Your presence muddles time,
Suspending its consequence
Hours stretch to days
Minutes melt away
Seemingly unconfined

But as we are apart
Another shift occurs
Time elapses
Slow as molasses
Ever to be endured

And I cannot wait
To be back again
Where never is there late
And time has lost its end.

The night

is for discovering by feel
instead of sight

hush, hush,
keep your rumbling down. let us not wake him!
he has no idea of this.
oh, this started so long ago, i cannot even remember
the first time i touched your heat,
tasted your iniquitous liquid.
i kept coming back, for one more sip, one more
sniff of your lip-smacking aroma.
oh, how my glands moisten at the mere thought of you!
how my nerves tremble without you.
so, shhh, shhh,
my joe, my java, my jesus.
keep your whistling down, my lover sleeps.
but tonight, we’ll share
another taste in my favorite mug,
we’ll swim in your bitter ocean

You never say a word
As I stroke your skin,
Tracing the veins along your arm -
Just watch my fingers
Traveling the road map of the blood
That courses through your body.
I have tried so many times
To find a different path
Discover a detour
But I have only found a common route -
Whatever vein I choose,
It leads to your open hand, outstretched
The only place I feel at home.

I just finished texting you on December 31st
Sunday night, or maybe you consider that a Monday morning
and a country song just came on the radio
I couldn't help but to think about how much I hate country music
I hate the stereotypical voice the singer always sings,
the predictable pattern of strung guitar strings
So, at 2:24 am, on a December 31st, Sunday night/Monday morning

I started to wonder if you liked country music
Or believed too that it's tacky
I wonder if "tacky" even exist in your vocabulary
Where did you get your vocabulary?
Did your mom raise you to believe words would be your greatest ally
Was she raised with more than one language
I wonder what your ancestor's native language sounds like
And if it was ripped out of their tongues
Like culture in our history books
what stories were told from those tongues that history books could never tell
I wonder, what kind of stories you've carved in lover's mouths
with just your, tongue.

I wondered if you've ever lost someone
I wonder if you've ever lost yourself
If you did, where did you find yourself?
Did you find yourself in your palms over bent knees
That kissed the ground that at one time
kissed your feet.

I wonder when we'll meet
I wonder if I'll meet your best friend. If shell ever get scared
You'll replace her with me
And if I'll have to tell her, she's irreplaceable.
I wonder what's your favorite places you've been to
The places that made you smile to your human anatomy's most potential
And I wonder how much you know about your own human anatomy
I wonder if you know that an average heart beats 100,000 times a day
Pumping almost 2,000 gallons of blood through its chambers
Over a 70 year lifespan, that adds up to about 2.5 billion heartbeat
And sitting here, just wondering about you- you made me skip a few.

It's now 3:07 a.m.
And I'm wonderin' if you've ever wondered what it would be like to be loved by a poet
To have your body be put words and your words be put against my body
To have lips match figurative language to the figure of your body
And write love poems on your cheek
And I wonder if you even consider me a poet.

What are the events in your life you consider poetic?
If your life was a poem, what kind of poem would your
8th grade English teacher categorize it as?
If you were a curious child and if now
You're ever curious about me
If my mind ever wanders while I wonder about you
And if I could ever weaver it back

At 3:21 a.m., December 31st, Sunday night, Monday morning
I'm wondering if you're wondering about me.
Or if you ever wonder if I've ever lost myself, but more recently, lost my mind writing poetry

I wonder if you wonder if I consider myself a poet.
I wonder, if at 3:27 am, if you're awake too,
Wondering if I like country music.

there’s a heart
grown heavy
laying in bed
trying to wake
up

453 times he’s said
to himself
“wake up”
but it’s only putting
him back to sleep,
a hypnosis
untended
or fate that cannot
be escaped?

wake up he says for
the 454th time
but his eyes stay shut
and he can hear birds
chirping their bird songs
outside of his
window

he can feel the weight
of his existence:
each social expectation,
each biological demand,
just another pound on
his shoulders
but
he’s been down
on the ground for a while
now

the heavy heart
prays to be
emptied

wake up, he says,
and counts 455
wake up, he says,
and counts 456
wake up he says
and counts 457
wake up, he says,
and counts 458
wake up, he says,
and goes back to
sleep

“i would have made a move on you”
unreachable, and yet you yearn with the soul
of a young boy i’ve seen in a summer field
far too many times.
“but saying, hypothetically…”
the dreams.
your eyes.
casting
spells
on
me.
in the dreams, you cared.
“hypothetically…”
i could never tell you about the dreams.
“hypothetically…”
you are the forest. he is the sea.
i ran through your trees for far too long.
“hypothetically…”
hypothetically, i would still dash through your woods, blissfully, scraping my knees as i fell over. over. over.