A professor explained to me once
how there is a limited number
of possible designs for making
an arrow point function as intended.

You can't stick a round rock on a stick
and expect it to penetrate like a dart.

It has to be sharp and hard, yet light
to fly like a feather straight and true
to the heart. I said, you mean like love?

She said, yeah, like love, kinda like love.

Lakes are the great mystery novel. Every wave; another page

love, blue passions
spiralling into the night.

we carve ourselves out
of emptiness,
drift where the moon
wanders into the night.

there are no dead leaves,
summer lingers in
the trees, splashes
pools of golden moon
onto the floor.

i can hear your heart-beat,
so soft, so beautiful
that the night whispers
sweet songs to the sky.

I stole a copy
of The Back Country
when I was sixteen
and it set me
upon the Poet's Road.

You signed it
for my friend
while I was
far away at war.

After most
of a lifetime,
I have it still.

May your
mountains and rivers
never end.

  ~mce

I squished a bug
rubbed him out of existence with my thumb
quick, minimal, forgettable experience

I wonder,
are people like that?
Am I like that?

One night, Death came to visit me and I
Offered him a cup of tea.
He sat gracefully in a fragile chair
That had only ever known my
Grandmother
And said:
      "Young sir,
Have you anything with pomegranate?
      I find that it
traps more of the flavor."

I stood up--my hands trembling enough to cause an earthquake--
And fetched Death a cup
Of the oxblood fruit.
I tried to give Death the cup, my hands as bad as a scared tightope walker;
he
                  Refused.
And instead insisted I drink it.
(I didn't have the guts to tell him I hated pomegranate)
In the same instant my lips touched the hot crimson water,
A zipper opened across the face of death.

"Now, I have you."