Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—a most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Though gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings—
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

There was a girl
I used to swap paperbacks
and spit with, once
I fixed her wiper blades,
I remember the soft dead wings
on the windshield,  pretty
as you please

She was alone in her shoes
listening to something
that kept getting darker
and glowing like morning
on the oil spilled under her truck,
she was drifting through
the rosewater of her soft red hair

She only wanted to be rolling
off a swollen river, sliding
out of a clean slip, turning
over in a deep sleep, trailing
a shimmering thread, hiding
under a pile of wet leaves

Then there she was sailing
in her river of blood,  going
white and smelling like smoke
from a struck match behind
closed blinds on a ceramic floor,
a white blouse red as a sharp knife
collecting the light of mourning.

I imagine us
collecting affections
like loose change

bits hidden everywhere

in couch cushions,
in strong, stitched
seams

pennies hoarded
in an old sweet
jar

cluttered coppers
at the bottom of
coffee cups

we count,
meaningless amounts

building neat piles
of insignificant coins

until they become
our fortune

I am done now, finished
all my ideas robbed
re-set in another's mind
be it grave or birthed
either way I am gone
to some other place.
A farewell is short
but fare ye well I say.
I wish you new fields
other fertile ground
where a poet sings
free songs for taking.
But this poet has flown.

For just a moment
Would you slip away with me
Into dark corners of anonymity 
Could we lose the fear.
The consequence.
Can you loop your fingers in mine with the simplicity of a lover 
And push aside the flush of watching eyes.
Be the steady tide in my ocean of melancholy 
And wash away these familiar faces 
With their poison darted tongues
Glass hearts overflowing 
With the bitterness of realism and lost ideals 

Can we lose our pretences
Our falsities and masks
And let our minds meet in serenity 
Sheltered from a world of turmoil 
From wars and tears
Outward pressures and inner conflicts.
Lets live instead within honesty and earnest hearts 
In hidden tracks and secret words 
Where we can speak our own truths in roaring solitude 
In silent riots that enflame my heart and remind my soul to sing

In this moment 
Can I be nameless
Faceless 
Can I disappear into the love behind your eyes 
And be remade inside the warmth of your opened arms 
Can I vanish from the humdrum 
From the familiarity of the accepted
And walk with you down foreign streets of passion and vitality 
Hand in hand 
Two beacons alight with fire 
Standing tall against an encroaching dusk of normality and routine 

Just for now
Can we be anonymous
Can we be unknown 
Maybe then we can learn to know ourselves

I saw the other side of you today
The flip side to your coin 
Beneath the sparkle of joviality and passion
When we strip away the gloss of illicit corners and barely touching hands
Rinsing away the heady throws of passion and your alcoholic aftertaste 

I saw your rage
The underbelly
There was no beauty in your hurricane 
Only fear and anger 
The constellations I once saw in your eyes turning to pitch 
Maybe they were just reflections of my own

I saw you change. 
I don't think I know you anymore 
I'm not sure I ever did