I fear:

I. the end of days
like some irreverent foot that with one mismotion
destroys an anthill,
and so the beauty of this world and
the beauty of you will be
lost
confined to a memory rife with inconsistency

II. that the tiny spark of hope
of faith
of desire to grow will
sputter in my palms
despite my cupping hands against the wind
and I will sink below the depths I am

III. that when I bare my soul, I expose my mind
and the utter nakedness of my intentions come to light and
I will be
known

IV. death and its cousin omniscience:
do those who loved me see me now?
Will I watch you love another when I leave?

V. knowledge, for knowing the truth invalidates inaction

VI. ascension, for I am unworthy on my own to rise, and
who will catch me in my meteoric fall?

VII. that we are all but endless and
eternity whispers to us in our
mortal state
reminding us in echoes that our heartbeats are merely
countdowns.

Groan again your siren song--oh!--it comes in broken weakened
waves.
Once you licked my neck like
long-departed loves, now you sell yourself to other
pity-ridden men.
I still yearn for glimpses
glimmers
anything.
Squinting at the aging sun I
strain my eyes to catch the stars
masked by pale blues, smoggy greys
winter rains, blinding rays--but
won't you wish your heart upon me?
Won't you trace my jawline with your lips? Your
delicate fingers, sultry eyes--
remember me.
Make me feel pitiful again.

He strides like stepping over
shattered glass his
twig legs make two tiny wakes and he
finds his spot outside the eddies
in the slightest sunbeam
beneath the willow where he
shudders his beak and blinks
blinks
slowly
blinks
until his eyelids no longer lift
and deep within his secret place
he finally withdraws.

And today,
the west end is on fire
again like clockwork and I
pray for devastation--
for once it's all reduced to ash
the world may never
burn again.

Imagine yourself
a linear expression of experience,
a long strip of film like
the kind in old projectors with the
sepiatic sputters and flickers--
yes! Imagine yourself a strip of film but
rolled up messily like
the earbuds in your pocket or
folding fitted bedsheets.
You are a movie and the filmstrip endpiece lies at your feet,
you are knots and coils and tangles and
if you were to lie down at the top of this mountain for a moment--just a moment!--perhaps
the wind would catch the loops of film and
you would feel yourself
unravel.

Please
bury me there--right there--in the
shade of the sycamore where the
sand will never dry.
When you carry me down feel the river rocks they
groan and grate beneath our weight.
Bury me shallowly so that
someday
if the rains return
the water will swell and find the strength to
carry me home.

So this is how the dreamer dies,
like awakening---
a vague and fading
recollection of the yesteryears and
the sleep sinks around the backside of the eyes
where it haunts the mind in
mirror images.
The vividity of living fades to grey and
all is calm, all is
monochromatic.
And so the dreamer dies, like falling back asleep.

Do you remember the rain, love?
I try to not.
Why?
When I do, I remember the trees. The colors, the greens and greys. The heaviness of the air just before it. The smell when it finally hits the thirsty earth. I remember your smile. All the things I miss too much to remember.
I still smile.
Not like you did when you heard the first thunder of a storm.
Fair.
I really miss the way you'd come alive like that. You'd be at your desk, pen scribbling with the same speed as the splatters on the asphalt. Happy. The clouds, the rain, they brought out the life in you. They watered your soul.
Sort of a blatant analogy, no?
I suppose. But it's true.
...
*I want the rains to return.

The sunset slowly dies and
I collapse into your bed
breathing in the echoes of your scent
this extinct perfume I'll never know again
hands groping for any remnant of warmth you left behind.
The pillows miss your precious headweight
and I sleep in tear-choked sorrow, grasping to a slowly fleeting
memory of you.

Endless oceans separate the space between my ears—
How I wish you sailed in them still.
All I hear now is the distant sirens’ song—
they beckon me to heed their call.
But I know their voices aren't your own.
I could spend sleepless nights searching these waters
until I found a trace of you,
a ghost, nothing but a memory
that forever left its imprint
on this ever-aching heart.

A mourning dove flew inside the machine shop. He perched on industrial piping near the ceiling.

Half the day passed.

I struck up a conversation with him.

"Pardon me, but I don't believe you belong here."

Quite perturbed, he chirped,
"I'm well aware."

"Then why have you been here for so many hours?"

Nothing.

"You could fly right out that door."

Silence. He preened his feathers.

Angrily,
"You have wings! A song! A love, I'm sure! Yet here you sit and sit and sit, while freedom is just outside! Why?"

Finally, a response:
"I could ask the same of you."

Oh.

He placed his head under his wing.

The next morning, he was dead on the floor.

The mockingbird in arbored sanctum
rehearses his newest musing
an addition to his lifelong
plagiaristic monologue

satisfied,
he ***** into the chaparral
to declaim his litany to
anything with ears.

I.

Smoke rising to an endless sky
fading twilight in your moon-bright eyes
crickets cry in crooning lullabies
as we kiss the world goodbye.
We lie beneath the stars while
embers from our fire fall
singe our skin and float away
like firefly kisses, like reminders that we
still aren’t dreaming
moonrise and a
soft "I love you" in the dark.

II.

Love,
let me be your now and your forever
let me be your somewhere in between
let me be your ever-loving shelter
for you are everything to me.

Let me be your comfort in the nighttime
let me be your never-ending dream
let me be your sunrise every morning
for you
are everything
to me.

This is my dissonance: I
live in a
sad place
in the shadow of my former
self

in a narrow world
with work and sleep and
not a single sunrise

in a small space with
rats in the attic
a never-made bed and the
ever-present realization:
I must leave or be
consumed.

When you died,
O, God,
and my life flashed before your eyes

did it make you wish you never chose the cross?

Dear dancer,
behold
a much-belated birthday gift,
an elegy, apology.
I drove 3000 miles west last week
pursuing every single sunset
the way I once chased after you
and... I'm sorry.

Dear dancer, you are a tree.
How wrong to think your shade was made for me.
Leaves and blooming branches
stretched towards the sky,
floating petals dancing in the
wayward air,
roots deep beneath the grassy earth...
How wrong to think your shade was made for me.

To me
you'll always be the dancer,
ballerina, book lover,
pirouettes and paper cuts
and piano strings.
I'm sure you make them sing like
symphonies.
To me,
you'll always have your place,
framed against sunsets,
nostalgic memories.
To me,
you'll always have that blushing grin.
Sometimes I'll imagine you in coffee shops,
and I still have that mason jar of ocean sand.

Dear dancer,
I'd be remiss if I didn't give you thanks.
You may not know,
but
you saved me from depression.
You saved me from myself.
You showed me what it's like
to smile,
to smile from the heart,
and you taught me freedom once again.  

Here it is,
an elegy, apology,
one last poem for you.
Happy birthday, dear dancer.
Happy birthday.

The paratrooper
clad in chlorophyllic green
stoic in resolve he leaps
jettisoned from lofty perch
spiraling in space
tumbling through time.
Airborne
born into the air
delivered to the dirt
he dies, decomposes
a casualty of consequence
body brown and rotting in the rain.

Wars are waged and seasons change
and the world spins on in spite of all.

An ever-growing list of things that I can't fix
a set of scribbles on a blank lined page
a lifetime of regretful (in)decisions
a stack of unstamped postcards that I swear I meant to send
my clinginess, my neediness
a drawer full of unused paper clips
two eyes that work too well to see what lies beneath the skin
a mouth that I may never learn to tame
two ears that someday soon will cease to hear
a cluttered, clumsy, cumbersome soul
two hands with scars and calloused fingertips
a mind that only ever thinks of you
two legs that don't know where the hell to go
and
a heart that's only satisfied when beating next to yours...

And this is all I have to give to you.

Every needle in the wind-whipped pines whispers out a soft "I do"
and the daisies dancing in their grassy ballrooms
"I do, I do, I do"
and the cardinals crowned with Christmas snow
chirping their identical
"I do."
Resonating through the trees and channeled through the earth
in places where the sun shines red
and stars shimmer through the waking hours
"I do."
Perhaps one day
our hearts and lips conform to the rhythm
as we whisper with transparent eyes
"I do,
I do."

All creation seems to cease
     we lie beside
With hearts like houses
     next-door neighbors
Hands like envelopes
     folded tight and sealed
Lips like long lost lovers
     blissful, close and warm
Love like a thousand red balloons
     high above the earth, ready to explode.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”

All is perception
through eyes of flesh.

What is known?
Outside of picture frames
My visage is a mystery.

In a ***** mirror
Dark room
Dimly,
I see myself.

Someday, we will see this
Earth from above
Through the eyes of God.

Face to face with eternity,
We will know.

Face to face with creation,
We will see.

In the presence of the Architect,
We will understand.

Outside of time and space,
We will truly be

alive.

Like a fly trapped inside a house
endlessly buzzing in solitude
beating and
bumping and
banging on the glass
straining for escape
seeing a world more beautiful
and so much less alone,
I hurl myself at pretty girls
longing to find a love
like once I had...

But in the end
It's just my loneliness and me,
and hitting my head against a wall.

Crumbling concrete screens at the old drive-in
reminiscent of an era bygone.
Progress is our god
we've no time for nostalgia.
California moves too quickly for sentiment;
what's past is past, and is no more.

The breaking light of day danced
in deep blue fissures in her eyes
mimicking the ocean before her,
sunlight glinting off of flecks of gold
as he longed to be the subject of her gaze.
He saw the way the rising Atlantic sun
     kissed
         her
            freckled
               face,
and in that moment
he knew he wanted nothing more
than to kiss her in that way
every sacred morning
for the rest of his life.

The legends won't tell
of Arthur when he fell in love
when he swooned for the arm that held Excalibur
extended out to him
how he did a double take
and stuttered and gawked
at the simple beauty of her flawless freckled skin.

And in this moment
I behold the Lady of the Lake
her divine completeness:
holy and whole.
Elegant sloping shoulders
a regal neckline pleading to be united
with loving lips
in an everlasting caress.
Water droplets dripping from her form--
reluctant,
wishing they could reverse the laws of nature
fall up from the surface
to bead and cling to skin again--
desiring to be as close as we
as she entrances me with emerald eyes
rivers of red hair
enchanting lips that know no equal.

She's won me over
and she drags me under
below the water
beneath the lapping waves.
The ripples on the surface
echo my farewell to the world.

Hello.
I'll not bother with the trivialities.
I'll forgo the lingering, longing stares
nix the stuttered words and long-departed trains of thought
skip the goofy, giddy smiles and tangential conversations
and I'll never utter the words,
"I think you're truly beautiful"
because you are,
and because you are
you've heard it all before.

A final inhalation, farewell to oxygen
submitting to oblivion
a conscious lack of everything.
The very absence of air, sickening and
desolate, destitute, despairing
tearing at my aching lungs,
my vacant mind.
Call me a vagabond, a wanderer
entrapped in the extrasensory.

My breath escapes. 

The empty core within myself rings in tune with the extant and extinct.
Neck arching, mouth agape
a single note transcends my lips of stone
unadulterated, unwavering, a melodious sound 
building and joining in harmony to create a symphony of
life, of
death, of
everything we cannot comprehend. 
Sonorous and assonant
my soul cries out
at ever-growing volumes.
My eyes begin to flicker and fade away.

God, can You hear my screams in space
in this vacuum, void of sound?

You breathe your salty sobs into my neck
each teary breath against my flesh
creating chills
not unlike the ones your kisses used to cause.
But, this is it.
Goodbye, farewell. You'll be something
for someone else, and I'll likely stay the same.
I can tell you're running out of somedays
and I can't bear to watch me break your heart...

Darling, I'm a natural disaster
so pack your bags and save yourself...
save yourself for someone who deserves you.

Love is a public hanging.
I build a beautiful platform
with eloquence
***** the instrument of my demise.

Fully conscious of my impending end
wrap the rope around my throat
she screams the guilty verdict
and soon I dangle,
twitching in the desert breeze.

I'm an immortal criminal, and I never learn,
a perpetual repeat offender.
I’ll soon be swinging from the gallows once again…
it's just a matter of time.

Two poets, hopelessly romantic
hearts and minds ablaze
and their love like a fireworks show:
brilliant and bright and beautiful and

     brief.

Semi-conscious, muddy clarity
voices like static
buzzing, monotone droning
singing, sustaining single notes
whispering their sinister intentions
or moaning, screaming
“Who am I, what am I, where have I gone?”

A single voice to clear the static:
“I’m right here.”
A pause.
“Right behind you.”
Unsettling and dark
dripping poison on his lips,
a serpent, fallen, far from a protector.

Breathing ceases, pulse increases...
So this is what it’s like to be seen by demons.
He stares into my soul, the deepest recesses
the darkness dressed in best intentions
the gilded rotting apple of my heart...
A final chilling stare
he fades away to haunt me in my sleep.

My heart,
a mansion made of straw:
Complex and
beautiful
but lit ablaze
by a single spark.
Intricate and
intimate
but bound to
collapse.
Spacious and
accommodating
but thin-walled,
colder in the nights.
Furnished and
ready for use
but over-staged,
exaggerated potential.

Do me a favor:
tear down the walls
burn it all, scatter ashes
that I may be an empty lot
to be renovated by an Architect.

Inspiration often manifests itself
in a female form
poetry, prose, pretty girls
igniting creativity. 

7th grade
heart smitten
hand clenched
scrawling, attempting
to formulate the essence
of the oak tree where we met. 
Charcoal pencil
cardstock paper
smudged hands
furrowed brow
stealing glances at her face 
(call it "motivation")
increasing heartbeat
blood flowing to my 
fingertips
through the wood and onto paper.

It's cyclical...
tree trunk felled 
for pencil and paper, reincarnated
as an oak
in a marriage of the two. 
Wood reformulated,
oak leaves reaching to the sun-- 
the glowing aura of her. 

The oak tree picture
its likeness
and she--
all left behind 
in time
distance
memory. 
Years later, I feel it again:
the siren song of a muse. 

But long abandoned charcoal,
cardstock paper gone. 
Now,
I am a painter
I decorate my canvases with words
of you, for you 
the one who makes
my fingertips prolific
they fumble
searching for the path 
to a Masterpiece.

Follow streams of Thought
to discover
a reservoir
of Inspiration...

Daughter of a rocket scientist 
son of a nuclear engineer
and they begat a son

a boy
too starry-eyed to question the stars—
the way they hang in space, the fusion
that keeps them burning brightly,
or how to launch an object past them—
more concerned with the constellations
of perfect freckles found on his beloved's shoulders

a boy 
too enthralled with Existence
and describing it in artful words
to contemplate its composition
or to ponder Existence's place
on Other Worlds

a boy 
enraptured with the Changing of the Seasons—
photosynthesis and 
chloroplasts and 
planetary tilt?
Irrelevant

a boy 
who'd rather write of Love
than consider its chemical makeup
or wonder how or why it is
who'd prefer to write of leaves
dancing spirals in the breeze 
than aerodynamics and 
air resistance and
gravitational pull

a boy 
who sometimes stops 
and only ponders Science
concerning his Genetics
and wonders where it all was lost.

Say I burned and spurned and left you on your own
but in this moment, just before you cast your stone
remember, it was you who said "I want to be alone."
So, darling, play the victim as you please.
You said you wanted a reprieve...
all I did was provide you with the means.

Made of glass,
but wishing
to be tinted
and shatterproof.

If I could be beside you in this moment
I'd gather all the stars suspended over California
and shove them in a bottle
that they would cast a gentle glow
to bathe our bodies as we lie
asleep, arms entangled with ourselves
blissful lips within each other's reach
hearts beating synchronized, harmonizing,
adding to the euphony of euphoria,
the anthem of togetherness.

When it comes time for my soul to part from my body,
bury me somewhere I've never seen before.
Inter me in a place I've not yet visited.
If you have any difficulty doing so,
then you may be assured
my life was one worth living.

A screaming pierces the serenity of the river valley.
Overturned wreck of a car and splattered, shattered, scattered glass.
A fresh-cut gouge in the dirt embankment where he clipped it
and in retaliation it flipped him on his roof. 
He staggers from the chaos
moaning not from pain, but from the Jaeger, Keystone, and regret
of totaling his mother's car. 
He flees the scene with his homies, his fellow drunken cronies
and the witnesses are left behind, scratching heads and raising brows. 
I among them contemplate the carnage
and I try remembering a different time, ten years ago or so...

This place used to be so beautiful
before the partiers and potheads and Varrio Locos took it over. 
Shallow waters filled with algae drifts and interspersed with boulder bridges. 
Sandy beaches, nature trails, wild grapes, and fishing holes. 
The last free-flowing, undammed, undamned river in the state...
Now it's bloated with beer and blood and bad decisions. 
Not a bare rock face remains, each one caked up in graffiti makeup. 
And the air, once frequented by the heady scent of sycamore
is far too thick with marijuana anymore.
Santa Margarita, choking on smoke and dope and disrespect,
once my heart and home and refuge, now and forever a cheapened wasteland.

If I can call a woman beautiful or pure
It's safe to say she's far beyond my reach.
So here's my resignation:
I want the world to know I'm giving up.
It would be far more noble in my mind
to be alone by choice than consequence.

You’ve left your fingerprints upon my heart:
Indelible,
and irrevocable.
And not only the prints
but the fingers too;
how they twist and toy with it.
And not just the fingers
but the hands as well,
and they grip and yank and give me hell.
And more than hands,
the arms that hug and hold it tight
unwilling to let it go, but always reaching for something more.

In a world that fears commitment
you said you'd spend your life with me.
In a world that asks for payment,
you gave your love for free.

Despite the pain of loss, life goes on
in an almost morbid mockery of me.
No matter where I go, I feel I don’t belong
in a place where I stand fixed and everything is moving.

They all said to me:
“Recognize, indeed, she's really
not a thing you need
And abstain from writing things of her
that she will never read.”

Somehow, I still long for the harmony
of our full and beating hearts entwined.
And I wonder if you miss me, reminiscing
of all the times when I could hold your hand in mine.

But I still hold you close to my head
and closer to my heart,
it was always us against the world,
and now we're worlds apart.

A faraway look in your rapid-blinking eyes
As you search the ceiling for memories of him
The way you dart them back and forth
As you reminisce with mouth agape

A faint remembering grin that longs for his
And you fiddle with your fingers
Like a little girl with a darling crush
And every detail of his heart and mind
Pours past your smiling lips
With a longing for the past and a wishing for the future.

What if the clouds above us
Lit ablaze
As they covered the stars tonight?
What if they fell
To baptize us in flame
As we lay beside each other
Waiting for something to happen?
What if the earth swallowed us whole
And we never saw another soul?
What if something supernatural, something strange
Really happened in this moment
Like we so desperately hope?

What if you and I had never met?
What if the separate roads we took in life
Were not yet built
Or turned another way?
What if all the things we wished had never happened
Were bottled up and thrown into the sea?
What if you don't wake tomorrow—
Where would I be?
And if we were a continent apart—
As we will be soon—
How would I cope?
What if I went my way
And you went yours—
And what if our ways won't ever intersect?
What if we reunite someday
But we don't really know each other?

I believe
That if we truly dwell in possibility
We won't enjoy the time we have.
So let’s just lie right here and stare at the nighttime clouds
And let's be glad that nothing truly happened.

Lying rigid in the frozen dewy grass, breathing fog into the air
If only I could see beyond the clouds, I'd look into the starscape
And trace the constellations with my eyes
Searching for the one we called our own
Remembering the way we lay beside each other one sacred summer night
Straining our eyes, staring longingly at meteors and satellites.
Tonight, those stars so hidden from my view are the same presiding over you
And that used to comfort me, knowing that you're not unreachable.
But tonight, I see through starry eyes
looking down at us with their celestial vision
To witness a bright and happy girl whose smile steals the world
And a broken, lonely man who used to call her "love."

Lying lonely in a hotel room in Charlotte
I'm listening to James Taylor like you said you'd never do
And if I could I'd curse you, calling you a heartbreak or a harlot
But as we both know, simply not a word of it is true. 

I start to wonder what you're doing at this very instant
Back in California, Golden State of emergency. 
Are you smiling at an endless sunset
As you dream of happy endings that I'll never even see?

You press your lips against another's and still I never cross your mind. 
I drag my disembodied heart along rock bottom's floor
As you experience your highest highs, sitting blissfully at his side
And wistfully I'm singing, "Hard times, come again no more..."

Each infrequent word you say to me
Causes me to long for you.

Every time that you ignore me
Makes me wish you missed me too.

2:00 am
This is the sort of silence that makes a man insane.
2:01
I find myself writing once again, coping as I can.
A lovesick heart still writhing in the throes of loss
And spewing empty words, lacking any meaning.  
2:03
And I'm still unoriginal;
Never have I said a thing not said before.
2:10
And I wonder why it's taking me so long to get over you
And why your visage fills my vision every time I shut my weary eyes.
2:12
And I ought to take back every word I’ve said
Because I didn’t mean them, or at least I shouldn’t have.
2:25
I'm beginning to believe you'll never be the one for me.
2:26
And I realize you came to that conclusion long ago.
2:40
And I find it funny that somehow, even now
You keep me from my sleep and haunt my every dream.
2:45
I'm feeling rather sick
Of sitting on the sadder side of somberness.
2:58
It's nights like this that make me wonder if I'll ever be complete again.