i am not your blooming flower
i don't belong in your
garden kingdom populated
by perennials and ruled by
thorn stemmed rose bushes
where you go
to seek solace and discover
the bursting lightness of
that sensuous pain when
blood erupts from that
thin line where
the white fatty layer threatens
to spill out into the world
and stain your white carnations.

and i never promised you
that it would be pretty
and that one day you would be
able to look at those sensationless slices
and see more than just
an act of scarification
that i asked for
that i endured
but the physical embodiment of
that internal scream that
bounces off the sides of my chest
and shatters the crystalline lattice
that protects my dispassionate heart
from your touch
as soft as the downy feathers
of the spring's children
emerging from their
incubator eggs to
greet the world where they
will fall before they fly
and i will impale myself on
the pyre of their sacrifice.

i want to sew myself into you

black wire stitches to close the
gaping hole and
ragged edges of my fragmented self
held together tenuously by
crocodile ocean tears and
a bloodlust that is the only drive
keeping me alive

but you

you are somehow whole
a sweating glass of full fat milk
a body that is not
fragmented
a mind that hasn't been
shattered and the minute shards
ground into an irreconcilable dust
scattered to the wind
and how could you not be
ripped to shreds when
a hurricane fueled tornado
ripped your world apart one day
and cracked the looking glass
through which you saw the world

perhaps you are as self-deceiving as i am
maybe you have an even darker
wool pulled over your eyes
a piston to continually
push down
and errant emotion that
threatens to remind you
of that nameless pain
or shame
an inky black spot i would
rub out of you if i could
if you'd let me

i want you to sew me into your broken places

those crumbling cliff faces
bowing to the persistence of ocean waves
those places where you feel yourself
growing thin
threadbare hidden places that you
lead me away from
because why would you lash out
like a cornered animal when
i inadvertently touch on that
raw nerve which you
tried to ignore but the
wound just festered and now
leaks a pus and
emanates a stench of your
fear
trust issues

how can two broken pieces
from different people
fit together and make one
coherent functioning unit

i want to sew myself into you so you might trust me
like you trust your own self

but maybe you don't even trust him
that uninhibited man who lives
at the core of your being and
transcends all the pain and hurt
and is a perfect mirror image of the
man you were before she
cut out your tongue and
blinded you

i've let you see the
emptiness
the grand canyon that gapes
and yawns open
in the center of my being
with the gravitational pull of
a black hole with the entire universe in its
orbit
but you're like the stopper for
a bath tub and you
fit perfectly into that void

if you'd only let me stitch the edges closed
to a soft pink sensationless seam
a roadmap memory of
where we came from
and couldn't it be a scar that
reminds us of how we came together
reminds us of growth
of a vibrant returning spring even in
the bitter cold winter
we both escaped

and your eyes were the headlights
on the front of a screaming
ambulance that brought me
broken and bleeding to
the emergency room
and your face was the one of
a meticulous doctor
frowning on my damage but
methodically sewing me closed
to keep my entire self from
spilling out

i want to sew myself into your heart
just so that i know
you'll be just as torn
just as wounded
just as broken
when i watch you walk away
into the blinding sunrise
of a new day.

Either I can't feel love or
I don't want to feel it.

Come, wipe away my thoughts of you
Now that you are not mine
Return to visit, oh blessed spirit
Conquer the grasps of time

To commemorate the days of past
To scorn the sleepless nights to come
And establish a vigil to ever-last
How to not know pain, yet not fall numb?

Teach me your ways, as your body lies
How is it you fell at my feet, while your free soul flies?
Let me be like you--sensationless, but eternal
Ne'er again to feel the cool of night
Nor the sun's infernal
Arms of light

I long to dwell in glory's abode
To feel you run through my spirit-hair
The passion of life which death fears to part
The mixtures of ancients in the sacred air

To feel no flesh,
Yet feel all of your love
To gift you my ghost
On the wings of the dove

Every morning have I gazed into clouds
I beseech the heavens to gather them into your likeness
Placing every heart's hope in these celestial vapors
Feeding my strength and my youth into my futile madness

Why have you left me, to romance of the seraph?
You sip the caresses of divinities
How could I have been so foolish to let death in
And ****** you away with her cold, dark delicacies?

Subtle waves make similar sounds to the desires
Drowning amid our fascination with the
"What If's" in life

The spastic sensations navigating our spines
Like fingertips navigating a writhing map
Curling as they make their way up and down

And so if we leave the "Ifs" for "thens"
Then they no longer sway but sit still
Our bodies lie dormant, separate and sensationless

Thus a hand in your hand says in silence
That "What If's" occupy no space
Between our clasped palms

Clouds disappear as soon as we find
No need for the moons slight shine
Exploring from behind closed eyes

No space between our lips to contest
The absence of space between our bodies
Nervously sailing above the waters wake

The air was cool no vessels to shield from the wind
For the boats had given us our privacy
To teach each other of music and dance

And music is the melody that drifts lightly
Upon your skin and your legs and your neck
Whispers softly in your ear so you fall victim to its passion
Suddenly pressing yourself against another
Heartbeats swiften and bodies move in unison
Caressing into shimmering heat that strips on every beat
Hands fall safely on chests
And suddenly the song descends into silence
The only sound is made by locked gazes
And breaths of amazement.

So why stray from possibilities
Why think of "What if's"
When one look and one touch
Led to music like this?

How oft has the piping poet iterated
the many nuances of feeling,
the many ways to love, or hate?
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
But where in these enumerations
have we distinguished the longing
that boils up within us
at an absence, the missing,
whether momentary or eternal?
For there are many ways to miss someone.

There are, of course, the dreary ways
to miss someone, the ways
of grief, the yearning never to be fulfilled
for the departed and never to be seen again.
The moving on because you must
and still like ringing bells
the memories perpetually toll -
at first so loud as to obscure any sound
or thought, yet eventually
fading to a distant chime, ever still present,
lingering tintinnabulation;
if you stop and listen, you can make it out,
but day-to-day you’d hardly notice.

But there are many ways to miss someone,
like subtle shades of purple:
while some are dark, oozing, sickly,
violent, like bruises,
blood pooling just beneath the surface
threatening to burst;
or some are near-grey, cold, desaturated,
a sensationless day,
a gloomy cloud in our sky;
others would induce with their very sight
the soft scents of violets and lilac,
the songs of spring birds chirping;
and others still are rich and royal,
thick like honey, endowed,
velvet sheen, lustrous silk.

Yes, there are many ways to miss someone.

Like craving the crunch of an apple,
or the tingling acidity of citrus.
Like the thirst before the first gulp,
lemon water warmed beneath the sweltering sun.
Or like how dusk to dawn deprives us of that very sun,
and yet so soon will it return,
crying out a yellow hello into the night blue sky.

There are many ways to miss someone.

Like the budding excitement,
the cocooned caterpillar,
the anticipation of soon-coming,
daydreaming, enriching, sweet, joyful,
delayed gratification.

There are many ways to miss someone.

And when you finally bite into the fruit of your longing
the juices seep into all the cracks and crevices
of all the moments past of absence,
fill you, elate you, concentrated,
and you ask yourself
was an orange always so sweet
or the lemon so sour as this?

a curved stony enclosure whose seawall gives
way to hulking cliffs--with chiseled ramparts
akin to bottom cuspids.
standing before foldable reflections--aside from
the accelerating interpolation of sea-clouds, prone
to negatives.
the guiding intelligence of a flood cupped by an
isle that is unmet with a return.
its interior of entryways are desolate modulators
of tides.
as the two main entrances to the isle set stone apart,
the first as ruggedly cut indicators--the second as
altar-immaculatus blocks.
its baselevel of algae--fed by browning runoffs of rain,
along cracks filled with ivy.
leading into cypress trees expecting late visitors, with
an adamance that gives an odd calm to the out-of-place.
though they unnaturally crowd & surpass their enclosure,
with a tingle of wildflowers anticipating them.
making a point of something, already at its most advanced
stage--withholding a shade solid enough not to have been
under a burning phos.
come the skewed vision of a boat, progressing in the way
of water.
the sea peering at the back of the void's head, as it's shone
upon.
the forward tilt of a boatman's oared tension--stiffly even
keel, with enough momentum to float to the isle.
the boat becomes sensationless...the figure in the white
shroud knows nothing else but what is about to transpire.      
as if Lazarus dazedly brought to his feet, remaining there
for all the world.
the only thing that the cypress trees can see, as take into
their shade the coffin.