I used to have a thesaurus in place of my heart,
fifty-thousand words to say how I hoped
I would someday feel.
In place of love, I had a fountain pen with a bent nib.
Instead of kisses, I had wirebound sketchbooks.
While other girls, giggling, wrapped
   phone cords around their fingers,
I wrapped sestinas in proper syllabics around enjambements.
        tiny crushes were
        replaced by Haiku gently
        wafting on the page
Love sick sighs were ignored in an echoing of
   alliteration and onomatopoeia,
and now I look at you and I rack my heart,
but I can't come up with the right . . . .

Do you see me?

I’ve been devouring poetry,
by the line,
by the page,
by the book.
No poem has been overlooked.

I’ve been feasting
on free verse,
blank verse,
perverse
cascades
of stanzas and rhymes,
a banquet of words
on which to dine.

I’ve been swallowing ad nauseam,
scarfing down similes,
masticating metaphors,
gormandizing poems aplenty.

Rhyming couplets,
I’ve contained them.
Sonnets and epics,
ingested.
Lyrical odes,
digested.
A thousand lines
to make you swoon.
I’ve tasted them all—
the potent and
the picayune.
Villanelles, check.
Sestinas too.
I even hiccupped
my own haiku:

          Icicles melt on glazed gutters.
          Water drips, prolific, bits of sunlit seeds
          promising lilacs below the eaves.

Do you see me*?

I hate to ask, but I’m afraid
something poetic has happened.

my head is a tureen
brimming with stars
my arms are utensils
in a darkened drawer
my chest, a room of last resort
my feet are stressed, in short

Such prosody is blinding.

Can you tell me why
my eyes are bleak?
Or why I no longer
blink?

I sense the sear of fluent tears
composing on my cheek:
endless drops, black beads,
consumptive stains of ink.

Conceiver of blue guitar dreams,
proclaimer of starlit prophecies,

she walks in circles
to the sound of blue guitars.
Speaks with rhyme
in a thousand pieces
and creates visions
of first impressions.
Her surprises are
without limitations.

The words she embraces
reflect star-beams
into the Sestinas of her heart.
She hears the symphony
of the blue notes
and becomes the music.
Her moon directs the sky
and orchestrates her desires.

She dances to the sound
of a thousand harps.
Sings to the soul of her being
with rhapsodic melodies
and whispers refrains of amour.
At the moment of echoes,
her passions are returned
by the sultry kiss of the stars.

Structure. Poetry is deemed poetry due to its structure.
Well why can’t my poetry just do what it wants.                              One word over here

One word here
Must everything make sense
An okapi does not wish it were more giraffe than zebra.    
Accepting it is is what it does and in doing so collaborates with life.
But   not us.
Does it botther  u? Does it bother you when I spell bother you incorrectly?
Bother you when My words jump around the page in nonsense.
Am I writing prose or a verse in free verse free of verse   Why can’t I just regurgitate these words upon this page and be loved and accepted for putting these words upon a page

So often are people admired for their sonnets and sestinas
But did you ever find love for structure
                  In
             madness