance.

I crept up on her
in the vague moonlight,
and she whispered;
“I am Vishnu, destroyer of worlds.”
Still... I longed.

I thought I knew loneliness,
but that morning
when I discovered
that your toothbrush
had disapeered
was truly
the first time that I had met her