Fire burns grasses
And comes to lick us.
A child lick it back.

You liked my status.
We broke up months ago, but
You liked my status


He broke my heart, so
No matter what facebook says
We're not really friends


I see you're online
I do miss talking, but I've
Got nothing to say

Do you know the feeling
Disconnection
Stuck in a jar
Loss of power
In the dark
Light a candle
Can't get a spark
Crooked smile
Surrounded on four sides
Walls dark with dried blood
Loss of speech
The only thing left
A hallow and terrifying screech
Amplified so no one can hear it

I sit on the river bluff
Waiting for
This black hole fire *******
To fizzle out.
Waiting for
All the contents of my being
All the gravity
All the wispy plots
To be released
And placed back in their spots.
No one else seems to miss it
But I do, so there I sit.

There was a time
Once...
Long, long ago
(or so now it seems),

That You
Being the elequent (and yet awkward) man that you are,
were the kind of man who (without prompt)
went out of your way to do romantic sort of things.

Hardly were they anything as eleborate as gifting fine jewelry,
or a dozen red roses,
or even boxes of chocolates,
no, no

you were (and perhaps still are),
the kind of man who wrote poems,
who dedicated songs,
who went out of your way to express love
in ways that were not material.

But still so Sincere were the ways in which you expressed yourself,

And although these days seem to have passed from existance (eons ago it seems was the day of their passing)
I do not sit now,
with pen and paper,
to write out complaints of days gone by

For this is a tale of neither joy nor woe.

A Tale not of anger, nor strife,
nor any other strong emotion
that most tales of this sort are written to express.

Perhaps, it is a written account of my curiousity.
of how, as these years have gone by, you have evolved
and I too, have grown with that evolution.

For even though we don't venture out into the world
alone with one another
for we generally take with us friends and loved ones,

And you,
That beautiful, glorious person you are,
have delved deeper into louder, more agressive (and somehow soothing) music,
and have strayed so far from the romantic ballads
that you once used to send to me,

I do not weep for those days,
For even with their death
came a sort of comfort
that I have seldom known before.

It is as though the cute, romantic days of our early love,
blossomed into a love that, words cannot express.

And no amount of Well-worded poems,
or Love songs,  or Cards;

No amount of gifts,
like fine rings,
or overly-cute stuffed bears.

Could ever compair to the emotions that run deep through our hearts,
like rivers flowing along side one another,
that as years pass,
slowly errode away the earth, and stone of contemporary love,

And, as they do so,
they take with them the overgrown weeds of dime-a-dozen love songs (even though I cannot help but cherish each and every one),
and wash away the insignificant problems everyone faces,

And someday soon,
those last few bits of rock, and dirt,
with fall away.

Leaving only one river,
that will flow strong, and pround,

until one day,
a story will be told,
that there was a time,
long, long ago...

There we were,
under the watch of the moon
and the distant traffic lights,
swinging from rope to water,
diving, turning, spinning.
Drunk on our youth,
we divested ourselves of our suits
and let the water sink around our bodies,
which glowed with untainted whiteness,
Clean&*****;&Free;
all at once.
We told each other we weren’t self conscious,
and maybe it was true,
but even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter.
I have never felt so beautiful and alive,
as I did the moment I paused in midair at the apex
with the rope strangled under my muddy fingers
and let go,
my naked body under the stars and the moon and the sky,
flying weightless
through the night.

Sometime
-certainly after I had stopped waiting for it,
and definitely when I wasn’t looking
anywhere in particular-
summer embraced me,
and I leaned into its chest
Our hearts beating together.
And we
-that is, you and I-
became pieces of the sun
and particles of the dark
dancing around each other
with our toes
only just
brushing
the blades of grass
(whose arrival had also evaded our immediate notice).
I was a lilac
and you were the wind
and I didn’t know
and you barely knew
me.
This is the breath of Summer,
poisoning us
like the smoke from the cigarettes our friends
exhale.
We say nothing
and move a little closer together.

Which Is Greater?

I break a vow.
A serious vow.

In a place, in this site,
Where the fluid pain
Is the water of the world,
The element that is crux,
The amniotic liquor of creative flux,
The morning juice,
The afternoon caffe,
The first beer of the day,
The liquid that we rinse and spit out our every day,

I will write about pain,
Arrogantly, as if there is any unused combination of
Letters, vowels and consonants left unspoken, *****,
Having sworn not to, for pain is cumulative.

Asking myself,
Which is greater?

The pain of creation, inception, origination and birth,
The pain of  wreck and ruin, destruction and death.

Homework Self-Assignment: Compare and Contrast

Suddenly, I am expert.

Creating a poem a day is very painful.
A poem that is the sum of
Reflection, research, and purging.

Once I wrote:

The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.

The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.

Suddenly, I am  expert.

My mother is dying.
It is a process. Days pass,
She neither eats or drinks,
Yet she lives on.

I watch each labored exhalation,
A subtraction, a countdown,
It is as if she was returning each singular day,
Every word e're spoke, every dream dreamt,
she ever possessed to the atmosphere,
One breath at a time.

Is that painful?
It is for me.

Now you complain. They're different, not to be compared, et cetera.

Pain is pain,
Whether it is in the service of creation, or
Creative destruction.

Once I wrote:

With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poem's birth diminishes me.

So, one and the same?

Nope. Yes. But. Cannot one be the greater?
Yes, one is greater.
When I lay on my deathbed,
I will exhale the answer
Into the atmosphere
For your retrieval.