They can keep that wine,
Which has festered for shorter than they
Have rotted inside of crystalized skin.
I’ll live without my heartbeat as
I force space travel to meet my dreams
Of breathing a Titan’s methane air
And swimming in Neptune’s seas.

The thrones they have and the jocks’ lives they wear
Do not interest me,
Not when I have breathed in Tin Pan Alley’s air
And watched Kings play golden trumpets
Up to the high Cs.

They can cling to their castles
Where only cobwebs grow.
I’d rather drag along clunky boxes
With black and green light screens
That shrink down to my palm,
While the numbers within dance free.

Frankly, they can shutter themselves away
Amongst dark corridors and coffins.
I’ll take the Worldwide Web
Every single day.
Over their lifeless deaths
I’ll spend eternity my way.

she,
in a simple nightgown
he,
in cotton pyjamas

nearing dusk,
as they laughed
while holding
the others hand

bare feet brushing
along the
soft bristles
of the rug

the radio
softly playing
a tune of
jazz

what a time
to be alive

Alice Coltrane, your music brings something out of me,
Something nameless
something I keep buried.
As I lay on this bare mattress, humming along to “Turiya And Ramakrishna”
I ponder if you knew your legacy.
If during those last days in 2007, you ever thought your work could inspire poets of the next generation
or was that even a question lingering between your tempels?
Perhaps not.

Well as this pen dances to the melodies you wrote,
I think, and think
and blink
and sink
I wonder if my last hours will happen a year from now or a decade
or a month
or a week
And what will remain of my creations
Have I touched enough lives
Have I loved enough souls
Have I danced enough
Gave enough
Laughed enough?

I envy the sand devoured by oceans
because it’s simply moving on to its next life
I envy photographs because their moments last forever
I envy the tortoise’s shell
I envy the hourglass because its fate is no mystery
I envy those who do not envy
I envy the days before sundials
when days simply couldn’t fit onto paper squares

I...don’t want you to worry.
I am a spark
Finite but furious
bright, unstable, contagious
and capable of lighting your way before I fade

At least I hope.

I wonder why I wish to speak to you again
Despite the fact that it felt like you never listened
You never listened.
I complained about it constantly
Wrote sonnets about your lack of focus on me
Hoping you needed hearing aids so I could blame something else
Instead of feeling unimportant
You claim differently though.
Said I built up a wall between us
And now I realize that we weren’t only not on the same page
But we were in completely different libraries
Searching two different encyclopedias
Trying to find a way to define our feelings
I wonder whose anxiety made you feel boxed in
Was it my obsessive need for structured plans that built you in
Or your neglection of problems at hand that made them pile up?
We made better construction partners than lovers
Although that doesn’t mean much
All the bridges we tried to build collapsed into our salty tears
The home we wanted to make sunk into its foundation
We should’ve stuck to classmates.
And I as to move on from another failed relationship
Building roads to a different city that needs to repair its infrastructure
I wonder if you even deserved the sonnets I wrote.

have i ever told you how your music sounds
-on soft sunday september mornings?
my apologies.

i imagine the world wakes up,
and expects there to be soft frost on the windows.
in reality, the leaves have barely begun to turn sunset colored.

we play soft jazz, something like, and waltz around the room.
we wrap our hair above our heads,
watching it droop ever so slightly until it’s puff is silken soft and messy.

and wait, until it comes time to run to school,
in those sweaters and jackets, to feel so a part of life,
jumping and dancing on cold aluminum bleachers.

the strangest thing is that i feel so close to you
-we can become the girls of dances and games and skates,
highschool sweethearts.

idly, i wonder if this strange sunday september morning
has made me wonder this,
because the music that plays in my ears seems to say yes.

it’s an ode to these girls of legend, the ones we define our lives by,
come together to watch, and slowly,
dance to the music and twirl.

also, did i mention, it’s a little dark,
because those sun rays i used to so love have truly run out and become outdated,
and the music becomes slower and turns into bright friday night lights in the dark.

Waltzing through the chaos that life’s left for today,
Dragging along my battered horn in case she wants to play
‘Scuse me, Ms. Bartender, but I’ve got something to say
Ain’t nobody listening to the radio anyway

I don’t need a soapbox, no suit or microphone
Just a space to spread the truth wherever I may roam
I speak straight from the bottom of a bottle left at home
The night is not much easier when you take it on alone

Hear ye, hear ye, gather round to hear a tale
Of dreaming big, working hard, but destined still to fail

Shredding that loopy little melody,
The craziest cat you ever did see
Make you feel so alive, ladies screaming, “Wow boy!”
I jump and I jive, cuz I’m a bebop cowboy

Remember the suddenness. How it all came in pour, and not drips or drabs.
A dauber, you were, and how you'd have to paint barefoot.
(I used to love watching you take off
your socks)
Your jaw locked and intensity gaze magnifying and ablaze.
Licentious.
You taught me that word was more than ***,
and taught me to be archaic.

You would study my studied glare as I toiled my own art.
Mostly for show, because I didn't know what to do;
with my hands or the words that needed massaging
from their tense sinews.
Then you, fashion of a muse came dancing to my stag self,
awe shucks off to the side and we'd boogie in darkness.

I left you at the altar.
You blew me a kiss with a nervous laugh,
and told me your heart beat for me like free form jazz.
Even when the music stopped and our hips ceased,
from lips you creased and then from pout poured,
"I love you, Jonathan Lore."