Don’t ask me to pass the assonance assessment
Or time my rhyming to make you smile.
Alliterative pieces I’m proud to produce
After pondering, my pretty person.

No I’d rather be free
When I write poetree (lol).
Must write with meaning,
So don’t be demeaning,
Even if you are screaming.

Existence, God, Love, People –
They’re what I write about.
Oft without form.
Just enjoy.

Gorgeous gold glory starts the story
That ends with a tune under the moon…

Paul Butters

© PB 20\9\2015.

"The other one, the one they call [Sophie], is the one things happen to."

Slurring steps like words, not even drunk, yet
still seeing clearly the blurred letters you sent.

I let her cry, although I never understood
how the salty spate should heal a temporary break.

Blowing up small things to make them big is, what?
we were taught, more than being warned on how they will pop.

I can clearly see through the glass bones and paper
skin, sitting and tightening her ribs, enjoying the plague.

Spilling speech, strictly to rid myself
of your poisonous finger-tipped bones.

I let the break hurt more, swinging mischievously, pulling off the band-
aid slower to compose the tones for her to express.

Fell heal over heads
          in love with a poet,
  he's mostly a rhyme schemer
       likes Poe and his dark Raven,
  in actuality,  I'd fancy him more if
    he were like Pablo Neruda, but I digress
I'm much accurately fashioned after Emily Dickinson
        chasing heaven's June bugs toing and froing,
we'd meet at a perfectly superfluous coffee shop
    he'll be murmuring elegiac pentameter
I'm simply looking to devour precious words,
    we'd argue about abstract destinations,  
            straight forward persuasions and
               premonitions of wayward ink allusions,
some days I want to claw mine own eyes out
               amid all that nonsensical alliteration
  others, I want to rip out embellishments
                   of his black heart's magnification,
he mutters tumult under his breath,
     states he's abundantly sickly tired of all my
         fanatical froufroutant  flourished fantasies,
albeit, we're mild mannered artistes
         of overstatement and simplification
               thus, we continue laying it on thickly
I, with my hyperbolic cuppa tea and honey,
       he's all brass tacks, no nonsense black coffee
ultimately, we reservedly seek gratification,
      envisioning who functionally makes it first
to a finished line of manifestations's publication,
           in eternity's poetic intentions and beyond

I'll be on the front lines
Fighting fireflies on a Golf Course
With a butterfly net

Collecting ghosts in mason jar
to plant back on the cemetery
The crows are making nests
in the skull of your family

They accidentally put
the wrong name on yours
And in Latin!
It's ok though, because you're
(were) Are?  a nihilist

The river Nile is the
best stream of consciousness
Known to man and of
Course that's where you drowned
your metaphorical thoughts
While you hung yourself above
a treadmill trying to pretend
you wanted to be a better
man

But you only ran away

The Stonehenge is the front gate
to your home
          It's made from
      billboards and
Pictures of static
When you're dead you
                        Live in White Noise

You're turning my lights
on and off
               as I'm trying to sleep
haunting me in
my over easy eggs
making the yolk run
in words "Miss me?"

And of course I do
But you are as good a my imaginary friend

When I'm walking in the
park with all the scarecrows
you make the dandelions
float, no amount of
wishes is bringing you back

I know boards of wood are
easier to you than the termites
eating the tumor in my brain
          from the insanity you're causing me

So instead I paper mache my
room with love letters from you
that got lost in the mail
because you stole them for me
A banksy bankrupt in original thought

I'm building a tiny forest
             of matches
If I can't sleep I'm joining you

So you pack your bags, hobo
style but with
Picnic baskets and dead leaves
Seancing yourself
With the crystal ***** of my eyes

I lost you in some newspaper ad
about a Home for sale
Does it come with a family?
How is that legal?
But I lost you because I bought the wrong copy and couldn't find that one blurry word that was you saying
Good morning

I lost you at sea
  And in my dreams
      And to your own hands
   And to my own memory

I'm dancing with wolves
Called Alzheimer's
because I'll die
with a disease of age
Instead of house burning, building leaping
Front Page

Then we'll go live in abandoned
amusement parks with creaky
Ferris wheels turning
Like you in your grave
And me with the Cycle of Life