I

am

blocked.

I

have

lost

the

fire

in

my

soul,

only

embers

left.

burning

orange

as

they

slowly

disappear.

and

I

do not

know

when

the

air

will

return

to

my

lungs

so

that

I

may

burn

brilliantly

again,

spitting

words

into

the

wind

and

finally

feeling

myself

once

more.

Numbness of creation,
Loss of literature.
Words feel empty,
Yearning to gather them up and use them... But they escape,
More like an attempt to paint with dry paint and a dry brush,
But words always fly back to their owners,
Filled and inspired; they fly back to the one to write them.

I own a library of thoughts in my eyes
     With your eyes alone.
There is no other way to know you,
But to compile and compress it deep
     Within my heart,
To flourish inwardly, to perish,
And to strive for
The academic excellence of greater love
And be the scholarly fool
     Of your divine complexities.

What can I say? I love your Astronomies,
Philosophies and Geographies. I love you
To the fact, to the fiction and back,
To the histories and the mysteries.
I can't unstudy your laughter.
     I am ignorant to your full allure.

Love, I only love you, your pretty eyes,
Because they close and reopen,
     Capture and imagine,
They wander and they wonder,
     And such is the way of life.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

When you make love to me, you unbutton
     The black jeans of the universe,
You discover worlds, paths, stars,
Dwarves and giants, the viciousness
     Of a blackhole, a machine,
          Swallowing everything.
Yes, you make love to me,
As though to pour milk on the full moon,
     You turn q into d, my love,
          A crochet to a demisemiquaver,
And you make rhapsodies and raptures,
     And records, as I make them envy,
          All the suns.*

© 2016 J.S.P.

Poetry is my public apology, for loving
     And hurting you too much. I bleed
In adjectives. My scars appear
Randomly at the last pages
Of your old notebooks.
     I am revision. I am bare.
I do not know darkness which can
Shadow me, but this: that you
Can see, somehow, this cosmos,
     This timeless chaos,
The divine, the celestial, guiding you
     To count on, and count
     And count and count
          The stars again.*

© 2016 J.S.P.

I am a crimson crescent
     Encircling you, embracing you,
Not quite fully, as though me
Understanding you, no,
     There is a space enough for you
To open up to the world, and cover
Yourself for me as a mystical wonder
     Or beauty, my flower, my lovely,
My hollander tulip, a heat, a tidal wave,
     A gift, a butterfly.*

© 2016 J.S.P.

It's a new guy this time
He has the same jacket and gloves
But it's definitely a new guy
I pull the collar of my coat with
The tips of my fingers
And approach the roped off entrance
Of the building

He stops me with a
Sudden hand on my chest
"I'm sorry sir,
but you're not allowed
in today."

"What? Not allowed? I was
Just here yesterday. The guy
At the door let me right in."

"No matter sir. You're not
Allowed in today."

"Well, ****."

I take a seat on the
Rain painted curb
And stare at my reflection
In a ***** puddle

Some cookie cutter schlub
Comes down to the same partition
I was turned away from
The rope is lifted without a word
From either of them

I un-crane my neck from
The door's direction
Meeting my own stare in
The puddle of ***** water
Again

I push off the curb with
Renewed energy and
Approach the doorman again

"Alright, I think I can go in now."

He pulls his white gloves
By the wrist to eliminate any
Excess space in his fingertips
And meets my eyes
With a smug look on his face
And shakes his head

How the hell are his gloves so white
When all the puddles around here
Are so filthy

"Just because you were in here
Yesterday sir,  does not mean
That you will be allowed entry
Today. I'm sorry, but that's the
Way that things work."

I bend my mouth into an
Upside down horseshoe
Studying the gaudy marquee above
The padded door

The doorman sees me staring at the blinking
Chipped letters
Sensing my resentment
He tightens his gloves again
And stares at the brick wall
Across the alley

I wander off in the rain
To go find something
Else to do

If I start to write a poem, will I finish it this time
Or will I give up midway through, because there aren't enough rhymes
In this old dreadful, awful language born of brutal feudal swine
Wearing wigs and pantaloons, and saying words like 'thee' and 'thine'?

If I have a hazy thought, will I succeed in making clear,
That murky bit of intuition felt, or will it disappear,
The minute I put ink to paper and begin to toy around
With all the scattered bits of insight that implicitly abound?

If I find myself inspired all the sudden by a muse,
Will she hastily retire before I can spread the news
Of all her wondrous gifts to me, that I so luckily did capture
In a transcendental state of exaltation, joy, and rapture?

If I have a vivid vision, flowing freer than the stream
Of a river, clear as crystal, and as dazzling as a dream
Will my will be of such power that I'll succeed to convey
It, or just fall flat in defeat and then retreat into dismay?

If I see sumptuous fruits that hang atop the mighty tree
That's down the road of human intellect and creativity
Will my reach extend sufficiently to gather them and bring
Them back into...into... oh, **** it! I can't think of anything.

                                                (╯°□°）­╯︵ ┻━┻