The words have numbered ten thousand,
Deep secrets poured in every line,
Each thick with meaning, prose and rhyme.
Tell me, Muse, did you understand?

My silent voice pens the imperfect word,
My feelings disguised in my allusions,
This meager poet writes to illusions.
Tell me, Muse, whether my message was heard?

My shame permits only poems disguised,
My heart seeks safety by speaking in code,
Fear of rejection if true feeling showed.
Tell me, Muse, was love for you realized?

So many poems, each one has been true,
The literal is too scary to write,
I express love with clarity of night.
Tell me, Muse, did you know ‘twas about you?

I discovered you somewhere in the void
Between hope and glory, where words collide
With the need for story,
In that void where restless despair resides,
Where you meet the broken hearts to avoid.

I discovered you at the end of strength
Between fear and surprise, where all hopes fade
Ere fate can realize,
The mistakes that my hopelessness has made,
With expectations abandoned at length.

I discovered you in a world beyond,
Between here and never, where fortune lies
Promising forever,
In hushed awe I could not believe my eyes,
I ardently prayed to have YOU respond.

My courtship is like autumn chill,
An omen to the nervous trees,
Who hold their warmth by staying still,
Before the comfort of green flees.

The steady chill has no effect,
The leaves resist their urge to fall,
The branches hold ever *****,
Resisting the whistling winds call.

With the first frost there is a change,
The tree becomes vulnerable,
The nakedness of its trunk is strange,
But change is inevitable.

My poetry has worn away,
The leaves you wore for protection,
That frost came when you heard me say,
Magic words of my affection.

Your seduction has been unfair,
Though you could not help it, my dear.
My heart melts with the thoughts you share
And aloe smoothness of your hair.

Executed so ruthlessly,
You constantly seducing me,
With love given innocently,
You did it all so carelessly.

I’m smitten and I can’t let go,
Seduced by all the things you know,
You made my desire overflow,
Just by affection that you show.

I’m a slave to your seduction,
Mastermind of will’s abduction,
From our very introduction,
I was lost to your seduction.

The intensity with which we shatter,
Those what’s-left-of-us shards that cut you deep,
Brokenness and jagged edges matter,
When prices paid with pieces feels too steep.

Only two things cause our own destruction—
We’re broken from without or from within.
The damage goes beyond reconstruction,
We can’t build what we built before again.

Cracked into piles of debris on the floor,
The remnants of escaped emotion’s cage,
Whose seething burn couldn’t take it anymore,
Disposing of it disrespects its rage.

We’re broken so that something is released,
Those shards remind us what we have to do.
To put them back is just what matters least,
But don’t cut yourself making something new.

The world presents too few opportunities
To say “I love you,”
Perhaps because the feeling arises constantly,
And I am not near you
As often as I would need to be
Each time the spirit moves me.

I can think “I love you” each time I see you
Whether real or dreamt,
But what good is this perpetual thought if
You don’t know it
Then, in that instant
Each time the spirit moves me?

Your existence surpasses all time and space.
To say “I love you”
Feels smaller than the grandeur of those moments,
Those fleeting moments
You occupy in me
Each time the spirit moves me.

I hear your echo in silence,
Your voice speaks to me in quiet,
With ears that hear feelings, not words,
In a heart to amplify it.

Your clearest words were not spoken,
But they resounded in my ears,
In a heart tuned to perfect pitch
Of loving feelings that it hears.

I listen to your heart beating
To know the words you have to say,
My heart understands love language
Said from a million miles away.

In despair that causes deafness,
Hope is the comfort your voice speaks,
With ears you’ve given to my heart
Your love is what my silence seeks.

The trees have shed everything in defiance of frozen air,
Nudely and bravely they boast of their strength with a stoic’s stare.
Their leaves have deserted them, their fruit has fallen, they don’t care.
The trees in January stand strong in loneliness, and bare.

Is their naked strength in the wind how they are supposed to be?
Do they welcome autumn, to rid themselves of their greenery?
Perhaps they don’t notice that the lives they gave have set them free?
They have lost something beautiful, but are they less of a tree?

Spring water flows into their roots, branches drop their icy weight,
The first sun-kissed buds emerge to witness the tree foliate.
But does the tree even notice this, its cause to celebrate?
The tree is at its life-giving most, but it does naught but wait.

The tree changes before me, and because of it I change, too.
But in that moment, when I love that tree, it feels nothing new.
And I think back, if the moment someone loved me, if I knew?
But I am too like the tree, oblivious to what is true.

Here the reluctance of nightly slumber
With my soul aflame with disquietude,
My fear, as darkness becomes my blanket,
That my eyes once shut will see you no more.

The blind can have their morning light unseen,
But my seeing you is morning to me.
What need have I for eyes but your beauty?
I should rather choose darkness with you.

I am scared! What if my eyelids rebel?
What if they are weighed down with jealousy?
My dreams are not enough! You are too true.
I’ll not sleep, lest my eyes stay closed to you.

I shall embrace insomnia’s madness
If my eyes can give me no assurance
That sleeping, they will open in the morn,
To you, only you, my truest sunrise.

No twinkling red giant star
Glistens with more red than your lips.
No verdant green of prairie grass
Can be more fertile than your hips.

The sky’s blue hues from morn to night,
Are pale against your royal soul.
The softened tan of perfect skin
Colors my heart out of control.

The yellow sun is cold and dark
When your aura is on display.
Like whitest white more blameless than
A child on his very birthday.

In you is all that can be seen,
In ways that colors only know.
Your gifts of beauty more vast than
The colors across the rainbow.

I have but one humble request.
Forget not I who loved you best,
Not I whose love will never rest,
With all my love I loved you best.

Acknowledge to me only this.
There is none else you want to kiss,
Mine are the only lips you miss,
As yours are those I want to kiss.

Assure me that you realize.
You see the love inside my eyes,
The tears of joy of joyful cries,
Of your image inside my eyes.

Promise me this one thing you know.
The closeness of our love will grow,
Coming together fast or slow,
Come closer so my love will grow.

If nothing else let this be true.
Devote to me as I for you,
Making love as only we do,
Love me for me as I for you.

It’s simple really, a clear solution.
Clear enough to get rid of confusion.
Wait.
When the love you knew leaves you desolate,
Wait.

The simple fact is, you’ll never solve it,
Martyred anguish will never resolve it.
Wait.
When you think that you’ve lost your true soulmate,
Wait.

It’s a simple truth, despite what you feel.
Time hastens the better for you to heal.
Wait.
Love will come again, even if it’s late.
Wait.

Trust simplicity, don’t listen to pain.
If you loved once you can be loved again.
Wait.
Make your self ready to welcome your fate,
And…wait.

Masterpiece of curvaceous precision,
Artwork sculpted and delicately lined,
As beauty’s natural definition,
She is the mold for all womankind.

The redness of cherries based on her lips,
Honey envies the sweetness of her tongue,
Waves aspire to the curve of her hips,
She’s more seductive than any song sung.

The trees model fruit on her perfect *******,
While sunlight was made to mimic her smile,
She’s sensuality that never rests,
Longing for her dwarfs the length of the Nile.

Butterflies wings are no match for her eyes,
Her embrace is lighter than clouds above,
Her perfect beauty makes me realize,
She entered my life so I’d fall in love.

A day in love is like a thousand years,
With a heart beating but time moves no more.
I know the timelessness of loving you,
Is God-like as in Psalms ninety verse four.

To be in love with you gives me my soul,
Your love is the breath of life from Heaven.
The love my lungs breathe is like the spirit
God breathed in Genesis two verse seven.

Your love shows me mercy, grace, good and truth,
Patience, forgiveness and absence of hate.
It awes me like when God showed Himself in
Exodus thirty-four seven and eight.

The more I love you the simpler it gets,
It’s something I just naturally do.
Love’s forever inscribed in my heart like
Jeremiah thirty-one thirty-two.

Which is the skin we must outgrow?
Walls we push against hard and slow.
To knowledge we’re afraid to know.
Restraints that keep telling us no.

What limits are holding us back?
Things we have we think that we lack.
Closing our eyes to turn light black.
Compassion feels like an attack.

What pressures are keeping us small?
Expecting we have to please all.
Afraid to jump in case we fall.
Ignoring doors built in our wall.

What good comes from our comfort zone?
We’re still while friends pass us alone.
Growing our fear of the unknown.
Destiny no longer our own.

What have you paid for this nothingness,
This refusal you have made your own,
Wearing discontent like shamefulness,
To be greatest at being alone?

What satisfaction your martyrdom,
Your stubborn turning the other cheek,
The Queen of the loneliest kingdom,
Self-loathingly bragging she is weak?

What appreciation have you earned,
Playing the role of unlovable,
Who knows more than the lessons she learned,
Too scared to be discoverable?

What’s worth being unworthy of love,
Flaunting beauty as only a tease,
Fallen from that pedestal above,
If you smiled once you’d find love with ease.

Static with words that speak the familiar,
Narrowest thoughts spoken so many ways,
Bare novel spark in the particular,
A tireless writer with nothing to say.

A thousand new words are no less banal,
When a writer is content just to be,
When the compulsion to write is his all,
He writes with no responsibility.

To lose that will is to lay down my pen,
To no longer betray the written word,
Writing not a thing until the moment when,
Something new inside deserves to be heard.

Unique thought must precede what is written,
Needing to write is to seek depths to plumb,
That awesome task with which I am smitten,
Is never to be, but always become.

Howsoever you shall now enter me,
I still shall not know what to do with thee,
You of fearsome spirituality,
You beauty! Stuns and paralyzes me!

Wherefore placed on Earth you of stolen divine,
Who numbs me as intoxicating wine?
You are unique to me but are not mine.
You beauty! No Sun shall ever outshine!

Who is the artist to whom you belong?
Drawn perfect lines and no color wrong!
I was born wanting and for you I long.
You beauty! Who makes weak knees of the strong!

Kiss me through the day and into the night!
Without you what need have I for my sight?
But for you I’d have no poems to write,
You beauty! My inspiration! My light!

My entire world is lying next to me,
Adoring me gently, and sensuous.
Together in a nakedness that’s free,
With passion devouring and virtuous.

My love is in the body beside me,
And in the soul, seductive yet so sweet.
Our bodies safe as they are meant to be,
In anticipation of when they meet.

All I ever wanted is next to me,
Wanting finally the one that I want.
The moment she kisses me so gently,
I lose self-control I’ve wanted to flaunt.

I love her lying beside me in bed,
She’s as much in my arms as in my head.

The familiar ba-bump ba-bump,
Of spikes and valleys on the screen,
The electrocardiogram
Looked the same as it’s always been.

The doctor turned toward the nurse
And traced the image with his hand,
“This heartbeat look completely fine.
I simply do not understand.”

The nurse stared back at him baffled,
And the doctor just cracked a smile.
“I heard of this in medical school,
But it has really been a while.”

“You have?” asked the curious nurse.
“Does the condition have a name?”
“True Love,” the wistful doctor laughed.
“You heartbeat never feels the same.”

The nurse removed the patient’s wires,
Who pointed to the screen above.
The doc said, “Your heart’s different—”
He smiled, “Because I’m so in love.”

Impatient I found a love worth the wait,
Knowing lost love does not mean love is lost,
Heartbreak was just a detour to my fate,
Where all of love’s mistakes were worth the cost.

I waited to find love in full despair,
That hopelessness contrasts with love so sweet,
I missed the point when I thought life unfair,
I had to be prepared for us to meet.

Your love is what I dreamt that love would be,
Looking back my deep sadness seems so small,
Perhaps you too were waiting just for me,
Finally we found true love after all.

Patience had worn thin from each rejection,
Then you came along with love’s perfection.

How many times can one hope to be saved,
After all the descents to the depraved?
How many times succumbed to sinful thought?
How often losing the battles he fought?

How often can he expect salvation,
When choice after choice is to damnation?
How many times can he ignore his guilt,
Atop the foundation of lies he built?

How many chances to apologize?
How much wrong can one man trivialize?
How many times can he find excuses,
For turning others to his own uses?

If he ignores needing introspection,
How can this man still expect redemption?
If one just loved him he knows that he would—
Being loved is all he needs to be good.

As my heart grew more enamored,
And as I felt this burning flame,
It was then I knew what mattered—
It was to give Beauty its name.

Her image would not go away,
But all the words I spoke would err,
So overcome I could not say
A description that suited her.

What should perfect Beauty be called?
There is no name that could suffice.
Overwhelmed I was too enthralled—
My language was too imprecise.

You simply are so beautiful,
That any name would be inapt.
Your Beauty makes my heart so full—
That I am speechlessly enrapt.

The sunrise was a shadow’s shine,
The birds sung their songs out of tune,
The rooster crowed silent alarm,
As if each day began at noon.

The dew was dried before it formed,
The moonlight never left the sky,
The pre-dawn dreams never took hold,
The darkness never said goodbye.

The bedroom shades were never raised,
The morning haze was ever still,
The alarm clock did its mime act,
The morning’s sunlight brought a chill.

It seems the Earth forgot to turn,
There was no morning to wake to,
Looking back this is how it was,
Before I woke up next to you.

I breathe memories of every feeling,
A heart pumping emotions through my veins,
Inhaling air of heartache for healing,
To feel nothing but feelings eases pains.

Nourishing my hunger with my loves lost,
Sustaining myself on passionate thought,
Feeding on my feelings at any cost,
Sated by feelings the memories brought.

Loves old and love new are my source of life,
The deep passions I’ve had fill up my lungs,
With strengthening heartbeats beating on strife,
While the sweetness of loving is the tongue’s.

No need to eat or breathe yet still survive,
To be in love is all I need to thrive.

I’ve written words needed but unwanted,
As one who fights a war of last resort,
Disrespecting heartbreaks that I flaunted
While shaping memories I could distort.

Those unwanted poems that I needed,
All written in defiance of my nerve,
Every one of them should be deleted—
I still don’t know what purpose that they serve.

I cursed my hand so it would write no more,
But the words fought battles of attrition,
Oozing out as if from an open sore,
To heal the despair of my condition.

I’ve no desire to ever return to
The places my words so often bring me.
But it seems writing them I learn to
Appreciate the gift of being me.

Shall I say “I love you” again?
Endless fawning adoration,
I fear there will be a day when
You tire of my adulation.

But those words are bound up in me,
And I can’t hold “I love you” in,
They cry out with sincerity,
Though to your ears they might wear thin.

“I love you” is significant,
It shows you how I want to live,
Born of feeling magnificent,
But sometimes all I have to give.

Forgive for each I “love you,”
Don’t dismissively demean it,
They’re only spoken if they’re true,
And each time a man should mean it.

The hands of time
Count our endless moments.
The hands we hold
Energize love through touch.
The hands that give
Take away our torments.
The hands that heal
Can remedy so much.
The hands that bless
Bring grace upon our soul.
The hands that serve
Make sure we’re not alone.
The hands that write
Use words to make us whole.
The hands that love
Are the best hands to own.

Peeling off layers of humility
To at last reveal authenticity,
To exhibit my pride most shamelessly,
I accept this vulnerability.

To be who I am confronts irony,
As still letters mask personality.
The art form I love has complicity—
The true self hides inside true poetry.

To shed this self-loathing ability,
And be honest in rhyme’s complexity,
I create pages of pure fantasy
That speak the words I feel most honestly.

Words tend to survive mortal’s history,
Past their reflection of reality,
So they seem written with mendacity,
Though lies are beyond my capacity.

Today I acknowledge futility
Of a poem that lacks identity.
This writer makes no more apology—
I am written words and the words are me.

I hear your echo in silence,
Your voice speaks to me in quiet,
With ears that hear feelings, not words,
In a heart to amplify it.

Your clearest words were not spoken,
But they resounded in my ears,
In a heart tuned to perfect pitch
Of loving feelings that it hears.

I listen to your heart beating
To know the words you have to say,
My heart understands love language
Said from a million miles away.

In despair that causes deafness,
Hope is the comfort your voice speaks,
With ears you’ve given to my heart
Your love is what my silence seeks.

Floating away with stardust in my hand,
Pieces of sunshine with nowhere to land,
Basking in lightness I don’t understand,
Holding stardust is like love in my hand.

Carrying stardust wherever I go,
To hold with me a bit of cosmic glow,
How it shines so bright I will never know,
Sprinkling stardust is letting my love show.

Kissing the stardust around my head,
Sleeping with starlight beside me in bed,
Into the darkness it’s lit where I’ve led,
Following stardust to true love ahead.

Needing the stardust as much as I do,
Alive with glow of energy new,
Its glorious aura in all that’s true,
Loving stardust, my star, that stardust is you.

I’ve thought about you all day.
Not because I wanted to.
Though I did.
But because I needed to,
To know my heart was beating.

I thanked God for you all day.
Not because I wanted to.
Though I did.
But because I needed to,
To recall life is fleeting.

I spoke about you all day.
Not because I wanted to.
Though I did.
But because I needed to,
To hear the name I’m needing.

I felt my love grow all day.
Not because I wanted to.
Though I did.
But because I needed to,
To feel my world completing.

There are two kinds of waiting:
Hopeful and hopeless.
Hopelessness is weary angst,
Violent eddies of despair.
Nervous pacing while staring
The mind battling the heart.
Hopefulness is jubilant,
Spontaneous leaps of joy.
Nervous tapping of your feet
Ready to meet life head on.
There are two kinds of waiting:
Hopeless and hopeful.  
But neither prevents waiting.

No need to retreat from smiling faces,
Or to find refuge from warmth of the sun.
The world comes replete with peaceful places,
Your only job is to discover one.

No need to deny moments of laughter,
Or rely on sadness to make you feel.
The world holds all the promise you’re after,
Your only job is to see that it’s real.

No need for shame when you feel elation,
Or feeling that fortune is undeserved.
The world has goodness as its foundation,
Your only job is to find yours reserved.

Happiness screams for you to come get it,
The world gives it to you if you let it.

I have never met a woman
in whom I did not see beauty,
Though I’ve met so many women
whose own beauty they could not see.
And they were each one and the same.
And if I didn’t say otherwise,
I’d feel I was the one to blame.

I have never met a woman
that a good man could not adore,
Though I’ve met so many women
convinced they’re easy to ignore.
And they were each one and the same.
And if I didn’t show otherwise,
I’d feel I was the one to blame.

I have never met a woman
who did not radiate her light,
Though I’ve met so many women
who thought themselves as black as night.
And they were each one and the same.
And if I didn’t act otherwise,
I’d feel I was the one to blame.

I have never met a woman
for whom loving was not assured,
Though I’ve met so many women
despaired that love had not occurred.
And they were each one and the same.
And if I didn’t love both of them,
I’d feel I was the one to blame.

There was a moment, so unexpected,
When I woke, seeking just ordinary,
Resigned to loneliness, unconnected,
Our encounter—felt imaginary.

Seeking isolation, no need for lust,
Appreciation gone, beauty no more,
Passion burned, with eyes I no longer trust,
You—a seduction I’d not known before.

Pulling back from feeling, and nakedness,
All the beauty, futile, unrequited,
Choosing instead dullness, and wretchedness,
Our spark—an extinguished soul ignited.

Recoiling, fear, cursed sexuality,
Libidinous impulses, uncontrolled,
Bare, on altars of sensuality,
You—inviting love I cannot withhold.

Kiss me, hold me, bring my love in deeper,
Forgive me, embrace me, don’t let me be still,
Touch me, and own me, and be my keeper,
Your look—I resisted, but have lost my will.

I think with my feelings, not with my mind.
My persistent heart leaves my brain behind.
The world that I see seems ever so real,
But I can never sense more than I feel.

While reason and passion fight over me,
I experience emotionally.
Instead of judging with thoughts in my head,
I’d rather resolve them in dreams instead.

I occupy life as if fantasy.
Truth without feeling seems a fallacy.
I trust in those instincts that bring me tears
And tune out rational words in my ears.

I’m giving up on following logic.
Too many thoughts have been catastrophic.
I no longer care what I’m thinking of.
From now on I listen only to love.

Calming with the softness of your skin,
Sated of my hunger for your kiss,
Nourished by the state you put me in,
Feeding this soul’s appetite for bliss.

Craving delicacies of your eyes,
Sensing sunrise warmth of your embrace,
Mornings such as this I energize
With anticipation of your face.

Awake to the honey of your tongue
And fluttering eyelash on my cheek,
You’re the morning hope of day still young,
You provide for me the love I seek.

To stir from my complacency
With the words as my compulsion,
Poems feel like a eulogy
Of my not-dead-yet emotion.

I write to be a memory
For either fondness or for ill,
With words of perpetuity
So that no reader’s heart is still.

The solemn thoughts trapped in my head,
My fingers type to let them out,
So my embarrassment is read
By strangers I know not about.

Writing with ego’s delusion
That when I die my words survive,
But my ironic conclusion
Is that I write to stay alive.

All criticism
Comes from the illusion of bravery,
From the pedestal
On which the lowliest men sit highest.

All criticism
Is someone’s projected false confidence,
From the pedestal
Upon which those who can do no wrong fall.

All criticism
Is a descent to egomania,
From the pedestal
Above small specks of blinding delusion.

All criticism
Derived from eyes whose lenses are mirrors,
From the pedestal
Elevated by its isolation.

The tenuous sense of self is crumbling
In a gentle breeze of slight rejection,
Whose worth is broken by extreme humbling
So breaking true self’s the self’s protection.

Breaking down instead of standing strong
Means the world must clean up all your pieces.
Even when the self feels the self is wrong
And the will to hold yourself releases.

The human soul is stronger than the hand.
The self survives outside a lover’s grip.
When you crumble you need to understand
Your own love is the greatest partnership.

You never considered how much trouble
It is to find heartbeats in the rubble.

You are my guide,
My beacon,
My direction.
For when I slide,
So meek in
My dejection.

You are my hope,
My feeling,
My compassion.
You’re how I cope,
When reeling
From my passion.  

You are my soul,
My soulmate,
My connection.
You make me whole,
You create
True perfection.

Too many paths where the traffic has slowed,
Too many wrong turns down forks in the road.
Too many hazards where I’ve blown a flat,
Too many stops that I didn’t know I was at.
Too many false steps into a puddle,
Too many treks where my plan was a muddle.
Too many times I was lost in the rain,
Too many times I crossed the center lane.
Too many speeds where I needed to brake,
Too many wrong places reached by mistake.
Too many spin outs from driving on ice,
Too many times I left driven by vice.
Too many trips life put me at the wheel,
Too many heartbreaks I caused her to feel.

Let not this love fall into discontent,
Nor my eyes accustom to her allure.
Let not the sight of her cease wonderment,
Nor my passion bore with beauty demure.

Let not my lips stop quiv’ring for her kiss,
Nor my fingers ache for her velvet hair.
Let not my arms embrace with avarice,
Nor my desire leave anything to spare.

Let not her beauty ever be passé,
Nor my heart not yearn for her naked breast.
Let not making love miss a single day,
Nor lying beside her allow us rest.

Let not me take for granted her boudoir,
Nor my love for her wane even a bit.
Let not my lustful eyes ever look far,
Nor my body ablaze become unlit.

The figures in my dreams must be angels,
Speaking in words I can’t hear when awake,
That beauty surrounding me is angels,
Their silent love beyond what I can make.

There’s no love like being loved by angels,
Whose embrace is welcomed by resting hearts,
My most intimate dreams are of angels,
Their love is timeless without ends or starts.

Feelings I feel in dreams come from angels,
Who kiss me with lips that form perfect smiles,
Releasing my soul to dance with angels,
In romantic step down flowered aisles.

I dream to dream once again of angels,
With mystic fingers soft as nothing’s touch,
To once again lie down with the angels,
And dream of angels who love me so much.

The finest wine to touch my lips
Was not as intoxicating,
Neither could its sweetness eclipse,
The magic that we’re creating.

The finest silk to touch my skin
Was ne’er as tender or as light,
Nor did its comfort draw me in,
As your arms do for me at night.

No melody’s been played so fine
To be the the music to my ears,
Nor notes written to such design,
The way your voice always my fears.

The world can offer jewels and gold
And endless gifts as pure as dew,
But not even wisdom of old
Is as precious to me as you.