I would inscribe her image on the front of my heart,

were her irises, ink.

And though my hands have wept and bled.

Though my tongue has sworn and stabbed.

Though my heart has hunted and prayed.

Though my lips have lied and kissed.

I haven't the knowledge to capture her.

My masterpiece, a failed rendition of  her countenance.

Put down your pen, poet.

No arrangement can rival the timelessness of her touch.

To try is folly.

Love simply.


Let my half of our kiss be the melody you harmonize to.

*“Hold me tight.”

And when the eternal optimist finds himself lapping wine from the bottom of the barrel, who then shall crush his sour grapes?


Who will be the vine he holds onto?


Who will be the cup to hold the out pouring of his soul?


And will it be too late?

For the winter is setting in and the frost has begun to steal the summers color already.

And when the bottle is empty.


And the boards of the barrel ****** dry, we will raise our glasses to the eternal optimist.

Who once was drunk on love.


But now is drunk on time.

I am learning the art of forgetting.
I am learning the art of letting go.

I am rising. I smash at you like high tide. Reminiscing about our tidal waves and yard arms, wrapped around our throats like business suit neckties. You see, I got lost, one more time, in our complicated little world and remembered that womb is not synonymous with ****. But rather with mother. And we played house together awhile. While the moon peeled off half it's dress. And I laughed at your 3rd grade poetry. And we regretted nothing, like Edith Piaf, on your couch, in the dark, entering worlds we'd torn apart.

It is worth mentioning that you were the first to ask me to your bed, rather than taken to mine, which proved prophecy wrong and wrong and wrong.

I was waiting for the kiss, like crimson stains, to ask me to say. But we muted them with burgundy.

I was willing to pay.
I was willing to show you.

But instead, we let wine separate us and bottle us up in action we didn't take, corking something perfect now, with the lie that it will be better in time. And I bought it.

Like hands raised in prayer.

And kissed oceans off of your cheeks, one.. salty.. drop.. at a time.

That was our crime.

And you. You came back, figuring you could pollute my stream. A virus set about my heart, freezing me like cold wet days when the wind cuts like goodbye. Come to sound yourself like a siren. But I can't hear your song. It no longer plays on my ears. I have forced it back into the foam that crests the waves and have drown myself in flesh and flesh.

So go ahead. Go ahead.

And we. We would have our night and it would drive you to an assumptive dissidence. Our harmony corrupted. Now an awkward, fumbling minor chord. Bleating like a lamb to slaughter.

I never wanted your soul.

I just wanted you not to leave right after we'd arrived.

Which is becoming less and less true as I run out the lines on my face and hands.

I wanted one, just one, to be there in the morning and then gone.

But I am folly.

And Gods teeth shake like parishioners in a collapsing church as I find my way back to the ******* poet I've become.

Consider these words like mercury, temperature rising.

And how I have made mistakes.

In darkened deserts. In hands on small of backs. In rain littered parking lots. Fireside. Ringside. In cold, cold water. In cleverness. In repeated attempts. In repeated attempts. Inrepeatedattempts.

I have made mistakes.

But take me in spite of my faults, Love.

Just until dawn. But be careful. Dawn breaks so easily. So lay quiet with me.

When the sun fills this echo chamber it will translate all this rich to ruin. My staggering meter to a retched stumble. And how should I finish? With a dying fall as my mentor would have me? Ragged claws and turpentine? No.

You see, I am more now than I was before.

And yet, I have never been what I could be.

Don't.

Don't let go.

Lest I forget.

I am rain streaked windows that cake with dirt, showing time veins from beneath itself, in rivulets on it's surface.

I am screaming. I am screaming. I have no voice louder than the ones in my head.

I am a stutter step tap dance down long streets that I would like to walk again because I think, but don’t know for sure, that they will lead me home.

I am dancing. I am dancing. I keep time to the rain, like millions of heartbeats on the tin roof, ticking away the days until I hang in the air.

And then we find the little cracks that let light through the dark parts of who we are and we press our mouths to them and drink the light like air. We are drowned sailors who believed what the sirens promised. We believed we could drink enough light in, to make us holy.

She is keyholes to peek through at the woman *******. My sight is the skeleton key that will open new worlds when I see that she can be more beautiful when she is uncovered. And more beautiful for not being afraid to be uncovered, because she doesn’t know I am watching. But I am. And she is more beautiful for not knowing.

And her face is a tear streaked looking glass, with make up showing the time lines from beneath the lies on it’s surface.

She is crying. She is crying. I have no way to calm her anymore.

Then is the promise of midnight love making and forever kisses that burn onto your soul and will never go away. And some will cover themselves like a tattooed man on a carnival pier, right between the fire eater and the fortune teller. There will not be room left for true kisses soon and no way to make room for them.

He is coloring book scribbles that stray from the lines with bad choices and noble intentions, autographed on it’s surface.

He is lonely. He is lonely. I have no way to teach him to trust.

Then the white sheets. Bleached and boiled in copper pots. Starched and straight and folded. She is the pillow case at the bottom of a constantly growing pile of untouched linens. And save for the closets occasional open and close, there is no light.

The pile dwindles, top down, but those at the bottom will never make it on to the bed, it seems. Just locked away in the linen closet. White and pure. And unseen. But the bottom side is darkened and settled in dust. And afraid.

And she is thread barren, white cotton that wishes to be held to the sun and seen through for all of it’s darkest stains.

She is trapped. She is trapped. And I lay my head on sheet less mattresses unable to make her my own.

I thought you should know. I thought you should know.

I am a magnet for surrendered breath and wasted youth. I am open arms that wrap you in and hold you as fanciful clothes to shield my nakedness. I am whispers of comfort that nuzzle your fears that are really just harpsichord bleats to silence my own.

I thought you should know that I am lying. I am lying.
But never about my intentions.
Just about what they become.