I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

You tell me it's all good.
I love you and that's good.
We're friends.
You love me and that's good.
We're friends.

He treats you badly.
But Jesus Christ, so do I.
I'm writing poetry about you and I feel guilty.

You have a bad habit of dating guys who treat you bad.
I could go down the list and can do it well.
I've treated you with nothing but love.

You said to me that I tell you you're pretty more than he does.
That he never does.
And I rarely do.

He's a nice guy and I like him.
But where is he going?
But where am I going?

I'm sorry but I'm not sorry.
Am I violating some kind of friendship barrier by speaking my mind?
Am I breaking some unwritten rule?

Well I hope not.
I'd hate to lose you.
After all, you're all I got.
*And I love you and it's all good

It's all around me
Streaming from the hills
Everyone feels it
Hearts lift, spirits rise
Souls turn toward the light
Behind the warmth and the life
Returning to the forest
As the seasons wax and wane
And ancient trails are traveled again

It's all around me
As each heart touches  and reaches out
With smiles and thoughts and acts of kindness
Everyone feels it
As spirits soar to the music
And the beat and laughter echoes
Through the room
With children dancing
As the party ebbs and flows

It's all around me
As words of love resonate again and again
Weaving in and out of my day
From a  heart so tender
Precious crystal, infinite in beauty
And tears of joy and happiness transform me
As I bathe in the warmth
Of sacred human love

It's all around me
I am surrounded
By blessings wished on me in love
And my heart is full, at peace and calm
Because I realize
This is the love of God
That envelops me

How do you spit acid and warp the way
Perception soaks up reality
And then stroll up like you have curls
And didn’t steal that poor kids candy?
Demanding I start handling
All the cracks in your porcelain heart?
Thinking you can catch me
And make me who I was before
You tore my wings off and broke
Every promise you ever made.
Think you could have made me stay
In the pouring rain, endure the dark.
But the things you said and the way you say
Makes people think differently, when
It just don’t quite line up.
It kills me , draws on my old pains
And feels strange to turn you down.
But I can’t stick around and listen to your *******.
It’s you….
Or me…
And I have friends who’ll miss me.
And you make me lose hope in humanity,
Oh yeah and grip on my sanity.
Find someone else to blink your
Big
Blue
Eyes at.

Zero is not an absolute.
I have seen worlds open inside her circular form--
the expansion and contraction of edges, curved
longings curbed: suppressed then exposed--
everything we've wished for in our beds.

Zero has infinite chance--
ringed and rung out-- sung and restrung
her points connected positive and negative glued and preserved
presorted for our convenience.

There is nothing convenient in the sputter of our silences
we spit and bite, tender nothing
solicitous starvation.
Our sympathetic matter of course.

Zero is not nothing.
She's bigger than comprehension--
compensation
and competition
Zero teaches us:
What alone could be
If we alone, weren't one.

I glimpse her profile
Off the glare
Of the overhead
Transparent

Cloaked by lank,  
Swinging hair

Eyes curtained
And a negative space of
Existence
Round her chair.

Forgotten  
Neglected
By the rowdy, stinging noise
Peers whose vibrant adolescent mouths blare
Out one-note identities

She is there and

Then she’s gone

And my mind
Disconnects
Mid-lecture

Squinting into the shadowed corner  
Looking for my grade-8 self.