The story I read, some forty years now,
Burns inside my head.
A young woman, ***** violently
By two brothers,
Hands and face mutilated,
The horror on her father's face.
Vengeance was his alone,
As he murdered her assailants,
And boiled down their bones.
His name was Titus.
The story was four hundred years old.
Re-told from a story three thousand years older.
Re-told today.
Rwanda, Bosnis, Syria, Jordan, Dahlmer et al.
Disfiguration with acid,
Limbs gone missing,
Tongues cut out, black sockets,
Missing parts of humanity
In prison camps and resistence movements.
We're still baking pies and feeding on human flesh.
Shakespeare was never so violent.

I
Played
Shakespeare's
Ghost
And
I
Won!!!!

I'm sinking, I'm drowning under
Endless streams of confusion
I wonder
If I could stem the flow
Could you silence the thunder?
My thoughts a storm
My mind's asunder

Shakespeare said love is a smoke
raised with the fume of sighs
So are we suffocating under it?
Or enjoying the intoxicated times?
Who'd of guessed I can't breathe
When I think about the goodbyes
From wading through lies
To restraining my indignation
Remembering my previous ties
And what I'm left with
I'll forget the unpleasant saturated state of mind
And say here's to goodbye
For the very first time

You want to know what I love about you?
I love your beaming smile
And the way it makes
Your hazel eyes squint
And the way you kiss me like
I just got off a battleship

I love your soft cheeks
And pouty lips
I love your messy hair in my face
When your delicate head
Lays upon my chest

And the feeling of your soft skin
Pressed against mine
Your naive laughter
Bounces moonbeams through my chest
And makes your dark eyes shine

I love the way your body fits
So perfectly in my arms
Right next to mine
Like we were molded together
Long ago
Two lost pieces
That aligned in time
Like when Orion meets
Artemis in the winter sky

Far away from tear filled nights
Gasping last words
Into a phone speaker
As she says it didn't mean a thing
Like a pretty old box
Holding an abonded engagement ring

Last chance
Car crash and last breath
But every moment leading to the next
And you fall into my life like a comet

You ask what I love about you?
I'll tell you someday
To tell you now

Is like printing the words of Shakespeare
On soft cover page

Living in the style of a Shakespearian play,
we are all tragedies,
Perhaps with a comedy thrown in the middle.

You and I,
We’ve been the
Lovers
In this
Divine Comedy
Far Longer than
Romeo or Juliet
Could bear to wait.

Yes, we have abandoned
The Unities of
Time
Place
And Action

So harshly,
That even we
Have grown into
A bored audience;

Searching out
Our Comedic Ending

But we’ve never really been
Good at timing.  

We’ve made our
Repeated Exits.

Always coming back
A Cue
Too early
Or
A Line
Too late.

Each time
Twisting words
And Actions
Trying to make
Each other fit back into
Our Plot.
But what if we are the truest
Star Crossed Lovers

As our plays don’t even
Have the same
Title?

It has always been
“To be with eachother
or
To Not be with eachother”

And I really, really don’t want
To end like Hamlet.

But the fault seems to be
In the stars,
As each of our
Actions
Seems to seek
More and more
For a resolution

That neither
Our
Stage Directions
Nor
Lines
Seem to offer.

We round ourselves out
With table work
And character development

But with each interaction
We find that we are
Static, together.  

It seems as if
We were a rough draft,
Left unfinished.

So we stand on this
Threshold,
Clinging to another possible
Classic.
But dissolving into the oblivion
That all
Unfinished works of Art
must face.

We are less than a tragedy,
As our deaths are silent
And no one will ever weep at our tale,
Simply because it will never have been told.

At my brink of oblivion,
I want you to know
Our story should be a history,
Simply a reflection
On the fact
That we were
Not fiction.

Lower than
King Henry
And
King Charles,

But Still,
Real
Like
A Golden Crown
For which we did not ****,
But simply pleaded
To no avail.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
No—
That bard Will has beaten me to it.
Half a league, half a league—
But the Light Brigade gives its thanks
to my Lord Alfred.
I know why the caged bird sings!
Oh wait—
That’s what Maya knows.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
I’ll take the road less traveled,
but only cause that’s what Robert said.
What’s left for me to write?
Thoughts swirl in my head,
and out through my pen.
Art has taken written form.
I know what I’ll write.
The world will love it.
I will love it.
And I’ll keep writing,
I’ll keep writing till the sidewalk ends—
Really, Shel?
You had to take that one too?
But no matter…
I’ll show you,
someday.