Color my smile in you vibrant shades.
Knowing the edges of my cast shadow
is a freedom of sorts.
Find the stars in my eyes, each with
the name you knew to be true.
Kiss me with any of the seven kinds
that you know. I yearn for them all.
Know me in your slow and steady way,
one hand on the back board one on my chest.
Love me as you always have. Without
condition and with only desperate need.
Sing to me, the songs you love and more so, the
ones you only barely know. I love those the best.
Close your hands around me, and cage me
like a firefly so that I might shine for you.
So that I might make you smile.
Any one of the hundreds you know.

Look for me in the usual places,
that is where I’ll be.

Find me smiling at an old joke,
heard so many times it has become
an old friend, and you will know me.

Hear me call out across a room,
perhaps it is gentle and perhaps loud.
Spot me and you will never go alone.

Know my secret name, the one
that only you are entitled to because it
is the one you gave me. Keep it with you.

Run through these empty three am streets,
giddy like children on adrenaline and life
and together we will tear the sky down around us.

Believe me when I tell you that I love you.
It is not lightly said and it is always deeply meant.
It is the first of three gifts that I will give.

Love is a contradiction without terms.
It is often compared to music,
but that doesn’t sum it up.
It is thought to come from ***,
but that is less than a third of it.
It is said to come from the heart,
but it’s true location is only known to
the people suffering under it.

Love is not one thing or another.
It is not a thing that fills,
nor is it a thing that drives.
It is not freshly fallen snow,
or the first red leaf of Autumn.

It is pleasure, and it is pain
and it is both and neither and all.
It is not found in books,
or songs,
or contact
or smiles.

It does not live in a gentle embrace,
or a baby’s breath.
You can not spot it’s home
from the eyes.
It is not in these places,
it would be a fool’s errand to look for it there.

Love cannot be defined or quantified.
It cannot be discovered or hunted.
It does not just happen, although it
happens all the time.

If you are extremely lucky,
and profoundly doomed,
you will know it when you know it.
Do not cherish it, do not avoid it,
accept it.
That is all that can be done.

Kept in the plaza,
by the booth
we once laughed
away an evening,
(How does time get away from us?)
There is a locked box.

My heart is kept inside.
There is only one key.
Crafted by birth and
shaped by a fire inside.
(I have stoked that fire to keep us warm and alive.)
I don’t possess the key.
I never have.

Follow the twisting pathways,
fight through the crowd
and deep inside a dark room,
high on a shelf
(So high I can barely reach)
You will find the box.
Unlock it,
beautiful eyes and dark hair,
quick wit and wisdom.
Unlock it, My love.

Set me free.

If that bell tolls one more time
I’ll rip it’s clock work out.
What does a man do with
all these hours in a day?
How do you fill them with meaning?
What is the meaning?

Tomorrow I will lay next to you,
breathing in the air
knowing home and love
and life and hope.
Knowing you.

There are raindrops racing each
other down my window pane.
I have these pictures, some are
of us, some are of places,
most are of you.

Tomorrow I will caress your hair.
I will fix the sheets on your bed,
rub your feet.
I will listen to your day,
and you will listen to mine.

Tonight (******* it tonight!)
I keep the time without you.
I hate the clock, I hate the light bulbs,
I hate the way your smile doesn’t
light up your eyes in pictures.

Tonight I’m on fire,
burning to ash and bone.
Tomorrow I will rise.
Reborn.

An Experiment:

Imagine a place without pity.
Where the strong survive
and the weak must force themselves
to create in order to achieve.

Imagine a world were no one
sits around feeling sorry for themselves.
Where things get done and no
one complains about the toll.

Sounds wonderful, in it’s way.

A Reality:

When you told me about your
Father, about how he died.
You leaned your head on my
chest and sobbed uncontrollably.
After all that time, years, you still
felt so raw and vulnerable.
I had never really seen you before.

Your pity allowed your grief to
wash over you. To throw some dirt
in the hole you had been tossed into.
Not enough, not nearly enough.
But your pity allowed you to take a step
closer to getting out alive.

My pity, as you rocked ever so gently
with tears. My pity, as you rubbed your
face against me leaving the smell
of you in my clothes.
My pity.
My pity let me love you that day.
It let me love you in a way
that hasn’t gone away,
that hasn’t faded.

A Truth:

As wasteful and useless as pity
is, I wouldn’t want to live in
a world without it, because it
is a world wherein I don’t love you.
I couldn’t bear to not love you.

I stayed awake to watch the sun come up.
I stayed up to watch it go down.
I climbed a tree to see what the country side told me.
I stood on the parking complex to hear the music of the city.
I ate food that were bad for me.
I drank V-8 and took those ****** vitamins.
I checked my blood pressure compulsively.
I checked my heart beat infrequently.
I drove fast through silent streets.
I slowed down on the highway.
I had not places to be.
I was in a hurry to get no where.
I breathed in the smoke from the end of this cigarette.
I breathed out under water to watch the bubbles.
I read like books were never going to be published again.
I watched DVDs until my eyes hurt.
When the third day came I slept.
I had such dreams.