I have a memory as a child,
of propeller planes droning lazily in clear blue skies.
In the field, lying down squinting up,
blocking bright sunlight with one hand to see the planes up high.
The moment seemed eternal then, and preceded responsibility.
So many seconds have ticked by since,
I can’t be sure if the memory is truly mine,
or is captured from a book, or film or song.
But as I hear that drone again today, the sun warms my bones regardless.

One day I will be different.
One day things will change.
You will no longer hold power over me,
The power that you cannot see.
You will no longer haunt my dreams,
The dreams will cease to be.
My thoughts will no longer be plagued by you.
These will disappear as I age.
One day I will be new,
I will not be the girl you once knew;
The girl that you once broke,
And as for you-
You will be nothing but a very distant memory.

I just want to say, right from the start, that I loved her.

Not in the neon bright light, two a.m. sparkling pavement, uptown New York City way. No, much more in the ice-cold Dos Equis’ beading in the summer dusk sunlight way, and in the way the sound they made when slid to us across scarred wooden bars.

Or maybe in the way she laughed when her fingers became tangled when she held a pool cue, and the way she didn’t care when she missed the ball completely – and then laughed some more.

But mostly in the way when faced with the poet’s choice of cowardice or courage, how she scratched furiously along the page, her thoughts spilling shamelessly across the white until she rested and read the words she had written, and when she knew she was no closer to immortality, the way she reached for another page.

In that way.

the worst part is when
my memories of you twist into
what i've see in pictures and then
when i think of you, i can't tell whether
it's the you i know or the one from the pictures

I know, I know, I am nobody
I am not worth remembering
I am wasting your time, I'm sorry

But I just want to try to be
Someone worth something
Like some sort of celebrity

I am no master like Keats
Or Basquiat or Mccartney
Or a philosopher of Greece

I am just a half Man half
Wolf parasite From the city
Who others pick and laugh

At. But I hope that in my poetry
I may become more than human
Something lovely like a rosary

Or magnificent like strawberries
With the redness of life blood
With the life force of eddies

I just want to outlive my flesh
Be remembered by some descendant
Live my life afresh

I want my poems to flood
The plains of their soul
And travel through their blood

Or be a lighthouse in the wild sea
That life offers them and be
A guide to the safe shore of creativity

Or be the lullaby as they sleep
Through the night of uncertainty
And give them dreams deep.

But as things stand, all things falls apart
And I can't even find comfort
In the traces of my art

So I take what's left of myself
Walk through the woods of my life
And find rest in the universe's shelf

I'm writing a poem for you
So that I could exist again
For a short time anew

So that I could share my heart
Fingers blossoming red
With the blood of my art

Read it on the mountainside
Or by the sea, or in the desert
As if I have not died

And sing it to the people
So that I could be heard
In their souls and let it ripple

Or keep it to yourself
It doesn't matter. Put it
In the notebook on your shelf

Take it out from time to time
To amuse yourself for old time's sake
With my simple rhyme.

All I want do is to touch
You from beyond this existence
Because I love you so much

This is the only way I know
Words I wrote on a screen
I have no other skills to show

|small gee for god; big bee for byron|
Strikes a chord with you, does it?
This shambling poverty of thought,
Insta-rated and underwhelming;
Thank god for Byron.

|keats versus shelley|
Sparing no injury to his phthisicky frame,
Keats lies atop a make-believe of cherry trees
Searching among the clouds
For wealth, health and a Grecian urn,
While Shelley does Venice
And blows himself a hookah.

|o poesy! for thee I grasp my pen|
Panning the wayward sky for inspiration,
A hope, a word, a beginning;
A versification so ecstatic as to transfix the senses and pierce the heart,
A lightning phrase capable of uprooting all commonality,
As outrageous a miracle in the minds of men as crucified immortality.

|requiem|
Unlike the wilting rose which has no higher calling
Than to bloom and die upon the stem,
And having relinquished its last perfumed petal
Retreat from memory again,
I fear that I shall linger,
Tethered to this eternal moment
By shudd’ring will and breath combined,
A brighter shade of myself than what of me I have left behind.

Saltwater rushes over warm sands,
refreshing the heat.
I part the ocean with my hands
while trying not to weep.
This memory;
so sweet,
so far away,
so faded,
my last good memory.
Winds still bring the ocean breeze
to me
wherever I be and
warm tears rushes over cheeks.