You poked my heart
just enough
to realize
that this is MY heart to break!

and I choose
to
cover it up
with

HARDENED STEEL!
REINFORCED CONCRETE!
DIAMOND PLATE ARMOR!

all wrapped up in a KEVLAR VEST!

with a itty bitty,
teeny tiny,
microscopic,
bullet-proof window

just big enough
for a single
beam of light
to enter

and reflect back
to your eyes
for you to see
the beauty within

Lying embedded in velvet gloom and night,
You and I are gazing up the northern hemisphere.
Within the sea of darkness is the stars' stained light.

Hidden inside the fabric of interstellar space,
Might be a kind of universal truth
That answers all the questions of human race.

Sensing the pull of the universe
I feel like we're lost between the infinite vastness
That none of us could ever dream to traverse.

Suddenly you get up on your knees -
Head in the sky and feet on the ground.
“Perhaps the stars only made us feel lost,
because we both wanted to be found.”

I would give myself away
as I so often do.

crack a smile
shed a tear
laugh abrubtly
or sit silent

Always with my heart on my sleeve,
where I have made a spot for it.

I would give myself away.
everytime.
if the person I am yeilding to is you.

And I will not hide anymore.
So that maybe
Maybe
Maybe we will teach each other
the serenity
In loving someone who let's you keep your heart on your sleeve
So they might see it.

So loving,
just loving
might come with less questions

I cannot give you serenity,
but if it meant you might find it
for yourself
I would give myself away.

For you,
I would give myself away.

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

People only ever want to ask me about
the poetry -
those verses about
busted up noses in outer space;
about the pros working
way down passed
the corner of Broad and Main;
about fistfights and hard, hard drinking.
But I built a flowerbed this weekend...
Twenty two tastefully irregular stone blocks
in a crescent moon shape,
filled with the blackest of soils.
The sweat of toil.
The digging.
The planting.
Exotic grasses. Asian maybe?
Purple and yellow flowers.
Zinnias or some **** thing.
All covered in a thick blanket of brown mulch.
It's a fine thing to have dirt on your hands
instead of blood.
No one ever asks me about flowerbeds.