Before you kiss someone for the first time,
Just wait.

Take a second to look at them.
They are so new and so unfamiliar.
Right now you don’t know how they taste,
How their hands will intertwine with yours,
How they’ll exhale after touching your bones.

You won’t see them like this ever again

Stare into their wanting -
the apprehension
budding inside their pupils -
they don’t know as well.
In their mind
you are uncharted territory as well.

Isn’t that special?

Keep it.
That’s how you’ll never lose them,
Or so I think.
Every so often after this moment,
look at them through these
soon to be ancient eyes.
Find this vision,
this exact dialect
of witness,
find these
pair of eyes

And don’t lose this wonder.
Don’t lose the spark.

For if you do,
The burns will leave you scared of the sun,
While the sunlight will still dance in their hair.

Even the universe is jealous of this moment, and will take this away from you in years to come,

Just know
If you are the forest fire
I will be the rainfall calming smoke scented winds.

Skin is delicate
But this story could be beautiful,
As we dive into the unknown.

- an excerpt from a book I’ll never have the courage to write

I know where this path leads.

a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn't there?
he came to hear the
music.

death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father's garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they thought were escape-
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his dank hole
nervous and exposed
the puff of body swelling
hanging there
not really quite knowing,
and then knowing-
something sending it down its string,
the wet web,
toward the weak shield of buzzing,
the pulsing;
a last desperate moving hair-leg
there against the glass
there alive in the sun,
spun in white;
and almost like love:
the closing over,
the first hushed spider-*******:
filling its sack
upon this thing that lived;
crouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
and my temples scream
and I hurl the broom against them:
the spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a ***** speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above his head
and looking
looking for the enemy
and somewhat valiant,
dying without apparent pain
simply crawling backward
piece by piece
leaving nothing there
until at last the red gut sack
splashes
its secrets,
and I run child-like
with God's anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime