A glutton for devotion,
is what I would say of myself.
Reserved only for singular reverence.
Chainlink fence around portrait perimeter.

Love lies lusciously
where the marvelous maple
lets leaves lay in the autumn.
Core, contained in a thick cluster of
counterculture conscience.

Averse to all wealth, save
the cornucopia held
within my sternum.

All the stars are falling down.
Make a wish —
maybe we’ll fall in love
before they hit the ground.
And if it fails, I guess we’re
just crashing down.

                                     To shot my shot, and try to be
                                     your shooting star —
                                     aimed so high,
                                     but I was falling too fast
                                     at the sight of your brown eyes,
                                     soft as cosmic dust.

I’m the dusk, you’re the sun —
and if we make love
to make a son,
will that light save us,
or are we still just crashing down?

                            Until then - hold me in the silence
                            between the boom and the burn —
                            where gravity forgets us,
                            and stars don’t return.

And if we’re meant to fall,
then let it be together —
two sparks in the dark,
pretending we’re forever.

                          Even if we burn out
                          before the dawn,
                          at least we lit the sky while
                          we were on.

The draw, the pull, the quicksand,
the rope around
my neck, my ankle, my soul.
The cosmic powers
tearing me apart.

The pressure, the push,
the everclosing bear trap.
The hiding in a secret place
and then the screaming
until there is none.

Even something distant
Can give enough light,
Longer than just a while,
Carrying vivid, tender moods,
Rising like green plants,
Despite the cold, acid rain.

A hypnotic, sweet mantra,
A grateful murmur,
Whispered my true name,
Coming on time,
Before I closed the door.

I am at home now.
In a quiet zone,
On my piece of uneven,
Creaky floor,
Grounded by gravitation,
Free from messy thoughts,
Just to save the plumb line,
Not to collapse inward
Into an inner gap
Of what it should mean.

I shift my wardrobe
Of emotional scripts
To clean a tame mess,
Collected into short breaths,
Like colorful, sharp stamps,  
Justifying a fading reason to stay,
rather than give up and go away.

Yes, I know that I can.
So, what am I afraid of?
That I am ready
To drop the weight
Of past attachment,
To feel the lightness
Of being loved?
To accept human warmth,
Enfolding peacefully
A fractured existence.

Each night a man writes in silence
His pen a lantern to his soul retreat
The pages hold his vanished spring
A lover long dissolved in time deceit

He does not write of now or today
But of ghosts who wore soft perfume
Of touches imagined that slipped away
His diary a blooming padded room

He never signs his name at all
The ink is shy like birds in fall
He writes as if the words could speak
But paper answers no one’s call

Sometimes he draws her face in ink
Not as she was but how she seemed
Each line a prayer that starts to sink
In rivers only he has dreamed

His sentences burn with silent ache
Not love but shadows love once cast
He drinks from lips that never spoke
And feeds on poems of the past

Though silence wraps the world around
He plucks her sighs from empty air
Though truth may fall without a sound
The ink still keeps her beauty there

His mind a garden of decay
Where old perfume begins to rot
Where laughter limps and fades away
And passion lingers though forgot

The night is cold the ink is thin
He writes for love that never was
From wounds that hide beneath the skin
He bleeds in silence just because

Yet he is vast and so is pain
His diary stitched with loss and skin
Each word a blade in fields of rain
Each page a soul he holds within

He writes because he cannot choose
To let her go would be to die
To hold her close a kind of bruise
He lives where truth and dreaming lie