Is this talking? A fleeting glance,
Another episode of our non-romance,
He's eye candy for older babes,
He'll saunter off one day,
Is this talking? He blows a kiss,
Imagine being his old miss of bliss!

Remember this bliss
A state of divine, ingrained in the mind
Euphoria seen in the glimpse of an eye

Cars are flying down the 41
Like everyday, one hits another one.
Pretty soon the cops will come
Delays will stay consistent,
Fatality they say over those radios.
You're running late for work
Thinking these jerks need to move
A blessing you can have those thoughts,
It wasn't your life death did choose
But no, we don't think like that and
Oh, there must be something we are owed.

A man goes to the doctor to get an answer,
Confirmed it was cancer so he's told.
Radiation could save his life,
While he holds his breath to hear the price.
Ten thousand a month, now he knows.
Choosing to survive to not be able to survive.
But no, we don't think like that and
Oh, there must be something we are owed.

There's a child starving out there,
Elderly with no place to go.
People with nothing still wanting to share,
As you read, someone lost their home.
But no, we don't think like that and
Oh, there must be something we are owed.

When you were eleven
and shy and shuffled your feet

from classroom to classroom
in that middle school, eyes downcast,

avoiding bullies like a midge fly
zipping away from the hungry maws of

rainbow trout lurking in
a mountain stream,

your father sat you down
at the dinner table on a cold Monday

night, over a steaming plate
of meatloaf and a baked

potato and some type of microwaved
canned vegetable

(the same meal that he served
every Monday night),

and he lectured you about the
importance of direct eye contact,

always making
direct eye contact,

while he held the fork in his left hand
and pointed it at you,

its tines coated
in starches and ketchup,

like he was jamming
his index finger straight into your forehead.

“Never look away when someone is
staring at you,” he said. “It

shows that you are afraid. It
shows that you are weaker than they are.”

Then, to make his point, he held his
eye contact—an aggressive, primal stare—

with you, an introverted child,
for as long as he could,

knowing that it would hurt you,
that it would make you wince and cringe,

but hoping that it would strengthen you,
solidify some resolve deep

within you, foster the germination
of some thorny plant there

beneath your sternum, which
over time would grow into

a gnarled cuirass designed to
protect you against the world

and make you into a Man—a true Man’s Man,
the kind of Man who uses his hairy

knuckles to smash his problems—the kind
of Man who eats red meat and drives

a truck, and never backs down
from a ******* contest, even with

an introverted eleven-year-old boy,
and so on, and so forth. Of course,

no such hardness ever germinated
within you, and whatever bond it was

that existed between you
and your father there beneath

your sternum simply frayed
in that moment—a sacred rope

spanning generations
suddenly transmuted into dust.

And of course
you looked away ashamed,

and your father was ashamed, too,
not for his own abhorrent behavior,

but because you were his child.
But he was also proud of himself

in that moment for showing
what a Man he was now,

for finally having proved his own father,
your grandfather,

wrong,
even after all of those years had passed.

I'm the two year old
With white hair and wrinkly skin-
Mother's eyes' magic

here's to you, my love:

here’s to your hair,
        the soft, soft strands on your head, light brown and golden
        in bright light,
        in my hands, stroking and detangling until your heartbeat
           steadies.
here’s to your eyes,
        hazel, streaked with green in your right, speckled with green in
            your left,
        kind,
        soulful, charming, comfortable, i cannot look away.
here’s to your nose,
        red in the cold,
        warm and soft when you rub it against mine,
        and we laugh and i brush my thumb against your cheek.
here’s to your lips,
        the first lips that have met mine, delicate yet titillating,
        curving into a smile from your hairline to your chin,
        i could draw it in my sleep.
here’s to your shoulders,
        broad and muscular and made to fit my head perfectly,
        carrying the weight of the world, the burdens of your heart,
        the things i’ve left room on my shoulders to carry with you.
here’s to your chest,
        resembling sculpted marble under the hands of Michelangelo,
        caging a heart of honey and sweet water and sunshine and
            sunshine and sunshine,
        steady under the palm of my hand.
here’s to your hands,
        the scars and calluses, the story of you,
        the things they create, bright and beautiful and true,
        the way they feel on the small of my back, holding the pieces of
            me together.
here’s to us,
        and the simple fact that out of a hundred billion galaxies,
        two hundred thousand years of humanity,
        and seven and a half billion beating hearts,
        mine and yours intertwined in the way that they did.

There's a seat right smack-dab in your mind,

A seat that's not that hard to find,

Where passion and grace, find a meeting place and love is eclipsing of time,

When asked how, I say now,

Cause its not when or then,

And I feel like that's blowing your mind?

...is a purple curtain

behind this curtain
is your flesh

behind your flesh
is your ego

behind your ego is the real you
we've been on a journey
like grandpa and grandmom
take me away
take me to the place of the real you