“Don’t say that,” I said,
for he gave me hope to dream
of a better life

Who am I to judge
what comes from your mind and makes
its way to the page?

Heartbroken hero,
you are worth so much to me
but I turn my head

Inevitably
rejected admiration—
Why do I bother?

I answer myself
quietly, shy, to prevent
embarrassing truths

Speaking in haiku
I am decoding language
to send a message

You are: a poet,
a lover, a dreamer, a
former(?) friend of mine

A broken wing on
the sparrows carrying the
last humility

in this broken world—
You are a fire, lit in black
ink and in tired lines

Your face, a canvas
etched with tragic beauty of
history itself

Your fingers, biceps
trembling with strength, the power
to know and create

Good and goodbyes to
encroached evils of the dark
You know there is more

than storms, depression—
more than this old soul can say
or see or even

Speak, in spite of this
epistolary chain of
senryu, tied with

the hope you once glowed
of, the old flame within you,
the torch to something,

to anything more
that still tastes life in all its
bitter and sweet and

salty and so sour
yourlipspucker with the loved
umami of life

and I am sitting
here, writing this letter to
a man who needs, like

all of us do, to
love and live and laugh and cry
and to feel skin’s warmth

once again. I have hope
for you, even if yours is
hiding under rugs,

swept away in the
midst and mist of foggy lives—
Smoke shall soon clear, and

the right words may not
be found, but these hands you hold
attached to your wrists

I am sure these hands
of yours will find the mirror
and remove the grays

of all your sorrows—
There is light, dear, waiting to
be recognized by

a humble man in
the desert, building machines,
building a new him.