Autumn is just around the corner
quite a lot of rain
Some flowers starting to die back
Birds seem quieter now
The breeding season is over

For my best friend, Naomi

like yellow flowers
on faded dreams
you came to me
gently,
with the soothing voice
of a sweaty spring
thank you, old friend
for being able to be
dark enough to see
the hidden light
in me

i will not go into the times we shared
asphyxia and summer air
juxtaposed to form
an inseparable pair

who am I, old friend
when the ship´s horn blares
if you made me who I am
(if you made me scarce)

like yellow flowers
on faded dreams
you left me
softly, without
any warning of
the lack of color
(there would be)
without your splendor

I like using fire as an analogy, a metaphor, the punchline for most of my poetry

I often describe the heart as if it were a hearth, while its beats were the heat it radiated

I see it—sometimes a roaring flame, often times a steady bonfire, other times a dying match.

It could scorch you if you aren't careful, but it also provides you warmth and light. A sort of clarity. Comfort.

It allows some of the toughest things on Earth to become malleable and mold itself into something new

It turns the bitter into sweet, the biting cold to teeth-sinking warm, the tasteless into delicious

It allows the spirit to soar with columns of smoke to the heavens while the body becomes fertilizer for daisies

It takes beauty, and burns it black and ash to the point of no recognition

Fire is so precious, and dangerous, and essential, and beautiful, and ugly—just like this hearth of a heart

Tended and regulated well, it's the greatest discovery of mankind

Allowed to burn out quick, or spread out of control, then it's the accident that burned down London in 1666

I believe I should end this by saying: find someone who will tend to your hearth as if it were their last dying light, instead of a person who would simply roast marshmallows with forest fires

when i was eight

my mother and i
left my ****** father
after our bar play date
and here i am now

reliving their mistakes.
i wonder if they felt the same way?

i had a boy
who i had dreamt about,
who melted away my fears
and showed me how to be devout,
but i left him,
my willing victim,
for a man who breathed my name
and believed me to be the same age
as his brother,

his juvenile brother;
and he thought it was quite alright
to sneak a peek upside
my pleated skirt

with his camcorder
and sell what he had found to his friends.
boy, that's tough.
what i once thought was love
became a funhouse maze of
broken trust and confusion
mixed in with potent smoke

and i at seventeen became the underage joke
that he sat and laughed at
while i grasped at the ledge,
tried to pull myself up,
and the boy i had loved
heard about my new crowd
and left off to college without a single sound.

he wouldn't have me
and neither would the man
who choked me out with his blood stained hand.
now i lie in his bed and cry
for i have lost everything i had
all because a blue eyed boy
promised me everything he had

and i believed him.

Her thoughts and I,
we stay awake
waiting for someone,
hoping for somethings
for the heart in pain
needs no tending
just a pinch of the divine
and that silver lining.

I think of the moments
we gently stole
from the curious eyes
of tired souls
our driving the distance
to escape our own
and finding the universe
in our palms, unfold.

There in the coffee shop
she stares at me
from the helpless tea bag
in scalding water.
In the bottle she would get
to quench her thirst
I find her asking if
my need's greater than hers.

The empty seat of car,
in front
is taken in her absence
by her memories warm
The gear shaft
without our fingers twined
is stripped bare
of our naked thoughts

The rains when they come,
they flood my heart
for a stormy noon
is still parked within
when the highway was lost
behind a sheet of rain
and in lights all turned on,
our tongues were mating.

Her breath is all over
this gluttony of a glass
half filled with wine,
half consumed by need
Now, the dam opens,
blood rising to the lips
flooding me with her thoughts
she can never read...

I don't know if I ever want to have my poems
immortalized in a book, to sit on some shelf untouched
a reminder printed on blank pages; my love, and my pain
organized into pretty poetic arrangements for other's viewing pleasure
for strangers to know me that intimately on a level I barely understand
I can't comprehend--

my love, and my pain, indeed
the love I have is beautiful, and worth sharing with the world
but I dont know if I could immortalize the pain it has caused me to love so throughly
so completely have I given myself over to everything
followed the winding paths through heartache and back;
I would much rather forget them here, forget the past