Emotions- empathy
I’m asphyxiating
Can’t contain the irony
The fact that he loved her all along
While I was jealous and
It’s spilling over like a child. Pouring
too much milk into a tall kitchen glass.

It spills into the crevices
In the floor,
Spreads under the round table
Makes way for the wooden legs

Make a mess, sure
But don’t forget
to clean it up.

I want to name my veins
After hurricanes;
This one,
In my wrist, pale blue, yet somehow
I can see the trail, this one
Is named Rita,
Because it washed away
The man I loved in Texas,

The ocean is never as salty as
My cheeks when I kiss him
Through the miles
He counts the stars,
and I try to count them too
So I lay in bed counting stars
That I can’t see
But this popcorn ceiling will do.

Inspiration
Doesn’t come,
Doesn’t last long enough
Doesn’t do her job.

Those Muses
Lived long ago and still think
about visiting
Or should
But don’t

They laugh in beautiful sounds
like singing from a choir
“You can’t write”
they say, “you know nothing,

Of life
Of love
Of desire
Of ecstasy”

But we know
We are blocked,
but we still reign over this
plane of our words

here we find comfort
we find life and existence
we don’t need their control

Humanity stumbles here
Searching for purpose but
We’ve found ours
Us writers, us sunshine seekers
As the pale moon hangs
And doesn’t wholly fade
When the light breaks the east.
We are in two places at once
All the time

We see
Centipedes as steeds
A dandelion
Is a universe
We find hope in the mundane
No need for patterns, seek them anyway
Because the gum on the sidewalk
Is a boat, sailing some sea
Somewhere in a depth of our
imagination
And that is inspiration.

I saw my grandfather today,
He's been dead seven years.
His smell still lingers,
On his old jacket
that hangs in my mother's closet.
Sometimes, I take it
and breathe him in.

His voice, coarse in his
last few fighting days,
used to ring deeply.
I hear him sometimes,
whispers from the air.

I saw my grandfather today.
He was driving,
The same green Nissan
The one my mother now owns.
He had his favorite blue cap on
It hangs in my room,
one in a sea of many
that adorn my
dead-limbed coat hanger.

I saw him,
Same wide starry-eyed grin.
He used to smile like that
when he was racking
up a game of eight-ball
mischievous twinkle in his eye.
Skilled hands
that knew the game
And never lost.

He was there,
same "old spice and everything nice"
scent.
It reminds me of the summers
days winding into hours
I spent them all in the
cool, fan-whipped air
of his game room.
Our sanctuary.

Maybe you know
your own sorrow
when a loved one goes.
Maybe. You know
how memories feel
now that we are hollow
and alone.

Your eyes open briefly
And you wake up reeling
No knowledge of where you are
Why you were lying next to that stranger
Exposed but not vulnerable
No, you haven’t been innocent in some time.

All your problems were gone.  But now,
They’re back and your memories?
Sharp as ever.
He hits you, and that’s your excuse
To slowly **** yourself each night
With a different man and a different drug.

Inspiration
Doesn’t come,
Doesn’t last long enough
Doesn’t do her job.

Those muses
So long ago, still visit
Or should
But don’t

They laugh in beautiful sounds
like singing from a choir
You can’t write
they say, you know nothing.

Of life
Of love
Of desire
Of ecstasy

But we know
We are blocked,
but we still reign over this
plane of our words

here we find comfort
we find life and existence
we don’t need their control
Be the Inspiration

Recollected in Tranquility,
He said;
Take a tempest wailing
her majesty
each crescendo falling
seamlessly
following the next
her droplets
sing in patterns
those patterns we know
those patterns we adore
each more elaborate than the last
those patterns are humanity
each of her drops strike
delightfully ringing
her lilting sounds against tin roofs
And her heart tastes Freedom.