Your atoms were once a part of the stars and maybe that explains your brown eyes and the shine inside them. The atoms that sculpt your body used to sculpt the ocean and maybe that explains the depths, hollows and dark corners of your mind I've yet gotten to discover. Maybe your rough edges are explained by the solely fact that the atoms forming who I'm deeply in love with were once rocks with gems inside them. It has been a privilege to fall for a beautiful, bright and amazing combination of Earth that is you.

I can’t tell you how often I yearned to be her cigarette.
Clasped between her fingers,
delicately placed and savored;
******* all that I had into her.

And as much as I wanted to fall into the creases
that parted each lip,
I wanted to be the first thing she tasted
when she drew her morning breath
And her every exhale to cover me like skin

he looks at me
with those slate grey eyes.
he mocks at me
with that snarl tooth lisped grin.

he looks at me and his lips dont move,
but his eyes speak with mountains.

they say she slipped through my fingers
like water through the rocks in the river.
they say the longer i ran to keep her,
the further she ran to me.
they say the more you tried to save her,
the tighter your fingers bruised her pale skin
and gripped her throat
until her lungs were almost dead.

they said she did it voluntarily.
i know better.

you did not release your grip even when i let go.

you bleed stars
I stare into your eyes
you are lonely
you want to leave
the forest.
you are dim
flying around in your sad sidecar
looking for a settling ground
I will hold your mask.

Here are two pupils
whose moons of black
transform to cripples
all who look:

each lovely lady
who peers inside
take on the body
of a toad.

Within these mirrors
the world inverts:
the fond admirer's
burning darts

turn back to injure
the thrusting hand
and inflame to danger
the scarlet wound.

I sought my image
in the scorching glass,
for what fire could damage
a witch's face?

So I stared in that furnace
where beauties char
but found radiant Venus
reflected there.

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

Pale scrapings of people
with lipstick ringed glasses
and cigarettes burning,
and laughter trickling up and down
their knotty throats.
What is this,
a gathering of henhouse critics?

My father's voice in the back of my head,
saying, forget that I'm dead and if you
can not do that than pretend.

I am standing
just outside the gallery
beneath the shadowy bough of a birch.
The moon is floating in the sky's dark lap.
Faraway I can hear the ocean sigh.

Now father, I am asking,
what smile are you wearing?
What color are your eyes again?
How many teeth have you lost?

Don't you think I want a kiss.
Perhaps I don't. Perhaps I don't
want to stand and pretend you
not dead while the wet, champagne
mouths of the living tell me how wonderful
your paintings are.

As they crook their fingers and strain their necks,
lose their vocabulary inside the artwork's depths
and colors.

Father, I want your reputation to outlive the pursuits
of others with their iron-on reviews after an hour's
worth of browsing at a lifetime of your work.

Father, are you crying?
Stop that sound.