The neighbors are having a party.
Young women are seduced by young men
and the cycle of life has evolved into this
degradation of humanity in the 21st century.
I have taken a large part myself.
Now, however, I sit a room away
with this keyboard, a case of beer
and this pack of cigarettes,
bullying this keyboard as I
punch words out of thin air.

I would take my party over theirs any day.

Sometimes when you’re sleeping, you smash
your nightmares into my pillow with your head,
which is why I think your hair sticks up sideways
when you roll over to me in our mornings
and kiss the back of my neck until the sound
of my own laughter wakes me up. I know you’re colorblind,
but you color me like a book, ignoring all the lines. I glow
in the contour your eyes make of me when you’re listening
to me frame the story I’m spitting at you before 2a.m.
You admire the shape it takes above my head, suspsendig
over the two of us like a mobile that rocks us, safely,
back to sleep. I love thinking about how you take your coffee,
how you put your sweatpants on in the morning, or the feel
of your lips nibbling at my palm as I trace your cheekbones
with my fingers like you’re a charcoal drawing
I never finish because I just don’t want
us to end. And I know that sometimes I like to skip some pages,
but come on, I just like to get to the good part. And I know
I’ve bottled up your sweetness for whatever reason
I had back at the time, and I know that I drive slow,
that I kiss you too long at the door, that I never
let you fall asleep before midnight, but I’ve always been your biggest fan.
I’ve always sort of loved you, even if it was in pieces.
I just got stuck. I just couldn’t find my way there again.
But I drew the curtain a tiny bit this morning so the sun
could highlight your sleepy face before I woke you,
and I covered your belly with the blanket so you wouldn’t be cold,
and I know our chemistry is a little old, but
you’re my favorite thing to hold,
or so I’ve been told.

You stole a piece of my pie
That one hot summer day
The harder I tried to ****** it
You ate it right away

You made fun of my forehead
That one cool afternoon
Your eyes lit up with laughter
I swear, you can be such a goon

You leaned in for a kiss
That one vivid morning
I was surprised to see you
As the kind to be adoring

You spilled out your feelings
That one intense sunset
Our shadows merging into one
An infinite silhouette

You stole a piece of my heart
That one moonlit night
I didn't try to ****** it back
It all seemed just right

I walked away from you
That one frosty day
I left behind a piece of me
And now I've become astray

You stole a piece of my pie
And a piece of my heart
My world has come crashing down
It's tearing me apart

ALTHOUGH I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.
Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, "Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.'

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

Spewed out, the Pain,  the Shock, the Awe
To hear things never Heard and see things never Saw
The overwhelming light, that falls within my sight
Colors Never seen, and the mystery of the Word
Its only been moments, but I feel so Free and light
As flesh has Fallen away to create this birth...

To think only 72 hours ago, cold and still, I were
In the Coroners Office on a Slab in the morgue
Embowled for the autopsy on a Routine report
The Car Ran the Stop Sign, doing near Ninety
the Glare of the Lights, The Last thing I could See
But its all over, the weight is gone and now I'm free.....JMF 12/11/2014