Long walks, long talks under the south sky, we knew it was love
December, snowflakes, cold night but you made it warm
White gown, black suits, sweet vows, but that’s not how it ends
Black lies, midnight fights, angry cries, we know it’s not love (not anymore)
  
This is the morning when the French man curses Paris
This is the morning when the sun loses its light
This is the morning when promises become lies
This is the morning when are love kisses the lips of goodbye
  
Chorus:
Because on the eighteenth, summer turns to winter
All that we have withers
Everything warm and bright fades on the arm of September
I can ******* tears, I can feel my fears
You walk away with no words of love to remember
  
Whiskey, dancing under the night sky, I have heard you died
November, tears fall, sorrow cripples like a thief
Ugly box, pale cheeks, another goodbye, I pray to see you breathe
Regrets, lost love, indecent goodbyes, you left me twice
  
This is the morning when the French man turns to dust
This is the morning when he takes his life
This is the morning when memories fake the aches
This is the morning when even fears and tears can’t bring you back
  
Chorus:
Because on the eighteenth, summer turns to winter
All that we have withers
Everything warm and bright fades on the arm of September
I can ******* tears, I can feel my fears
You walk away with no words of love to remember
  
Coda:
Your awkward smile, your deep blue eyes
Old  photos will remind they’re once alive
Your broken dreams with an unfinished song
No more Tuesday nights for you to sing along
  
Because on the eighteenth of September there’s no morning, only mourning

There was too much life in that man for him to...
2. It is possible to associate sadness with your name.
3. Strength now walks without a counterpart. She is tired.
4. Your un-presence billows louder than your renditions of "O Sole Mio" ever did throughout this home - throughout this heart
5. There will be no more music. Only everlasting echo
6. The sound of shuffling slippers was my favourite song
7. This house is now a museum. I am 5 years old, flashlight in hand, creeping creaky corridors. I stare as each of his artifacts slowly disappears before my very eyes.
8. We share the same shoe size
9. Now, when I remember him, I think of his hands - sturdy as he grates orange peel, fennel, Parmigiano-Reggiano, smooth as he stirs his shaving cream - Forever moving
10. This hospital is now a museum. I am 21 years old, sister's hand in hand. We all stare as he (yes, you) slowly disappears before our very eyes
11. There was too much life in that man for him to be ever silenced by un-music box
12. There was too much life in that man for anyone to be able to fill his shoes
13. There was too much life in that man for him to disappear with artifact body
14. Now, this man, he is somewhere untouched - the smell of orange and fennel fill his pockets (saved for rainy days). He lives inside and out of The Music, with soles(souls) bouncing.

I

My mother speaks with rumbling tongue
And whispering words
Her hips are mountains I yearn to reach each morning
Dawn’s rose fingers stretching
Across mother’s soil toned skin
Her eyes are seeds the flowers drop as I pass
Her wind pushing eyes to follow me
Always watching

I speak with trembling tongue
And whispering words
My hips are boulders stuck in wrong places
Paper fingers pushing
Against rock sturdy skin
My eyes are leaves scattering before you catch them
Body too much
Trying to shrink
Always hiding

She speaks with clear tongue
And frozen words
All hands fighting
For her pure snow skin
Her eyes are never ending blue sky and breeze
Reliable
Lovable
Never needing to be always

II

My mother’s mouth never closes
Never leaves room for another to open his
Her hair,
Is silk curtain draping to wood floor as she blooms
Mouth growing with each truth, a fairytale
Where everyone wants to save her
But she doesn’t need to be saved

So when the man at thrift store counter
Tells me I should know how to *******
I yearn to look to mother and sigh
Instead

My mouth never opens
Can’t bare white teeth
They look more like flags to you
My hair,
Is rope noose tightening to twisted throat as voice booms
Spine shrinking at each eerie smile, a nightmare
Where everyone wants to save me
But I don’t need to be saved

She is in line after me
Thrift store man gives her sweet smile
And the exchange has disintegrated into ashes

III

My mother has seen ashes
Should have birthed children into fire pit to save time
My mother will want to be ashes
She is the only allowed to say her name in vain
Once mother’s mouth is closed
No one else may open theirs
We will rebirth her
Into white sun
Rumbling oceans
Rolling mountains
Seeds of flowers so she can be carried by the wind
Always watching

I have seen ashes
****** black bodies tainting pure white snow
Felt my brother slip through fingers
Swam with him in ocean
I will want to be ashes
Because thrift store men with paper fingers may see my body and think
“****,
I should have made her mine
When her spine could bend with my touch
I could lift her from boulder hips
And find us a cave that she could close
And never move again”
Instead
I want to be scattered across leaves
Across mountains
Across seeds
Breathed into someone
A woman like me
My sister
Might inhale and

IV

Know that her hair is beautiful
As rope- or cotton- or silk
Tongue is necessary
As ocean, or earthquake
Hips don’t need to be a ******* mountain
For someone to stretch their fingers around her
Carefully
Lovingly
And I will apologize
Whilst floating throughout the world
And seeing nature’s wonders
For speaking in metaphor
When I saw nature’s wonders
Each morning when I kissed my mother
On her cheek
And looked in the mirror
At my eyes
And saw people
Saw beauty

P.S.

She wanted a funeral
One last chance to have people speak of her
She knew they would always say good things and give sweet smiles
And the exchange will disintegrate like ashes

I'm locked in a cage.
Half my body spilling out through the bars;
Arms bent, snapped bones piercing through skin,
Stretched out, reaching for the key that gets further away.
Other half still held captive, hidden in the darkness
Of the secret that never wants to be paroled.
I want to escape, but the jagged limbs have formed a knot
And I can neither be pulled out through the gaps of the bars,
Nor back into the depths of repression.
I'm half free and half trapped,
And those two states of being cancel each other out.
I am nothing.

i put my eggs on the bottom of all my groceries.
i did it last time, and i'll do it again,
and i'll still act shocked when i open the carton and they've fallen apart.
i'll watch devastatingly as the yolk slips through my fingers;
i'll mourn for the money lost, mourn for the eggshells on my kitchen counter.

breakfast is the healthiest meal of the day, and mine is spread across my kitchen floor.
everyone walks on eggshells around me,
but i stomp on them.
i pour bacon grease on my legs;
the burn feels good for thirty minutes,
but the blisters become unbearable at thirty-one.

i didn't just spill the milk;
i poked a hole in the carton.
i watched it leak through, like blood seeping through a bandage;
i'm crying over spilled milk.
i'm always crying over spilled milk.

i want to grow out of this never ending stage of self sabotage;
i am the victim,
i am always the victim;
the child cries wolf and no one in town cares anymore;
the wolf can't be found,
because the child has swallowed it.

i am no good.
my kitchen is a mess,
i don't eat breakfast,
and i play the victim card like it's the only one left in the deck.
my groceries are in the dumpster out back;
i'm ravenous --
i'll eat you out of house and home.

Is it I - the one
Me, who has to
strangle on this
side of
the morning?

With the lashes
of dew still
dripping, tripping
off of the
edge of
the fire.

Reminders
left there - all curled
up and slowly
deceasing
down into
the open eye.

Fog languidly
sweeps up from
our hollow valley
and begins to
eat away

slowly and slowly
into our
lives; Built on
chaos and
disarray from

Each other.
Can
you feel it?
Can
you feel
the thunder?

The Majestic,
The Majesty
Of the
Unknown. . .
The whispering
voices.

Awakened by
her songs
in the soggy
morning light.

A crack in
the shades,
reveals a
world

waiting to
be found,
when you
decide

to be a
man and
put

your shirt
back on
and

realize that
you've
just

dreamt
that
same

old dream

again. . .

the sun is creeping towards
the horizon under the trees
and a sliver of moon is
all that remains of night

my chest
is tight
with heavy
dull twinges

and though i always
long for things to break
up my monotonous routine
a funeral on a thursday
morning in spring was not
exactly what i had in mind

yesterday was recycling
to the curb and while i
ripped apart boxes a
staple stabbed my finger

the sight of blood only
increased the palpitations
under my skin and i've been
trying to forget it for twelve hours

trying to forget
what's coming
ignore the sense of
gloom pooling around
my ankles and the anxiety
wound round my wrists

i just have to make it
through the morning
into the afternoon and
then i can tell the racing
thoughts in my head to
stop what they're doing

and they will
obey me

would it be too much
just to ask for a hug?

Even the darkest night is followed by mo(u)rning

I wake up
Every morning
Crusted over,
Like some sort of pastry.
The effects
From a night of crying
While I sleep—
Again.

You are brown and eating frozen grapes in the grass: petting the hair of some tattered doll, singing a song I taught you. I try to conjure a face, but all I know is the back of your small head—an afro littered with dandelion residue. You are lucky to be nothing more than a thought...because I don’t know if I could have ever been as good to you as you will never be to me. The exchange between parents and children seems to go this way: you - a wonder; I - everything I hope you never become. A spongy piece of angel food cake, as elusive as love, I would wish you didn’t put your tiny pink tongue, lapping, at our French doors—the dry swipe of play goop on our marble countertops. Maybe we ate avocados and blood oranges together, drank rice milk together; maybe I told you all about your star sign, gave you a nickname like: Mia Amata.
Our talks are never without melody—a miracle, like a thick, forbidden plum in a desolate dream forest; silk in the hallow of a black tree.

I shouldn’t be so sad.
All of the money I’ve earned so far has been my own...
All that is mine remains just, so—every decision made out of lust, habit, or both.

At this point, it seems pointless
to even bother sleeping.
Before I even realize it,
the daylight will come creeping.
Forcing me to do something
I've scheduled far too early
and to grow increasingly,
irreparably surly.

life is our poetic reality,
you are the best ever
metaphor,
the one poets
keep stealing from
each other,
at the intersection
of our eyes crossing

your disruptive crying poetry,
bring to me in NYC,
and I'll take you to
poetry slams,
tango parties, a real Chinatown,
blow smoke up your nose,
Waltz step on your toes,
drink with you
in Central Park at five am,
visit half a dozen museums,
take you to the ballet,
and then you can maybe,
cross a few to-do's
off of our mutual
intersections

care taken,
if you want hide deep,
but to late for thee and our world,
your name on the roster
of poets by night,
tinkers, soldiers,
and some who tailor
poems bespoke
for the ones who
dare not reveal their true (s)elves
in the words they write.

1431
poems in ye old inbox,
genteel knocking,
whispering thru stolid front door
love me a little lot,
little lot, love me?

these are the holy-of-the-holies
attention-me-crystal-cries,
prayers, wry observations, nature collations,
me and thee adorations,
heart rendering
screams of need,
these are the moments in your life
raw-roughened gifted
or threaded smooth cursed,
but tendered unto my caring

am old man.
my poetic voice is just
memories that are
repetitive lies and lines.

speak in simple sentences declarative.
this is nature's way.

darkness approaching is indeed my
au courant poem, mon actuellement.

I have seen betterdays

ain't young enough to be afraid no more
write what pleases me.

this day leases me
what pleases me
and this is as close as I can come
to being human
and writing my flawless poem.

Anything I can do to keep you,
happy and poetry-free
from midnight
till the **** crows
and slumber trumps
the restless words
that will wait
till mo(u)rning born,
and the kingdom of poetry,
awoken,
comes alive

These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger,
by force majeure,
Declares, here,  poem aborning,
Contract with this moment,
now satisfied.

Al,  what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me

long have I searched for my
flawless poem,
knowing it my be
my next one,
each a doorway to the next

this one, and the
one before,
never good enough,
keep the essay going
in fourth gear

I taste skin,
like a good poem,
the cheek, the shoulder bare,
the in between spaces,
the minty hint of décolleté,
the ankle chain,
turning my breath heated,
tips of red noses,
I take and
I keep
and no,
no refunds, no returns

nowadays,
grandpa's tools
outdated, shelved,
in their final
resting place,
blades dulled,
the technology
of his verbiage,
rusted by old age

the reads diminishing,
his touch, antiquated,
his best days, resting on top of
the ocean internet waves
his summertime buddies,
sand sun grass and
sea air perfumes,
singing,
"awe, we got ya,
cosy and comforted,
awaiting you in your chair,
overlooking our truest
sheltered applause"

so I write for me,
write for her,
for with her,
in love's sight,
life is
easy like Sunday morning,
and
that's why I'm easy,
like Sunday morning

wake up unscrubbed,
sleep still in the eyes,
dream crusted,
probably unaware, child,
that you are a poem
sleeping

when a little girl,
reverting, designing
real from dreams,
processing, reforming,
the dreams lusting
to be poems
to go awandering

don't
let the sin memories
of ancient words,
black gold bubble up
with the first striking of the blade

Delve
(excavate your soul deep)
Not

I did not come this poem to write
I did not come to repeat
Solomon's poem,
nothing new under the sun

don't,
daunting
wish to delve into my delusions,
my original sin
the deceit
the conceit
I am unique
I am original

*Experience anew,
Each time,
Say:
This is my first time,
This is my first work

I do not need your validation.
I validate myself
and in doing so,
who else
comes along
for the ride
on our tide?

create with no shame
create with no measuring stick
only this:
everything that is done well
                           is good art

Be Fertile and Radiate

I miss you in the morning
when the sun peaks through the blinds,
I miss you in the afternoon
when I'm working all the time,
I miss you in the evening
when I close my weary eyes.
All I want is to tell you I love you,
to hold you through the night.

The sunrise this morning
was like a huge
magnificent fire
devouring the sky. So
great was the fire that
everything it shone it's
light upon burned up
and became ash.
*Including me
including you.

so ******* fractured
bloodshot eyes
casual lies
i'm okay, i'm okay
i'm fine i say
no one cares enough to notice
the marks on my wrists
the drawings in my sketch book
the title of my playlist
if my tears pool on the ground
and leak under my door
will you see
does anyone see
what my own thoughts do to me
i'm so **** unstable
so irreparable
it's a shame that i'm wasting all this oxygen
thought of cutting myself off today
but i'm so scared i always end up stoppin'
i wear black because i'm mo(u)rning
and hoping i won't see another
don't give me empty words of comfort
don't give me a warning
give me ******* medication
i sit with some copers
drinkers and dopers
oh how it ***** to be the first to come to
when they're still smokin' and drinkin'
and my thoughts are so blue
so i go straight back
breathing in anything i can
to escape the world
my head
my ******* head
for a few moments
before i come back
come to
and cry
like i am now
i dig at my skin
trying to reach something within
dark or light
anything to make me feel alright
stopping just before there's blood
because i'm already seein' red
i don't deserve tomorrow
only my ****** up yesterdays
make a new plan to carry out
i stumble and shake with regret for what i can't do
so ******* fractured
bloodshot eyes
casual lies
i'm okay, i'm okay
i'm fine i say
no one cares enough to notice
so i continue to medicate myself
melting brain cells
taking in all the smells

dawn's rays peek like a ******
through my blinds, refracting
kaleidoscopic sunlight
through the window pane.
the succulents on the sill
reach out, needy,
craving the kiss
of photosynthesis.
motes of dust float
melancholic. detritus
pirouettes off the ceiling fan—
whispering languidly,
dancing as i stare blankly
at the space in bed
next to me. i'm sick
to death of mourning
every morning, wishing
i didn't wake up.

This morning,*

I confused a moving car
For a running fox squirrel
This is a problem to me. . .
This ****** city is bleeding its
***** blood over my eyes and its
Making me anxious to take that first step up
Up the rain soaked stairs to that quiet home
Upstairs on the dead floor

Not another living soul but me

In this clearing mo(u)rning
The trees still cry out
From over a thousand acres of land
“God’s good earth is leaving!”
I am leaving then!

I’ve said it before*

I’ll push the start early
Just to see it end and crash
Before I can ever get out alive

Watch me bleed over this
This abandoned concrete wall
All over these hollow ******* halls
These imposing empty skyscrapers that pierce
Her skies and my eyes still see you

I will call you out
This will be my final move
Never again will I be back
I will never return to you

The ferocity of my wrath on this feral city
Will start again after the next one hundred days.

If you find thin traces of despair on my veins tomorrow mo(u)rning, will you still love me?

this grief of love is quiet...

it does not hit me in the face
to face the ground with a rumbling gasp

it comes tenderly
through the gentle weave of my days
sowing the cold nights in a blanket that holds me tightly

bubbling in the kettle of my heart
percolating through the pores of every shadow that I cannot touch

behind the whispering breeze and gentle sun ray
it pours its burning liquid
sweetly
into every sensation

until
in the start of a passing day
my quiet tears bleed

I stand there
stark
with only one question...

"Why?"

and with every utterance
in this hollow expanse of skull

resounds again
my mo(u)rning heart

Drip, drop
The mist disperses quietly
Drip, drop
There are only droplets lying around
Drip, drop
The rain subsides finally
Drip, drop
The silent cries are finally drowned

Seas pouring instead of my eyes,
She passed away this mo(u)rning
And I wasn't there.
My mother cried, and I wasn't there.
If there's a heaven for them,
I'd believe in God.
If there's not, I'd see the night sky
and look for a new star,
that little one, the pretty one.
If there's a heaven for them,
when I die, I'll be glad to be there.

Sally (2003-2015)

Lying on clouds
The morning sun bathing my skin
I smell you all around
I feel your soft skin up against mine
I brush my hands against you
My body aches for you
I pull you in closer
You press that magnificent *** against me
I groan low, and nuzzle your neck
I kiss your cheek and gently say “good morning beautiful” as my hand moves up your thigh.

I awake to the sound of my own voice.

Instead of clouds I’m laying on a thin slab of foam that makes up this futon.
The sun is beating down on me, leaving no shadow for my shame to hide.
The room smells like a full ashtray and stale beer.
I reach over for you but I only find an endless sea of empty space.
I roll onto my back, my body aches and my joints crack.
I extend my calloused, unwashed hand out to a half empty glass of bourbon.
Maybe this will help me get back to that dream of you.

But I can chase this ***** as long as I want, I’ll never catch up to you.

And you’re never coming back.

I wake up with the blinding lights of the new day
and take a shower to let the water wash away my despondency
I put on makeup to desperately
hide my depression
then look through the window desolately  
to watch the morning dispiritedly
I take my time to prepare a healthy breakfast
and brew tea
steeping extracts all the aroma of my pain

then I sit down and watch your photograph
and gaze into your eyes
praying to spend the rest of my life with you
before I throw away the breakfast
thrashing my heart

Living like the routine has never been broken
keeps hope alive for a while, unspoken  
It is as if reality is not as it seems
and you will come back any minute with the morning beams