There are no words that can describe
my love to you, a heartfelt vibe
my body shudders with loving daydream
the heart is bursting from lover's esteem.

Nothing can stop me, I'm the wind through the stone
this love excites me, my mind has flown
my smile is a sign, something unique
A lovestruck swan with nothing to seek

Thoughts of you are waves on an endless shore
a rising rose whose beauty I adore
melody that caresses my mind
sweetly played and gets rewind

like birth of a toddler, my love hiss
Heaven's greatest wonder, love of bliss
my mighty love a floral arch
a newly sprung at the end of March

Paints my heart, with blooming scent

You wore your tattoos
Just like your heart
On your sleeves of wonderful art
Each tells a story, a reason
Each admired and seen
But it was your heart
That wanted to be seen, heard
It was your heart that had the reasons
Of why you were art itself
Your skin adored
But it was the heart that yearned
A canvas for black ink, worn proudly
An uncolored heart, worn openly
You loved the pain of the needle
But you feared the pain of your vessel
Despite it all
You wore your heart on your sleeve
Aching to be filled, colored
To tell its story, its love
Your most beautiful tattoo
Is the empty outline
Of where your love should be

We were artists
But you had the brush
And I had the pen
You drew the worlds, the people
I wrote down the feelings, explanations

You captured the images perfectly
While I can only guess at the words
The way you moved your brush
While I can only stick to lines
Beauty versus perfection

You express your worlds radiantly 
But I can only write in black and white
I wished I traded my pen for a brush
To feel the colors you weaved 
To see the world beyond my script

Maybe if I knew how to color
If my pen drew more than rigid letters
You would have understood me 
In a world of black and white 
You were the color in my life

i wrote  
again.  

(a minor miracle: after  
8 years of not caring for the craft
let's call it deviceful degeneration,
unintentional uninspiration)  
                                    
the thing about  
nearly getting better  
is  
you start  
thinking you're better.  

i wrote something this week  
(it wasn’t bad)  
sat back in the chair like  
i'd just nailed  
a wasp to a wall  
with a pencil.  

but this morning—  
the poem’s still there  
and the chair still squeaks  
and the rot in my ribs  
hasn’t gone anywhere.  

eight years  
of eating my own teeth  
chewing time like  
it owed me something.  
"writer’s block"  
was a nice excuse  
for cowardice.  
so was  
"perfectionism"  
but now  
i’ve got words again.  
& i just realised
they don’t save me.  
they never did.  

the poems may come back  
but what if the fulfilment
doesn’t?
  
so what now?  
what’s left  
after the confetti  
after the applause  
dies in your own throat?

you write.  
maybe you write.  

even if  
no one  
is waiting.  

even if  
you  
aren’t either.  

& if the ache comes back  
(which it will)  
you greet it at the door  
let it crash on the couch  
pour it a drink  
& say  
fine.  
one more night

a man came up to me today
and told me I might look prettier
if I coated my mirror
with the blood of the golden goose
and call me cynical
or a caveman
or a luddite
or whatever
but I didn’t believe him.

a blue great shark  
(she)  
   wears muscle like    wet velvet

          a  
     slip   of fang’d prayer,  
  flitting      between glass  
       (between    god)  
              & the breathless hymn of vacuumed air

           I: was              not born to trap—
but you
          (brine-womb'd deity, slit of eye & icepick heart)

         how you undulate: (slower than sound faster than thought)
   the way a sigh    pulls threads from skin  
             & your dorsal dreams
      puncture my             museum bones

                        (curators watch—)  
with    chloroform-thirsting hands  
          & tongues that catalog moan  
                        in latin

                "carcharodon carcharias (desire in aqueous form)"  
                 whispered into tubes of   blue    gel-light

they                (we)  
    hunted her in sonatas  
            dissonant harpoons      
                            like broken violins
                      stitched with heartbeat wire

   a net of     unreason, &     peach-blind codes

           she swallowed our time  
                        whole

(yes)  
& spat it out      garnished with  
                         cumulus

                          (‘*** in bubblewrap’  
                             & I wept:  
                                   not for her  
                                       but because)  

you should see  
   the way her eye  
                 bends around corners  
       like velvet crawling up the leg of the void

       (can glass blush?)  
            mine does.

        the trap was not a cage  
                   (never a cage)
              it was a vowel—
   unspoken  
                    caught between  
         two mouths                  both too full of salt
                    to say "stay"

they filed her fins  
         under “****** geometry”  
          & mopped her breathless body with silk
               (I dream in that silk now)

   mythology in the gift shop:
                 $17.99 / laminated lust

    "do not tap the glass"—  
         the signs say
    (we tap anyway)  
         it sounds like  
                    a kiss

                          —or knuckles  
                                  trying to remember what “prayer” felt like  
                                   before museums

she moves inside
                   (me?)  
     (it?)  
             the tank of days
                            like a wound that doesn’t know  
                                     how to close

                   her movement becomes time:  
            an ellipse of pelvic   clocks  
                            hips made of tide

          (I counted the ******* by wave-height)

  a fin shadows my sleep
        & my sleep is
             /liquid/ & /open/
                   & /wanting/
                       & /neverthirsted enough/

the exhibit is called  
            “arousal in lowercase”

        the plaque reads:  
            “species suspended in ****** amnesia”  
        (but I know:  
                     she swims to remember)

her gills—
         fractal *******
                   (every inhale an alphabet of longing)  

          & oh how she  
                   spells me

a.museum.is.nothing  
                   but a lung that cannot  
                    exhale

   & when I press against the glass
             (mouth to pane)  
     she flicks a tail      —just enough—  
                       & I almost break

   the security guard has seen this before

“don’t worry,” he says  
    “it happens to everyone”

           (but I am not everyone)  
                I am the one who kissed her name  
                         into the salt

I was not born to trap  
       but born by the trap  
               untrapping me  
                  through her

         & now (she)  
       is the one watching  
            me
               in a tank

          mouth full of air
                     no words left
        just one endless  
             fin  
                   curl  
                         ~  
                            loop  
                          ­        of  
                                      shiver

      ­       & she swims  
                        through  
                       ­     (my glass heart)

Since it was such a beautiful day,
my high school art teacher had us go out to sketch a section of the school.
I have reason to believe we were faced away from the scenery the entire time.
Someway,
somehow,
the sweet sublime of noontime in spring was consumed completely by unbridled,
uncleansed boredom.
We stared down the ugly,
open hallway that our teacher almost tried to persuade us is pretty.
The dirt between the two sidewalks had been so pressed down from rain and being trampled,
it would often be confused for the sidewalk when students didn’t watch their step.
The pebbles by where we sat were covered in dust,
about as dry as the spot made me feel.
There were a few trees that stood like awkward,
gawking freshman boys.
The hall was lined with faded paint,
and asymmetrically placed doors,
windows,
and polls.
Altogether it was an urban obstruction.