When you come to my thoughts
You are none other than the billowy embodiment of a reminiscent memory
and also a current everlasting longing
You are the memory of a being or idea
one can feel and remember vividly
but can not zero in on,
for you are the intangible
the winding wind
You are those spiraling twines that place intermittent along grapevines
You are the ancient scrolls from wise days before paperback
You are the spin in the reaching center of a handcrafted wreath
And within all these
individualities and collective,
Lies your scent comprised of multiple scents
You are the mighty togetherness
Your arrival to earth escaping from birth  
gave these words to the minds of the kind
You are the winding wind who spins and twines, wreathes and scrolls who lands from time to time and when you do drop for a spell
This location of harboring landfall
is a day of new tradition,
the first step you take on new land on that new day
Becomes the origin of a new holiday
In my thoughts you are the mortar of the earth

My heads pounding
My necks twisted amuck
think I'mma stop giving a ****
Light up a blunt and do what I want -
woah wait -
ain't that the **** that got me
here in the first place?
Worst case I nervously pace
the halls for a day - two or a weekend
Blasting the weeknd
Entire enviroment reeking
shrieking -
Nah -
I'm better than that.
Can't latch onto the past.
That's the trash that got
us there at the start - instead
I prepare it in art
And share from the heart, with you.
And you.
And you and you and you.
Because why not?
It helps forget about that pinebox looming-
Thinking outside the winebox lucid -
I mean Windex, clean em out
And a win decks, stacks paper chips
You can't say this isn't some matrix blips
I am not losing ****
I am manuevering this beautiful thing
up past this ******* Nuva Ring
Cause that's life - you can get beat
or keep it on a leash - jeez
that's sexist. I don't know
where this became an accepted
comparison, its embarrassing
comparing them - to K9's
But we hear it through the grapevine
Turns of phrase we make fine.

The grapevines have never been so silent,
but it is not the oil, or changing climate.
To hear its word, you must now be beside it.

Their messages once sung loud, merrily with joy,
but now go unheard by most girl and boy.

The words that find a way to meet our ears,
have never been so full of hopelessness and fears.
The grapevines eyes swell with tears.

It seems the grapevine would no longer like to share,
for the words they are sharing have lost the love and care.
The abundant grapevine forest,
now but a desert bare.

After all of the rumors have come to cease,
the grapevines sleep tonight in peace.
Together waiting for sun of tomorrows dawn,
they pray for new coming souls to bestow whispers upon.
Holding on to hope that new messages will spawn,
and lead to beautiful pictures being drawn.

Like a captive, I capture rapture wrapping around stakes that matter
Joan of Arc battered
Also tattered but, easily dismissive
Refracted from fractured prominent phrases people play with
Distinctly persuasive and evasive, dressed boyishly attractive, lax stature, dawning armor crafted by absence as if asked about it-
I’m drifted
Protection is principle prerequisite, when fire is lit
I sort of implore your aorta before it’s incinerated to ashes
Dethatched as a habit, with swords or hatchets crafted to singe heartstrings that attached it
While I slash slick Rick as a quick fix,
To fend for pretend pretenses or presumed tricks,
I can’t quit
Cause I hit lips against hash spliffs fashioned with dashes of passion all while rationing fireball cinnamon sips
Martyr to avoidance
I gaze at fabled dazed gossipers galvanizing grips on gritty grapevines while licking warning labels through smoke haze on blurred lines
Capably unstable
Other eyes attending scandal circles able to shout lies and rekindle handed arguments on tables with locked smiles stay boxed in
Avidly amiable
Searching for counterparts when combusted or branded
Toying with matches loses meaning when rules reseed
Those vagabonds claim love is some all end hard bent to mend what the same above can’t comprehend.
Breaking boredom, I pillage pillows with night terrors
And ardent arsonists yearn for flames that churn, turn, liquefy and learn learned thoughts and smoldered feelings
Completely complacent
Melting in one another they are completing each other like two candles tryst true at a wedding day
However later the blaze is severed, smoke sears, and charred black wick stands alone for them.
Aggressive and progressive.
As for me never pleading, fire forever fleets to streets between iron bars I built that cage in deep heat and seep dire dreams once desired
Suppose I’m a skeptic
Roasted or disconnected
Just jaded, just met you
Always over it too soon
Burnt but I’m amused.
I’m useful.

I first saw it a month before he died,
When we took my father on
A drive through his high school town.
Thornton
We listened to the Shirelles
On the way, driving through vineyards
And dusty dirt roads. In Thornton,
Grapevines wither because it is cold,
The December ice too fresh, too biting
For their youthful leaves, and they die,
Brokenhearted for the flight of youth and sun.

I had a dream I smoked some ***** with a Rasta Man
while we jammed in the name of the lord to some tunes
the children of Africa roaming free like wild beast
once the cradle of civilization turned into tombs
by the ungrateful, heathen souls that ran amok
in the name of annihilation and war.

But we are fearful pious men, as we inhaled the herb
the grass is the shepherd that nourish us like Giraffes
the sky is the ceiling that we reach with our blessed hands
the rivers gives us skins like Crocs to be able to survive
harsh whether, the blood-stained desert left behind by men
witnessed by the pale eyes of the torture souls of this land.

And so we inhaled and puffed like chimneys in a North Pole night
we talked about the smiles of our seeds stretching far and wide
how beautiful is a voice when it’s brought to life by a loved one
how the scent of a pure woman can bring the dead back to life
deadlocked, we are dreadlocked like grapevines until Jah lets us
the mental slavery that keeps us chained to the ships of our ancestors.

We never once conversed about the frail indignity of the mortals
the uselessness of hate, the ways material possessions can’t help you
we reached Nirvana without taking our feet off the common ground
we shared a spirit, bonded between long hits made of peace and love
in the freedom of those free thinkers tinkering with words without rest
in the children of Jah, daydreaming at night in a warm bed made of bread.

There we sit beneath the cherry blossom tree,
You were there, talking to me.
The silence, hearing the trees whispering.
We were spending all afternoon laughing.
I just wonder and I wanted to ask,
“Would I belong to you soon?”
“Would I ever have you?”
I wanted you to know and hear.
My heart brings off with no fear.
I wanted the way we used to be changed,
Not like how we are right now.
I wanted something  more if you allow.
Talk to my eyes, do you want it too?
The voices, I heard them in my head.
Talking to myself, forgetting the road ahead.
Every way I take, it leads me back to you.
Your smiles and the way you move are my sunshine.
Being with you makes me feel better than fine.
I forgot how the rain used to cover me.
I was never meant to leave you recklessly.
Until one day, I heard through the grapevines.
I was looking and hoping for a sign.
Fright drove my heartbeat swifter than the time I trusted you.
Why was I not given a cue?
Was I asleep when you told me?
Was I wishing you dreamingly?
Was I looking forward to the future
Of you caring and embracing me back?
You loved someone you believed,
You said she is undeniably stunning...
But, you did not have a chance to know her.
I had the time of loving you, it felt great.
I wondered, “Why did you refuse?”
Still, it was just right to forget right away.
Someday, the colours would slowly fade
Into a beautiful shade of gray.
The wretchedness would be an enduring mark...
To rather let the mark be the end of the world...
Or to look up to the shining sun and restart?
Someday, I would learn to love someone better.
Someday, I would be laughing at myself and say,
“What was the real reason why I loved you?”
Cause all I can think of was your foolishness.
I could have been dumb when I had you.
I used to laugh to our one-liners before.
We were just young naive kids.
(Now, I learned.....)
I was better off giggling with myself.
I was better off being with my friends.
I used to remember that tree,
It was where we used to sit.
Do you remember it too?
I know you had forgotten.
If you ever regret, do not return.
‘Cause you might be hanging your head the next time.
But you had been right, always right.
“Let go of the beautiful memory
When we used to sit beneath the cherry blossom tree.”

The sadness is beginning to set in
like the grapevines that grow up the side of an old brick house
gnarled and tangled in such a unfixable mess
just like the inner workings of the soul of mine
that once felt love and beauty and strength
growing in bouquets of flowers from my chest
unfortunately those flowers rotted and decayed
yet never really left, just like the proof that's shown
from the overcrowded webs of vines that still grow
up the side of that old brick house.

So tired
Back to work and then there's this social event and that social event
and the last one is the best one and I'm still trying to get over not having
last years job that was taken from me and given to you and still
trying not to even think about this because this is a whole new year and

Driving past Napa Valley's Wineries
Hotels, Buses, wine
Everything wine and I don't know where I'm going
My GPS broke, and the directions are drive straight and you'll see it

Suburbia has turned into true wealth
I've gone back in time, wine Haciendas on hill tops
like feudal mansions, waiting for the peasants to do the actual
work of wine, the dirt and the sweat of wine as the owners
twiddle their thumbs and worry about the stock market and their wine

I arrive at my Castle.  For a few moments I will be allowed to taste
the lifestyle of the wine and pretend that I too belong in this castle
watching grapes ripen and waiting for the teaming hordes to do my work
and the mechanical wine processors sit idly waiting for the grapes and I feel a tinge of
sadness and fear for the grapes to be processed like in a slaughter house
until I realize they are only fruit, and not mammals

And on the hot deck overlooking the beautiful, silent valley with grapes ripening before
our eyes the only chair left is next to you

I sit down and look to my right and I see the woman who I feared would take my job and now did
and I wonder how it is that this has happened that I've driven for miles in the hot sun
through miles of grapevines only to be made to sit next to you who jealously drooled over
my job and could never say anything good about my work and then you won.

And we talk and I'm very clever and you don't like that because I'm supposed to be stupid
and it's supposed to be obvious why you got the job not me and not some seniority thing
and you say nothing nice, and it's only me keeping up a charade of conversation that
could turn ugly at the drop of a pin but doesn't due to my skill
and you then leave made uncomfortable by the evidence of my continued existence
and lack of dumbness

And it's only later that I realize in my imagination I wanted to hurl you from the deck
and into the wine press

When she was seven, my grandmother suffered from fever and swollen glands. The doctors believed her tonsils were inflamed, that she needed surgery. Instead, she went to a curandera. The curandera divined that a jealous relative had cast a curse on her and, now, her language of kindness was bound to her throat, the unspoken swelling her glands.

As a child my grandmother spoke to santitos with a voice like a chestnut: ruddy and warm, seeds dropping from her mouth. The santitos would take her words into themselves, her voice growing within them like grapevines.

During the tonsillitis, when the words no longer fell like seeds from her lips, the santito's vineyards of accent and voice grew vapid, dry as a parched mouth. They went to her tongue and asked why silence imprisoned the words of the child, why lumps were present under her chin, why tears drew channels down her cheeks.

I asked my grandmother how her tongue replied. After touching my cheek, she told me she had a dream that night: She was within her lungs and she rose like breath through the moist of her throat. She remembered her tonsils swinging before her like fleshy apples, then a hand taking them into a fist, harvesting their sound. She told me her throat opened in two spots like insect eyes and the names of her children came flying through her wounds like peacocks.

Patting my thigh, she said, "That is why the name of your mother is Maria, because she is a prayer, a song of praise to the Holy Mother."
She told me this, then showed me two scars on her throat—tiny scars, like two eyelids stitched closed.


st - 20 mar 14

Antonio your name,
Agriculturist, grape grower.
Gotten passionate for the land,
For the Douro, Mounts.


That love that is not locked in,
He  sleeps in the hill, the mountain range.
He harvested sadness in the Colonial War.
He loved the Douro and Portugal.


He showed the land that joys would bring to it.
He  loved their children and wife Maria.
He planted grapevines that looked at the covered with star sky,
He  made  his wine with immaculate love.



The grapes are a love for all the life,
He  looked  for Rio Douro e Tua,
In  the memory of a people with glory,
With that tear that I feel now.
I comfort me in the duriense horizon,
Today, tomorrow and always.


Victor Marques
love, douro, Father

Those dangling chains,
I wish for them.
Just like a baby wishes for his mother.
They, the chains,  jump around;
Just like wild and free kangaroos.
The holes so close,
Remind me of fishnets;
The livelihood of those at sea.
The hanging chains, like grapevines
Much like people, hanging onto hopes.
Dangling in the storm to save their life.
The chains still dangle,
Carefree, without concern;
Lost in their own world;
Like few people,
Those who stand out.
Those dangling chains;
So **** beautiful;
Just stare at them,
Like you stare at the stars,
On a moonlit night.
They keep dangling,
Undeterred by the world.
Chains are free,
Chains are dominant,
Much like the unfettered few.

There we sit beneath the cherry blossom tree,
You were there, talking to me.
The silence, hearing the trees whispering.
We were spending all afternoon laughing.
I just wonder and I wanted to ask,
“Would I belong to you soon?”
“Would I ever have you?”
I wanted you to know and hear.
My heart brings off with no fear.
I wanted the way we used to be changed,
Not like how we are right now.
I wanted something  more if you allow.
Talk to my eyes, do you want it too?
The voices, I heard them in my head.
Talking to myself, forgetting the road ahead.
Every way I take, it leads me back to you.
Your smiles and the way you move are my sunshine.
Being with you makes me feel better than fine.
I forgot how the rain used to cover me.
I was never meant to leave you recklessly.
Until one day, I heard through the grapevines.
I was looking and hoping for a sign.
Fright drove my heartbeat swifter than the time I trusted you.
Why was I not given a cue?
Was I asleep when you told me?
Was I wishing you dreamingly?
Was I looking forward to the future
Of you caring and embracing me back?
You loved someone you believed,
You said she is undeniably stunning...
But, you did not have a chance to know her.
I had the time of loving you, it felt great.
I wondered, “Why did you refuse?”
Still, it was just right to forget right away.
Someday, the colours would slowly fade
Into a beautiful shade of gray.
The wretchedness would be an enduring mark...
To rather let the mark be the end of the world...
Or to look up to the shining sun and restart?
Someday, I would learn to love someone better.
Someday, I would be laughing at myself and say,
“What was the real reason why I loved you?”
Cause all I can think of was your foolishness.
I could have been dumb when I had you.
I used to laugh to our one-liners before.
We were just young naive kids.
(Now, I learned.....)
I was better off giggling with myself.
I was better off being with my friends.
I used to remember that tree,
It was where we used to sit.
Do you remember it too?
I know you had forgotten.
If you ever regret, do not return.
‘Cause you might be hanging your head the next time.
But you had been right, always right.
“Let go of the beautiful memory
When we used to sit beneath the cherry blossom tree.”

the last blue summer i dripped
               sulfur from a bottom lip
               you found an eyelash
                in your cheerios
and we danced
all winter
                into the next blue summer
                  then it was rhubarb and honey
      The First Man came to stab
           his tongue in my mouth
             i,
the very silk sheet of femininity
         let him puncture inside with the chewed
            embittered nails
this is a girl in holy conversion
           she convulses at the right times
           for dramatic effect
                     the blood on the bed is as christ
                      a symbol of sacrifice
         back when men played gods
and i let them

The Second Men
            are numerous skin lesions
             diseases from stepping in the wrong
                 swamplands
         they smell always of
            peppercorn or gin&tonic;
                     their ***** sense a tenderness inside
                      like dogs they sniff it out
                to bury it with the one large hand
       that wraps around the throat every
       time
       that same ******* line
                  you like it rough you little **** like it rough
    i am on my back on the bed
           that rocks from him ******* into
           my girlhood
                            i think of what my mother said when she found
                     the box of condoms i keep with me
                     "i would just hope these men care about you."
she doesn't understand
          these delicate men look for women to care
           about them
in the lily morning
          they want to get breakfast
                             text me their problems
                i'm the man on the sidewalk
              curling my lips into each other at their texts
"what are you doing tonight?"
           "hey haven't heard from you for a while"
   "hi :)"

I am on my back in bed
              wondering if I can hail a cab from delancey St
               while he licks and ***** at my **** and I feel nothing
               but I play the parts
I know my lines
                and the Second Men could have done well in the spotlight
                only they wanted a girl and by then I was decidely
       not human

The Men
                     can smell it
                      when you've been taken before
           a goodbye kiss on the cheek i grant
             in a moment of kindness
             and it becomes his tongue in my mouth
i am paralyzed in honesty
in the remaining threads of the docile sweetness
                mom says it is feminine to be kind
              that it is not a weakness
I think of this again when I am on all fours
                        hair pulled back by his hands
                  I think of it when the door closes and the other he
              wouldn't take no for an answer
how many times did I tell myself
I wanted this?
                              every time

The Dream Men
                   take me in my bed
                   in the house with grapevines and white shutters
         they stuff their hands down my throat
          they **** me from all sides
I spend the dream trying to scream
                and when I wake it is always sunny outside so I never feel
                 good about crying

Moms at the foot of my sadness
                              brush my hair braid it
                        we are in flower fields with magnets
             painted lilac and baby pink
                              im stomping around in the garden they hush me
              quiet
                              we are born into these love traps
                     these delicate sentiments
                     tricked to think we are heiress to sloppy emotion
        but the women ring the rags
     pluck the tomatos off the plants
                        the men see ghosts and weep
                          into their coffee
                  weep on the shoulders of their women
         who lie on their backs in bed
                         wait for it to be over

It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
I don't like it I don't like this
Did you come? Yes I came
Yes it's all taken care of
Is that blood? Are you okay?
Sorry I forgot I'm on the last day
You sure? Yeah It was great
I want to go again
Ok Baby


The Women
                 taste different
                   feel safer
                              their histories and mine are reflective
          they know what it means to be taken
         but their hands
                       do not hurt enough
                        don't leave behind blisters
                        i begin to come into someone else
                 never satisfied enough
                  to settle
                  to build a home



            
          Men and their history of abusing women
          Me and my history of being abused
We'll never understand each other
We'll never love each other either




The Men have taken
                everything from my Women
                my Grandmother barren
                 my Mother so close to death
             I was born into the locked
             door
             The history of Women who stayed
                   tender and delicate


I am tired of being taken

Ms Dolittle was giving her cuppa a sip
Her beady eyes drowned in deep brood
Last night she didn’t get enough sleep
The morning found her in a grumpy mood.

She had never seen them in all her years
Though read or heard about sightings
Dismissed them as mere conjectures
The believers’ flight on fantasy wings!

It might be the moonlight playing mischief with her
The moon can fool with such eerie nightly designs
Or maybe had a peg too many she couldn’t remember
She wasn’t unaccustomed to swigs of grapevines.

Whatever, she saw it clear not imagined in her head
The silhouette of her husband on the curtained window
Something she wouldn’t wish away as merely moon-made
He stood there upright waving to her in the moon’s glow.

Ms Dolittle brave as she is didn’t swoon or pass out
Just lay there motionless without rising to the summon
It was her husband about that she had no doubt
For in a troubled voice it said, ‘Come on’.

So there he was troubled for not having her company
And it was precisely what was worrying her
She had no idea with him how she could be

*She wasn’t yet booked for traveling that far!

When I meet her gaze,
it rips the soul from my body
and ***** it through time and space
into her hollow and vacuous eyes.
Into the vacuum of her being.

I find myself in her mind
and step tentatively over the creases
and folds of her grey brain,
avoiding the beehives hanging like grapevines
from the ceiling of her skull.

But my eyes adjust to the light
and I see that my fears are misplaced,
it's not hives hanging inside her mind
but a series of dark rainclouds
behind black and blue skies.

It's too dim in here, thinks I,
where's all the sunshine?

If it's true, and her sun has died
I would douse myself and burn alive
just to provide her a little reading light,
just to dry out her rainy skies and
maybe brighten up her nine lives.

If it's true that her moon is hollow and dim
then I would be proud to fill it up again,
I would be happy to reinflate it's craters
with my final dying breath,
with all the essence of my being.

And I would hang it there in the night,
surrounded by the hole-punched skies.
So maybe when it reflects my self-immolation,
light would shine down through her beautiful eyes
and into that long-neglected mind.

I love my dreams
for they show me the places
Mystical scenes
filled with beautiful faces
Sherbet and rainbows
like waves in the summer
Playing electric guitar
with a drummer
Floating on clouds
above rivers of jelly
Limburger cheese
that is never once smelly
Stairways to heaven
that I might be singing
Picnics on Thursdays
and plastic bells ringing
Grapevines and flowers
and candle light dining
Beneath a moon
that is forever shining
Holding her hand
through the park we are walking
Hearing her whisper
"I love you" while talking
Kissing her lips
in a soft tender fashion
Seeing her smile
and feeling the passion
Spending the rest
of my days with her sharing
No longer worried
if someone is caring
Happiness follows
wherever I’m going
And how the look
on my face it is showing
I love my dreams
but awake I am weeping
Because my dreams
only come while I’m sleeping

We stand on tonight
with adrenaline running
in our veins
   Taking pictures,
   videos
capturing every moment
   to make sure we don't
forget this.
   Because we take tabs of
acid outside McDonald's
and venture to some park.

The trees become the air
and my skin is liquid
vibrating through your
bones.
   Playgrounds and swing sets
become home.
   Truth or dare's muttered
from closed lips.

And then it's him.
With his nicknames for
everything. I am his
crazy little girl.
   That alone "I am his"
   has my stomach tumbling
   like tumble ****.
I find him at a gas
station.
Then I find myself
in his van and
we're on a road
trip to the edge of
the world.

We are as fluid as
the blood in my veins
   walking through the
   gate to sins. *****
   is in my hand.
"**** it" whispered in my
   ear
and trust me. I chugged the *****.
  Like water,
    But they said they
    had sympathy burns
    in their chest.

We lit the world on fire.
   Called it a challenge.
Begged the world to be
as stupid as us to light
our hands on fire.
  Trying to touch
     the end before
we're really there.

We stood on the night
opening cans with our
teeth.
  Whiskey on our taste
  buds.

She held my hand and I
could feel her insides shiver.
   My veins were on fire
   and I could feel them
   twist around each other
   like grapevines trying to
   help me grow into
   something better.

We stood on top of last
night.
Had it on the ground
in a choke hold.
Sat on it's back
  Pulling it's hair.
The ground was ours
to walk on and I
swear I was real.

I was in my skin
and saw through my eyes.
I felt my own flesh
burn.
    And I promise you
    I breathed air through
    my own lungs.
    I touched everyone
    with my own finger
    tips.

People were art
   and I was a
   deaf student
   with eyesight as
   a feast.
Your personalities are
   entrees and all I want
   is to have a taste.

   You are all books.
   And I have had
   thirst for your words
   since birth.

Tonight is the end
of my world.
And I will make
peace with loose ends.
  But I promise you
  there will be more
  threads than when
I started this quest.

But my insides run with
liquids I don't understand.
Bittersweet honey runs from
my eyes when I cry.
    My sweat is
    sickeningly salty
and my blood does not
run red. It is sugar
tore from a cinnamon
bun between your teeth.

Tonight I am inside my
head and I am
   real.
   Let me discover
what my brain whispers
in the dark when
I'm alone.

How do my knees quake
   when I'm scared?

You say you love
   me so well.

What do you love?
Because it's a road
trip to the edge of
the world.

I have grown into my skin
and I don't think you
know what I feel like full.
I have been empty and
gone.

But tonight I'm here.

I stand on tonight
   and I am here.
I am alive.
  and I am your crazy
   little girl.

We talk, but only in my dreams and when i awake in the morning i wonder if maybe you might of actually been there, but when i've blinked my way to the surface and realize that im laying there alone and have been since I first layed down alone, you were never really there and havn't been for what feels like centuries. Disappointment and a mixture of anger sink's and I rush out of this bed that once held you. When i've clawed my way out of the grave of nights filled with what now is a ghost, I look around the room and replays upon replays flow through and out into the open like a 1920's projecture. After being glued down to this floor by the sea of memories trying to take me down, I walk out the door and when I do, the oceans spray hits me like your hair did when we hit the bed and for a minute, I feel you, all over me, every inch, like grapevines on a forgotten building, take over what's left. But I rip through it all cause I don't like to be broken down. I head up the staires and fall because your voice keeps calling me, pulling me back, climbing up to my shoulders and pushing me down as if my legs are slowly disinigrating. As I lay there, in defeat, every inch of my body is tooken over by the feel of you, your voice, your touch, your smell, your taste, your ghost. And while I talk to you in my thoughts you louer me in, word by word, inch by inch. I'm sailing away, back into you, away from myself, in a sea of defeat. As I sail closer and closer to you, the wind picks up and steals everything. The voice, the touch, the smell, the taste, my sense of direction. It steals all from me and leaves me in the sea to fend for myself. As I float, the waves grow higher and higher and take me down under. As I get pushed down, farther and farther by the pressure of the unknown, I start to give up and realize there's really no need to fight because theres nothing I can do. Nothing I can say. Nothing. So, as this scene comes to an end and I hit the ocean floor, I then look up and see that everything's come to a rest and all is calm, I then look up and see the world. The world in which doesn't involve me. A world in which doesn't realize where i am nor does it care. A world in which was mine. A world in which is you.

(c)SeanaseaWallen 2010

I look at you and I see trees dancing in tangible rhythm with the wind like your hair blowing in directions compasses never seem to have captured and your face is clear now. I see those eyes. Irises so black i fall inside just to test the height because i've always liked doing dangerous things and that dangerous desire has led me to loving you. carving your name in skies that you will never see as you have always been blind to anything Intimate that came from me. you once told me you never liked Affection and that it only brings up bad memories and i sit there itching to scratch the back of your head to erase anything painful from your past. I see secrets hidden in between your long eyelashes that never once saved me from staying trapped inside your gaze and i am shivering at how cold it is in here. Then i see those lips. Lips that my mother warned me not to kiss but Temptation always gets the better of me. Now i feel the attachment forcing itself inside my mouth and punching the back of my throat and I am choking at how fast i fell for you. I wonder how to get over the feelings that have soared over my whole nervous system. i am convulsing with each passing thought of you and i am tripping over my own stupid feelings that seem to be towering over skyscrapers. I was never afraid of heights but darling,am i scared of you. I am scared of how fast i will fall and how deep and how you will not be there to cushion my fall.  I wonder how do i get over someone who has wrapped me all over his little finger like grapevines only you squeeze out my blood to drink over dinner as you watch me burst into flames from the way my heart ignites every time your skin touches mine. but darling, i would rather die with your arms wrapped around my neck while i whisper my prayers one last time that my ashes leave a mark on your fingers and that i will always be the dirt underneath your fingernails and i think, i think, i will die happily. if that happened, baby, i will not regret a thing.

you stood not too tall,
and not too short but enough in
underlying sun-kisses of
the mulberry feathers of your hair,
falling grapevines upon the bottled rain
but you,
you wore it like pixie dusts from the stars
above your candy apple parasol,
and you spoke words,
you puff a smoke,
and it kills me so
and you exhale words,
words that make the rain,
the rain to be a beautiful, brilliant mess

Sometimes, I forget to let go.
I forget that im alive.
I forget that breathing is important.
I forget everything.

But most importantly, i forget to let go.

Tangling itself like grapevines at the bind of these two hearts brings me home, wrapping along the brick. Overwhelming comfort creeps through the air vents and im there. Im home.

if you walk on the front lawn
past the library where –
free of charge –
you can take some
if you leave some

if you approach the front
windows she will likely try
to claw the screen
attesting to her
ownership

if you walk up the driveway
and duck under the
grapevines or
poison-ivy – some say –
will tickle your legs

if you look upward
you can barely see the sky
between the
older-than-the-4th-of-July
burr oaks

if you walk past the
once-was back door –
into the backyard –
a forest of ****-trees
shades leftover plants

if you stroll further
the spring bulb-mothers’
dead stalks
cover the leaf-mulched
soil

if you climb up two rotting
steps to the bird feeders
squirrel-ridden –
and treated with suet –
is the cardinal family’s
year-round home

if you like critters and
engage them in dialogue –
natural ambiance –
you will have an annual
prayer rug for a yard

if you let the white pickets
go gray beside the curb –
looking wrinkled –
the shimmer-light of the
street lamp will guard the
paw prints of winter bunnies

© Lewis Bosworth, 2016

some people don't see it
the beauty that lies underneath
it's rough and beaten exterior
the art that grows like grapevines
behind walls of over-compensation
and masculinity and in some cases
but certainly not all, misled homophobia
i enjoy football because
it was one of very few shared interests
between me and my father
so reluctantly i'll admit that the fourth wall
could be built from deep seated daddy issues

Marching off to the abyss with a fallen face
to be gone forever and lost without a trace
filled with discontent felt for losing the race
tired, legs are dead, can't keep up the pace

coffins inside of a coffin, a horrendous fate
suffering, sentenced to dying at a slow rate
too proud to end the suffering, so they wait
like broken and lost angels standing at the gate

dragging feet heard through the grapevines
sifting through the same obsolete lines
sitting on top of their own last human signs
not even moving as their hope declines

Cupid sang about sunbeams
and blooming grapevines before
darting a single arrow in either
of our directions—I suppose

he knew better. I suppose it was
all part of the Master Plan, because
if there wasn't a plan then what's
the point of planning a *******
thing anytime, anywhere. There

isn't one. It was written that I'd
meet you. Shakespeare said something
tragic about it, but he certainly never
felt what I felt. Not like this. The feeling
of loss is never familiar. You are talking

underwater without a snorkel or air
to pray with. Cupid never misses, that's
part of the plan. But maybe, ever so
often, he hits the wrong people right
in the ***, and forgets to pull the arrow out.

We are easily broken creatures,
Like glass hearts that shatter.
Victims of the ones we love,
Slaves to affection.
Hearts beat as one,
Intertwined like grapevines.

This early winter has already slipped from the macadam,
Bloats the creek I see
From the perch of rusted manhole covers
Their tunnels rush with concrete.

It falls over the v-shaped Two-Log dam,
It whispers to me
I’ve come close to
Nothing, to nothing, to nothingness,

I’ve heard the babbling, the incomprehensible echo
Of my own voice
In the abyss of being, that, if I spoke
It taunted back, in a voice
Rife
With truth.

Redemption of solidity has me now,
This is where I grew up:
Along the same creek, along the flow and course of man
Crossing the winter’s water has proven
Test, trial, and victory
Every time. I never noticed it.

Apathy is a vague blur in the saccade of the last few years,
Self-destructed by the fault of feeling.
I am more human now, returning to the shores of limitation,
Of the piercing history
Still young, but wizened, hard, a court
At which I stood and begged for my head.

I have but my name now, and nothing to return to
But the temporary homes with temporary people.

If I said I don’t care, I was wrong. They were my temple,
But the god of me, the god of them, the god of sheer youthful joy
Has been overtaken by grapevines, by ivy

And I still proclaim victory, still proclaim
I won the fight of isolation.

From the frozen bed of silt and winter
I pull concrete chips from the bridge
They destroyed ten years prior, where once I stood
And added my sorrows to the ebon stream, carrying it
To the end of it, where end met end,
And continued on end-to-end.

But I have seen nothing and no end it quite like it,
For every shore has its mirror,
And beyond it is my voice, I cast out,
Calling back,
As it was.