(After Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem by the same title)                                    

Love is not all. It is not meat nor drink
nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.
In the beauty of sunlight falling on water,    
love is hardly a major factor.                                          
It cannot stop a bullet
or lift a crashing plane
-- or make a stopped heart beat again.
Yet people are killing themselves
even as we speak, for lack of love alone.
It may well be under pain of torture,
starving/dying of thirst,
tested by want past resolution's power,
I'd strike a bargain:
a cup of water for a different life,
a life without memory of you and our children;
I'd trade our love for food. It may well be.
I do not think I would.

Your star freckled hands
reach inside me-
Pleasure making me forget even momentarily
That this, is not a love story.

Your hands do nothing to soothe the empty hunger left behind.
When my bedsheets are no longer warmed with your body.

Like an echo I can feel my heart beat against my rib cage.
A violent rally of
Alone.
And it screams
Alone.
Thumps
Alone.
And my fingers trace it into your skin when you are making my body your temporary home
(Alone . Alone . Alone it sings )

And I must never forget that
your hands can make me moan your name
Shout praises to a god I don't even believe in-
But your heart could not bear
to love me for anything more than my body

-to the girls who confuse *** with love
And to the boys who think an ****** is a job well done

dear heart of
many faces
you remind me
to breathe
the small things
and so
i do
through you i
dream of worlds
sublime
new and old
combined
flying high or
passing low
a life is lived
in your eyes
- amber
like the forest
in shade
where gold
flecks with green
and the curve
of your ready smile
melts my bones

feels like putting my hand
on something sharp kinda day
invincible temporary, of course
fight the system on a february dawn

where the lamp's lambent spheres
bob in and out of existence
as the sunshine overcomes their presence

first kiss with you, like hands
dancing in the fires
trying to stay warm in the winter light
an ogre of a dream, a curse to be this shadow

compared to the glow of an angel like you