I've heard and read lovers recite
On love about their love;
… a full petalled blossom
in a silver vase...

Trite, I thought,
and so blase.
If what I recall is true.

I see my lover more like clover,
Spreading along a tree laden brook,
On a pathway through sun-streamed woods;
Spreading, thriving, covering green,
A more vibrant, living floral scene.

Trite, I think.

most people can exist like
a rubber ball;
floating, bobbing around in the water,
unaffected, intact.

i exist like
a paper boat;
floating fraily,
until I wither and sink.

You're the first person I think about when I wake up from my dreams.

Like the sun warms the earth, you warm my skin.

Like the birds sing to the waking world, your tired voice tugs a string in my heart that makes me smile.

Like the smell of freshly baked bread, you're the pleasant aroma that makes my mouth water and leaves me wanting more of you.

Like the color of the sky at dawn, you make me glad that God made you so beautiful, without flaw.

You're my sanity.
You're my saving grace.
You're my answer.
You're my angel.
You're my reason.
You're my revival.
You're my best friend.
You're my better half.

*You're so much more than the woman of my dreams.

loving you is like the wind
the way my lungs fill with air
when I breathe you in

loving you is like the sun
the way your skin keeps me warm
when the cold nights come

if falling asleep in your arms
means waking up to the same alarm
then I've never wanted to fall as hard

loving you is like loving your heart

I want to say I'm an unopened novel on your bookshelf,
but that would mean I'm the Harry Potter series
(if I remember correctly)
and I might be, I wouldn't know -I've never read them,
but I've been in your hands enough to be a bit worn,
and there could've been so many chapters of us
if you had just opened the first book.

I'm an encyclopedia of a subject
you never got interested enough to read;
so much information, so much to learn
but my cover is plain, and my words are complicated
and there's magazines on your brother's dresser
of beautiful girls and little words,
so why would you ever waste time on me?

But I'm a wine-box full of scripted letters never sent,
and you're downing liquor as if to forget something,
and I hope you never try to forget me.

I wish you downed me like you did of that bottle,
but like old-wine, my cork was tight
and you didn't have the patience to open me.
Old wine has more flavour,
at the surface I'm sober;
at the core, I'm drunk.

We could've fallen in love
if we had taken the time to learn each-other;
but we started as strangers, and ended as strangers,
except now I'm left collecting dust on my own shelf.

I've been writing letters to a stranger
I swear I could have loved.

(NJ2014) (© All Rights Reserved)

The night,
Like a panting black dog
Falling exhausted upon the day
Like his favorite old blanket.

A worthless instrument filled with sentiment
That is what I want to take
   from when I thoroughly become benevolent.

I yearn a reminder of a version
Of myself where I don't have piercing eyes
Or a cold body
Or a stifling loathe of beings similar to myself
Or a need to curl up to a ball when pens *****

Ah fornicate this I can't write anymore

There's a hope buried in me
It multiplies like bamboo shoots entangling
It says grow thorns, be turgid
It says pop horns, stay frigid

I walk down the corridor constantly defying myself
I'm one character I think
Am I