The first thinkers were poets
Naming Mother Earth
Beginning symbolic thinking
Of nature, death and birth

Though themes are often repeated
Love, Beauty and God
Poetry in the guise of Religion
A prophet or a fraud

The poet resurrects the Primitive
Through allegory and similes
Disarming the unknown like explorers
Sublime Prophets and Visionaries

They must lay bare those treasured images
That must be expressed
Unraveling and revealing the sounds
At each soul’s behest

Encompassing the entire Cosmos
So lyrical the beat
The poet’s excitement flows outward
Laid at the Reader’s feet

So original, individual
She won’t examine or explain
Letting go the festering feelings
Disturbances in her brain

He exposes his dark, wounded psyche
Just to release and express
Such capacity to see and compare
Hyperbole at its best

I love, I hate, I suffer
A special dance in rhythm and rhyme
The poet as a buffer
Lessening the pain and sting of time

Laden with symbol and feelings
She gives you sweet relief
From something urgent, revealing
Confusion to belief

Through a cinematic kind of seeing
The poet purges to transform
By leaping through Alice’s looking glass
She never was one to conform

Quite intolerant of convention
Just like The Mad Hatter
His passions immune to all logic
In syncopated patter

Jamming up the poet’s mind
Struggling for expression
Seeking order out of chaos
An infantile regression

Cleaving to his imaginary world
The poet breaks out into words
Creating sound paintings to be unfurled
So his own agony is blurred

She succumbs to storms of passion
With instinctive techniques
Rhymes and rhythm still in fashion
Out of hand flows mystique

The poet mines from his unconscious
The Reader is not blind
For every single line and symbol
Means something to the mind

Causing an inner liberation
Enlightenment or flight
It is a matter of life and death
When darkness turns to light.

Sometimes, I swear I can feel my chest concaving at the thought of you.
I find interest in the fact that sometimes I want to be near you, but sometimes,  I wish you were an ocean away.

Sometimes I look at my mother,  and pray I'm not like her, but other times,  I wish I could be more like her because that would make my life so much easier.

Sometimes, I cry alone at night.
I sit unaccompanied and begin to gorge myself on memories and guilt that I am certain will forever haunt me.
And during the day.
I think about how many more days I must suffer before I can be me freely.

Sometimes, I wish I was as much of a physical man as my brother is.  
Because sometimes,  like when we have a relatives birthday, or a celebration, he is glorified for his ability to be ox-like.
And while I sit here only weighing 130 pounds and having the strength of a rubber chicken I feel as though every bit of breath I breathe is not with the carbon my lungs put out.

Sometimes I think about you.
And how you're with him.  
And it makes me sick.
Because sometimes. . .
I wish sometimes didn't exist

In the midst of the darkest nights,
waking up, tearing the blanket apart
of weariness of the sleepless nights
and sadness for my bleeding heart.
I hear you in my dreams, yet
in reality you are silent.
I try to remember but I forget.
Have you met me there or haven’t?
You’ve had so many chances,
never dared to and never kissed.
And I can’t stop giving you chances
because without you I can’t exist.
   I tried so hard to let you go,
   yet, again I come and say “Hello!”

The Sun Always Rises

and the dark always
gives way to the light.
Remember that,
in turbulent and troubling times.
Like these times
right here and right now that we are immersed in.

We are wading through this sludge with trepidation and angst and with the fever
of revolution.

Do we fight? Retreat to our separate corners?
I say fight.
Be bold.
Be ****** and resolute and be belligerent in thought and word.

Do move forward, kindly, and with the spirit of all that have ever been repressed- with the spirit that breaks the chains of uniformity and oppression.

Fight for freedom.
Fight for love.
Fight for a hopeful future.

She stole your heart
  without asking,
  —leaving only a dream to chase

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2016)