A whisper in the leaves,
A plea on lips
Caught in a transitory
Moment.
“Make me more like You.”
Lord, make me Love.
Make me Joy, Peace.
Make me Compassion
And Grace.
All that You are—
All You made me to be,
Make me.

Please,
Do not carve wounds upon your skin,
Do not let your blood spill thin.
Instead,
Carve pain in words upon the sheet.
Pour your sorrow out in ink.

for vicki who loves this poem for the best reason ever: just does...
<•>
read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for  twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance that  is the only concert
the imbalance that is the the only constant

how do I know this?

what are my credentials?

you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know, recall of these matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner;
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient

then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move off

  begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked.
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation
---

Waves caress my feet,
ever so gently,
wind murmurs words of love
to me,
the sun kisses my soul
so warmly.

Within this ocean of affection,
my thoughts tremble,
but my heart yearns
to drown deep,
lost in the ebb.

Negative habits, emotions, and thoughts:
feel like venom, injected by a snake.
Slowly or quickly killing me from within.
Bit by bit, or all at once.

Whatever will be, will be
I guess that's what they call destiny
But where does that leave you and me?
We'll have to wait and see
Due too love messing with thé
Predestined story

©2025

Slice where you live like pie
--this piece of heaven,
you and your cream-filled sky.

Cappuccino sweet-talk,
every dream includes a bit of sleep-walk,
the taste of last summer
floats belly-up in your cup.

When you
Speak the
Truth about
Palestine the
Devil suffers.

Your beautiful eyes are my jewelled crown,
In their depth, all my stars fall down.
A universe spun in sapphire gleam,
Where love walks softly through every dream.

Your darling lips—my sweetest cure,
A balm of flame, both fierce and pure.
With every kiss, the night turns gold,
And time forgets how to grow old.

Your gaze, a spell that bends the air,
Turns silence into sacred prayer.
And when you smile, the heavens sigh—
A blush of dawn in a twilight sky.

Let kingdoms fall, let empires cease,
If I have your breath, I have my peace.
For no throne shines, no fate is sure,
But your lovely lips—my only cure.

So wear my soul like silken gown,
Your eyes, my fate—my pride, my crown.
And in your arms, I seek no more,
For love like yours is worth the war.