Blue clouds and soft notes and fingers down my spine,
The wood grain looks like thick rain and your taste is fine (so fine.)
Let the wind blow wherever I go, I’ll lead you where it’s safe.
On the long grass, off the stone path, we will wander until it’s late.
You will hold me up, by the bull’s horns, by the headstrong heat in me,
I will push back, until you realize I am trying to make you make me bleed.
Ghosts will skip out from the closet, try to play with you and me.
Skeletons will rise out their graves, try to trick you so you leave.
I am so afraid of you but if you leave, I will cry (cry, cry, cry.)
But if you walk out, I will lose it, I’ll join those skeletons and die.
Hold my gold ring, while I go sing, kiss the doctor under your nose.
Don’t get mad, dear, this is poetry, you’ll know we’re real when it’s prose.
I saw an alien in my bed once, he whispered the secret of life.
He told me life is but a chess game and love is but a knife.

You were born
Inside the old letters
I wrote when I was nine.
I dreamed of you slowly,
Pushing patience as you
Took your time.
You were warm,
Lying still and quiet,
Beneath my lonely mind.
I waited for your sweet eyes,
Looking past others as I
Waited in line.
You woke up
In my heartbeat,
When you held me that first time.
You were gracious,
So darling and spacious,
And I spread out this soul of mine.
You burst open
In my bloodstream,
When your skin melted into mine.
You were nesting and hiving,
Became scarred handwriting,
Hot to the touch on each freckle.
You fell asleep,
Stuck in a bad dream,
Where the real you walked away.
You were flailing and diving,
So unsure and crying,
And running away from me.
You are here,
You will always be here,
Stuck hopelessly in my heart.
You keep leaving and coming,
And my heart is always drumming,
I will always be humming for you.

Undeniable draw with a
taste for the taboo,
my world is sparkling
all over, all over.
And he is all over me,
warm weight and bad jokes
and I just can't stop laughing.
The world is my oyster
but sometimes I clam up,
so afraid of how strong
all my emotions are.
But I'm not scared long,
or I'm scared and I'm smiling,
because it feels so good to
look into his eyes.
I'll wade in the waters
in a big pink pool tube
laughing at the riptide as
I'm carried away, I'm carried away,
I'm always getting carried away.
Dip my toes in the gold for a moment,
leaving twenty little prints in
the wake of my day.

I cannot stand to feel because my ocean heart suddenly comes to life beneath the full moon of someone to love. My blood changes, my skin changes, my life becomes a series of goosebumps and the swallowing back of the urge to cry. Alone, I am a strong wall whom very few can climb; but those who make it within my fort make me paranoid my stones are crumbling to pieces. I love to fall in love with every waking moment of someone’s existence, and to know what it is like to touch God’s face because it’s when I’m touching his. But I hate the monster it wakes within me, one scarred and scared that this one, too, will climb in only to walk away, leaving only ruins of what once stood so proud. This time, I am different; my whole fell apart, leaving me to resurrect the foundations and start all over. I have built myself back up, growing towards sunlight like a plant, my pride growing brick by brick, so sure I was leaving the beasts behind. But a higher wall, rather than making me stronger, has left me looking down at a much larger possible fall from grace. I’m so aware of my own ridiculousness that my shortness of breath feels like I’m drowning in frivolity, and when I step outside of myself and look back in, I know I am merely an old man in a bomb shelter waiting for a disaster that may never come. But it all feels so real when I am with him, that I feel stuck in this what-if nightmare fantasy when I am not. It’s been so short a time, I can hardly believe how wrapped up I am in my own thoughts, how much my fingers bled as I wrote this, how hard I had to try to remember who I was just a few days ago. I am a strong wall, but I am scared shitless.

Hungry, reckless, nasty,
Bursting, burning, babbling,
The youthful heart beats on and beats itself up
For the sake of loving others
And the selfish joy that hurts so good.
So bruise me, cut me, slice me open,
Gut-wrenching love of twenty-something’s,
That breaks glass ceilings and my own heart.
I will gladly swallow all the scars your teeth
Leave behind upon my greatest instrument.
This is merely the overture, but it feels
Like we are toiling in the crescendo;
With heavy breathing and a thirst for life,
My heart, the drummer, sets the rhythm
For everything alive in me.