Poets are assassins
Words wound and ****
Cut open arteries
Spilling life blood
Sharpening and refining words  
Honing them to a killing edge

Poets are sorcerers
Words; their incantation
Grammar; their arcane ritual
Sentences turn into spells
Transforming you into someone else
Teleporting you to a distant place

Few poets are prophets
Gifted and cursed with visions
Vessels to be filled
Conduits waiting for lightning to strike

Poets are codebreakers
Deciphering life's enigmas
Translating experiences into words
Skilled technicians
Finding the right words
For exactly the right moments

Talking on the phone is easy
But making phone calls is difficult
Thirty gut wrenching seconds
Heart beat ringing in my ears
Lungs working overtime
Every time the ringing tone resumes
I think its someone answering
My muscles tense
My lips ready to spit out
My already rehearsed lines  
But no one answers
I never leave voicemails
A worse fate is ****** upon me
Anticipating their return call

The photo is shot
The subject is killed, embalmed
Corpses on display
Moments entombed in amber
Preserved forever
Taken out of time
No past, no future
Only that one shining moment

You kissed me on the corner
Of Highland and North Central
A block away from my house
My eyes were closed
My stomach was tightening
The air was still
On that slow June day
That was just hot enough
To justify ice cream
I had walked over that spot
A thousand times before
Unaware of its purpose
I've walked over that spot
A thousand times afterwards
But now it has been transformed
Into a nerve ending
Independent of my body
Every time I step on that corner
On Highland and North Central
For better or for worse
Memories flood in unbidden
Fresh and as volatile
As that June day

Stale cigarette smoke
Lingers longer than you did
Half a pack of death
Half a pack of relief
Clings to my sheets
Like a ghost refusing
to be exorcised

The apartment walls are as thin
As cell membranes
Your life is seeping into mine
Through osmosis

You're room is right above mine
And sound and fury and smells
Come through the divide
Flowing freely as wine

Our clocks are aligned
The car door slams in the parking lot at two am
You drunkenly lead girls up to your lair
Unaware of anyone else in the building

You **** with the windows open
The bed creaks above me
A major seismic event
Complete with a screaming damsel

All my hopes hung on one promise
One impossible magical promise
Everything traces back
To this one point
That only holds up
When I don't look at it directly
It hangs in my peripheral
Out of time, out of focus
Fluid in definition
Like a monolith
It supports me
Like a ghost
It haunts me
Like gravity
It grounds me
Like a black hole
It consumes me