October butterflies
game against blue skies,
wind that gusts indifferent

fading buddleia’s
purple sashes
give one last hurrah
to the peacock, admiral,
as the lowering sun
sees through wings that were

#autumn #fall #october #butterflies #turnturnturn

You know what I mean
that person who seems
to you in your dreams
a bit more than lust
but just shy of love
who can drive you mad
with only one glance
and I'm not talking about
getting into those pants
no, what I mean is
something beyond desire
more than a fire
but not quite the one
that would leave you broken
hearted and alone if she danced
with every man in the room
but, man, I sure do like the way
those butterflies in her *******
make me feel like a lepidopterist
rather than an archaeologist.

Tell me again about how the caterpillars in your stomach metamorphosed into butterflies that fluttered around when frankie walked through the door.
Leave out the part about the butterflies' stagnation,
how eventually they reverted back to caterpillars and mistook your insides for leaves;
because we can't stay in another day just listening to Au Revoir Simone with that same story rolling off your tongue.
darling, it is starting to leave unkissable burns on your mouth.

A spectacular butterfly
splendid in its monochrome, leopard-print reflecting armour
flies unto the lavender branches
recently budded in my garden
Fancying myself a faithful reader of Nabokov
and drawn to anecdotes of self-glorification
I thought I should become a Lepidopterist
and catalogue its striking corpse
beginning what could become a masterful collection
Me, the quarter-tanned Irish bopping all in tennis whites
with mock-radioactive web of butterfly doom among the wooden yard dividers

But where should I keep it?
this hype-building collection of one
amongst my dust-collecting books
my backdated journals and flaccid-worn glossy magazines
my "value-appreciating" vinyl records
the more prettily curated and precision-hung images that curate my partner's collections?

No, it is not for me
to stop it succumbing to dust, to allow it turn into something beautiful again
if a tragic kind of beauty
amongst the dirt, for something becomes more wonderful when
it's beauty is not forced on show
but produces itself through more layered, yet uncomplicated means
returned back out of the dust, without any of our artificial light
recording again it's eventual demise

everyone who passes through the  house of James
plays a part in their second story   story
Nick is not of  the kitchen
but he’s ghosting there

and he tries
he tries   with words  
he tries with dance
he tries so hard we barely see him!

James is thirsty!
and that’s the other story...
He's drying *******
on an old gas cooker

when ‘Phelie   blows in
on a colleague  
o’ Koz Bar leaves  
hi  poising   cat-ready  

on a brown couch
on a couch
that remembers no shape
though she tries

she tries to make an impression
on our blurred nerves too
beginning with alrigh'
which is  hi too   but with feeling  

this hi assumes we know
drama gril and da Richmond crew
And I try to say
I mean I am trying to say

the couch remembers no shape
I have no memory
of drama teachers or  michelle
yelling again darling with feeling this time

then she tells
me what a lonely time
it has been since the…addiction -
michelle poising there

upon the word
like a  Lepidopterist’s pin
on au-then-tic-i-ty -
isn’t it enough that I said it?

now that it’s a dead thing
it spreads its terrible wings
and 'Phelie double drops
her second story    hello  hello

we lean into a kiss  hello
her lips are not dry
though she smokes her mouth un-wet
she tries to say hello

by laughing at
I've given up not-smoking
and we talk
and kiss  a fresh hello

undress hello
touch hello
leading to a breathless hello   hello   hello
and now  I am saying,

*again darling with feeling this time

Lord,
don't let my feelings take me down sober
It's late at night, and everything's over
Disconnect, and let's have it over-

What's the use in telling you how to be my friend
I remember saying silly things, like this won't ever
end
Now I'm sure we'll each hear it all the time but right now

I gotta just let it out

So I swallow pride like an overdue book
I bet I bought every line, hooked
But this is how it'll be-
Sorry

I don't need to hear the words, they don't change
Signal's down, went out of range, and I
Got the skid marks to prove it
But I wish you'd try to say them anyway, ****

When the rain falls down it makes a pretty mist
With everyone we've kissed, could you even miss
Well I'm sure the next one will at least remember my lips-
Until the next one

So I tell all my friends I'm testing around
Shooting game, jobs and boys and doctors
Who won't remember my name
Well, if it's all the same-

I'd rather you dropped me like a stone,
I'm skipping here, and I'm all alone
But I've grown fond of the lake and I've made it mine
Come on in, the water's fine!

But maybe I'm not-

Lord,
don't let my feelings take me down sober
It's late at night, and everything's over
Disconnect, and let it be over

I let the sticky fingered kids grab me
Collected forced fingers like candy
Again turned away from the bottle,
Trying to leave this me and us behind full throttle-

I'll be a social butterfly in the house of a lepidopterist
Be another number on a manager's list
Talk to someone I pay to hear me instead of you
God I hope I do as well as you

Hiding out my pain somewhere else
Because it's not easy trying not to be myself
Until I wash it all away with pain and time
Well, my worries shouldn't be yours.

They aren't even mine

Why don't I tell you everything? Or how about how I'm feeling?
I don't share that much with my friends, of course.
If you want more, you open your door more!
Men.

Lord don't let my feelings take me down sober
I'm chill as ****, so now this sad poem's over
It's behind me now,
I feel a lot older.

The Mirrors and the Reflections,
this fresh breeze and the sunlight,
these inanimate realities
and their oxymoronic existence
amazes inner child within me.

I am not a painter,
I am just a man
with a taste for colors.

I delve into them,
till the hues whisper words
that fly like butterflies.

I am not a lepidopterist(butterfly scientist)
I am just a man
with a thirst for writing.

I collect and nurture them,
till they look like a beautiful painting
made out of unseen words.

I am not a poet,
I am just a man,
with a love for beauty.

I just let the beauty flow,
like the never-ending seas
for purposes unknown.

Back and forth flickered his net
with a shimmer, and whirring stems
stirring and whispering in the haze.
But little did the lepidopterist know
there were lions in the long grass;
lithe numbers, labeled days.

I'm Covered All in Black

But if you scratch the surface
you'll see all the colors underneath.
As the wax flies off in the hands,
of a lepidopterist I'm a butterfly. And

in the hands of botanist
I'm an orchid. If you were a mother,
I can be your kid if you drew  
a circle for my eyes and head, loops for

ears and nose, a wiggle for a mouth
and a body with some clothes in red
and green and gold. But if you leave me
black then black is all you'll see. If you sit

back and don't look under
me. The colors are all hidden, cloaked in
a black prison. The shapes are yet
to take without a pen or stake.

there was a lumpy brown couch against the wall of the living room
I sat on beige carpet facing beige wall and couch
light scattered by the pale yellow lamp in the corner
it was upholstered in tough fabric stitched with white diamond brocades punctuated by little red and blue squares
my mother and father somewhere behind me in the kitchen
the squat brown coffee table draped with delicate white cloth sat in between me and the couch
we were just beginning back then, my family and I
and sometimes my nascent memories of this home
happen to intrude upon my thoughts
and I capture this image with fond words
like an awestruck lepidopterist
as the vision in my head flutters like his subject
cherished for as long as it is mine