He takes photos.
His books are filled
With spilled coffee.
Wavy sun ray hair
Lime green citrus eyes
Sturdy safe shoulders
Rich, melted dark chocolate voice
Pouty peony puckers
Stolen lenses
Quirky movies
Oversized sweaters to cover his quivering hands when he cautiously holds hers.
He reminds me of a child's desk
That was personalized by doodles dinged and carved into it over the years
The desk that his parents probably adore.
He is a collage of all the things he photographs.
He takes pictures of anything and everything
To make himself whole.

sometimes
if you stop breathing
you can hear
you can hear the sound
of the single drop of water
as it drips
onto a bit of tin
amidst the grass and the mud
or the sound of the ducks’
feathers as they play
in the eddies
or the sound of the sun
as it rises over the grey canal
kissing it to life
over treetops that are
japanese watercolours
and boats moored in the marina
memories of a time gone by

sometimes
if you stop breathing
you can feel
you can feel the breeze
on the hair of your arms
the wind as it chills your fingers
and you exhale
dragon breath
sometimes
if you stop breathing
you can feel
life
in death

sometimes
if you stop breathing
you gasp
as you take in the details
the masthead
on a boat
a dragon
with horns?
a greek god
to keep storms away?
hammered iron and blue
a totem
a good luck charm
a protective spell

sometimes
if you stop breathing
everything fades
and all we have
is the now
the single breath
pain vanishes
and all that remains
is bliss

To be classifiable, she nervously applies the cake to her nostrils
While splinters stick in her fingertips. 30. To be a woman she
Harvests necrotic insects and dances in Warhol underpants.

I explain how gravity loves the catalogue of your unique hollywood
Romances. Each train takes a new storyline through the ****** treetops
And counterfeit addictions she poises herself in to seem attractive to
Each magazine under her daddy's workbench.

Being a woman is more than big ***** and paint for brains. Some skins Cling to the reels of the love language sprinting through historical Venetian street settings. I smoke ***** with wizards.

For the first time I witness the acatalepsy of the Irish, but narrowly
Passing the beguiling succor that renders the whim of persons
In the acronychal hours.

I'm telling you your hands are my new exoskeleton. I take to you
With the excitement of gravity. New denude photographs of pallor
Fleshes upstay the human trials we are blessed to share in this open sky,
Where I warn the blues of the sky to be jealous of these sciophilous Women who experience the unyielding pressure to feel the pleasures
Our confabulations offer acushla.

I am prepared to caravan our
Cargo across the country into
New times zones.

Carpool with our college friends
Through rush hour traffic and back roads
Without street lights or deer crossing signs.

Pledge my allegiance to the
Fraternity of road trippers who
Believe all homes are mobile.

Measure myself by interstate
Mile markers—every township line
We cross is an invisible stamp
On the passport of my soul.

Spend bathroom breaks between pilgrimages
Gluing Polaroid pictures of our expedition
Next to city names in our road atlas.

Learn how to **** into coke
Bottles in bumper to bumper
Traffic between rest stops.

Discover new reasons to live
As the glow of brake lights guides
Me toward the next exit.

to capture the sun kissing the sea
is to feel like every trophy in this world deserves to be yours,
to capture an interior without individuals
is to perceive a beauty that's never been told.

to capture the speed of light in busy streets
is to write a thousand thoughts in a minute,
to capture the hidden words in one's countenance
is to reveal the surreptitious lines that are meant to be confessed.

but to be able to capture your heart
is to capture all these things at once.

My friends wonder why
I'm acting so care free,
so giddy.
They haven't put the pieces
together yet.
Like a picture that hasn't developed,
the result a secret.

You're my secret.

You're always in my mind,
constantly.
I can only focus on you,
and nothing else.
Like how cameras focus on one object
and blur everything else.

All our time together,
is stored in my mind forever.
Like the pictures I have of us,
tucked safely away in the shoebox
in my closet.

Maybe to you I'm nothing more than shades
Of black and white.
The dark and the light at war,
tearing apart a broken body
Until it's left to waste.
Shadows haunting an already ghost of a soul.
Your shutter always sticks so that
I come out in incomplete smudges.

I used to exist in color,
But maybe that's too far gone.
Those photos are all lost
Or melted by the sun.

Red lips and brown eyes --
Glossed over now, as black.
Peachy skin and soft freckles...
Look sickly white, a dotted grey.

Your pictures are framed in galleries,
And people ponder what they may mean...
But my old photographer, all of his pictures were only meant for me.