Barbie screams for help in her dream house
as you rush to the scene, a towel tied loosely over your shoulders,
a pillow beneath your shirt in place of a Kevlar vest,
and only oversized sunglasses covering your identity.


As you rush to save her, Elmo – your first rescue –
clings tightly beneath your underarm, bobbing gently
as you scale the ottoman and jump from couch to couch.


To the unseeing world you are Batman,
Wolverine, the Flash, and all of the Avengers –
ordinary men made heroic through radiation and tragedy.


But I see beyond the alter ego, past the acrobatics
and death-defying maneuvers that merit the oohs
and aahs within our general definition of heroic.


I see a boy truly worth admiring, the boy I’d call for help
if needed, because in you I see all boys, In you
I see the beauty of biology, the lovely product of a number
of atoms I will never have enough lifetimes to count.


If you could only see the splendid hue of your wide-eyed
innocence as you tie your teddy bear villain to the chair leg,
unaware that the seemingly simple steps of your chubby fingers
require a million more steps within you.


The sheer energy coursing from nerve to nerve
with each dip of your head and bow of your lashes
is more incredible than any power
induced by gamma rays or infected spiders.


When you place your hands at your waist in glorious victory
and lift each rain-booted foot over entire civilizations
of Lego people, I am made aware of the social circles
present within you, the cliques of tissues and cells
moving uniformly inside, carpooling toward their respective jobs,
their kinetic messages traveling faster than
the water-cooler gossip of any terrestrial worker.


And while you separate your plastic dinosaur army
by rank – in this case color, shape, size, and title –
you show the world that the truths you contain
in your four year old brain could rival
any super computer or evil mastermind.


A Pomerian named Lucy yips at your feet,
making me keenly impressed by the relatively few genetic signals
that separated you from her in creation, the same genes
that invented the stormy gray novelty of your eyes.


In truth, being superhuman is only a lofty dream
because the awe of being human
is our most overlooked achievement.

But we do not realize this truth until
we’re older – If we ever do – once we’re past
the age of dress-up, too old to announce this fact
by wearing tights in our favorite colors
and a cape with our own initials.

Dear hummer driver:
you don’t need a car to prove
you are a *******

Left the museum
to find prettier colors
in autumn leaves

If eyes are windows
let me pray to the stained glass
mosaic of yours

I write in green ink
to spread the hope you wrote of
Pablo Neruda

What better feeling
than waking to a heartbeat
knowing it’s not yours

Where did the stars go,
I ask as the sun comes up.
Oh! They’re in your eyes

Play me the guitar
and imagine that it’s me,
in your arms again.

“Lord have mercy,”
you dolefully sigh,
your song awaiting


my reply.
”Have Mercy on me,”
each chord explains,


your baby is lost
and torn heart pains.
With tired feet


I softly croon
my dark agreement,
a bluesy tune.


I stir my cocoa –
a condoling toast –
and welcome you in


as your lonely host.
Suspended in your
mournful zephyr,


I bear the wounds
you’ll always suffer,
the Atlas burden

that breaks your back,
your scarlet letter
weathered black,


and offer you
my own lament
of how my stormy


Monday went.
Then, like a
wing-footed Gabriel,


he sings his
holy madrigal.
With merciful swiftness

my beloved appears,
and whispers,
”Darling, I am here,”


Then our duet becomes
one person less,
As I am
            undone
                        with
              ­                 happiness.

I do not understand Pordon when she says
your love makes her “tremble with me
in paralyzing pauses,” nor do I understand
Cummings when the texture of your fragility “compels me
with the colour of its countries.”


Too often poets confuse some high,
a drug-induced elation, with a testament
of love. But it is not some contrived intoxication
that makes me see your beauty as divine
or your voice as some thrill to be craved.


Your touch does not electrify my skin or send me
into the light-headed ecstasy of a common drunk.
But the simple warmth of your center, the smooth suppleness
of each padded fingertip does elicit euphoria in me because it is you,
my earthly lover, who possesses them, and in so possesses me.


Your kiss does not make time speed
through the highways of my mind like
an amphetamine, blurring physics into philosophy.
Rather, your mouth points out the geometric precision
of time compared to the fluidity in
the organic bow of your bottom lip.


I am not addicted to your glances like some aesthetic ******,
because your gaze does not make my heart race
like the hummingbird pace of someone needing a hit
of your rainbow-prismed eye. Instead, it is the complex brown,
turned honey in the sunlight, that stills my heart
whenever you turn from me, because it is that familiar liquid tint
that I love more than any other.


And the sight of you does not commit me to profound
epiphanies on politics or sociology, because, I admit,
you are my favorite distraction, and I prefer looking at you
to some wild hallucination, since I am struck momentarily dumb
by the weighty power of your sudden presence,
left in myopic gratitude until you leave again.


So understand, dear reader, that it was not some chemical
fixation that bound Petrarch to Laura or Dante to Beatrice,
but rather the arresting truth that the million colors poured out
by the sun, the duck fluff softness of the rowdy dogs at your feet,
and the explosive, joyous giggles of the neighborhood children
will continue to exist in heart-breaking beauty tomorrow.

We were on the phone when you said it,
the proverbial observation that time
speeds up and slows down depending on the activity.


It is believed that summer vacations go by
in the millisecond it takes to blink.
By that measure then seasons could change
in the months spent at a dentist’s office,


if a baby is born in the morning
his parents will  find him middle aged by the six o’clock news,
and you will surely go gray in the centuries
it takes to file your taxes.


It was then that I remembered the way you looked
last night, your very own contradiction.
You lay there defying the familiar axiom,
a little god on a downy throne,
the sun awaiting the command perched
vigilantly on your softly parted lips.


With each breath clocks fell motionless around us,
hourglass sands poured out singularly
like the carefully rationed drops of a leaky faucet.
I watched as you slept there, entire eons passing
with each rise of your chest, small forevers in each fall.


In that moment there was no history,
no sound beyond the simple sighs that escaped you,
each an iron cable fastening me tighter
to you in this seamless moment, no light
except the dimming flicker of the last stars in existence.


I watched time not tick, but slide
and curve over the gentle dip of your elbow,
sit cross-legged sipping tea around
the perimeter of your navel, play cards
on the smooth musculature of your sturdy calf.


It is this image of you that now pulls me
from my newspaper crossword, makes me
rest my spoon back down in my half-eaten cereal,
and has me relive each brief infinity
before finishing my orange juice.

They are always laid on their backs,
hands folded delicately, almost
as if in bedtime prayer,
over their still bosoms -

as was custom to call it
then in that undefined
historical time in which all
sleeping princesses forever dream.

I am reminded of them now
as you lie there, my drowsy prince
in a comforter castle. You
who lie there so unassumingly,

your quivering lips impetus enough
to embolden anyone, knight or otherwise,
to scale the stony towers of
your blanketed confinement.

But as i watch you i find
that i am no princess, and
far from the gallant savior
your fairy tales promised.

I have no sword with which
to save you, and no beast
to save you from beyond
the snoring dog at your feet.

There's no poisoned spool or fruit
to trap you, no wicked witch's scheme,
just a heavy head and a warm
pillow beneath it,

And how foolish i look now,
worn pajamas replacing the
silver armor i should have on.

so sleep my dear prince,
and dream of the hero you want
me to be, and i'll stand guard

by the door, trying my best
to keep the dust bunnies and
dragons at bay.

Each poet’s pen and adolescent’s heart,
exhale the breath of summer’ name;
and sun shine brightest on the face of youth,
when she is at her highest frame.


When nature’s bloom elicits childish hands,
and gentle waves like puerile feet,
and arduous caress of loves’ palms,
alone protest the summer heat.


Then passions and abandon wax, extol
the barefoot freedom of the sun;
as libertine’s delight and Robin’s trill,
extend well past the day is done.


But some prefer a cooler breeze,
to welcome Sunday rest;
and sun’s blush greater radiant,
when setting in the West.


And while the zeal of summer play,
allures a feverish touching thrill,
what human warmth more magnified
than that which follows autumn chill?


The greens of summer don’t compare,
to palettes fall alone achieves;
and summer song is sweeter sung
when whispered through descending leaves.


To those who speak of summer love,
you’ve never really loves I trust;
as love is lost in verses that,
confuse true love with summer lust.


So I’ll ignore the ignorant
beliefs that kids and poets old,
and let them have their summer greens,
for everything in fall is gold.

From time to time you will ask me,
always with the same coy inflection,
what i am thinking about,

And each time I'm not sure
how best to give you
an honest answer,

how to succinctly catalog
the innumerable things that had
crossed my mind right before you asked.

My real answer is always this:

I'm thinking how there is nothing i'd prefer,
in no exotic location i'd rather be,
than sitting right here, silently
in your car, the window cracked
just enough that i can smell the grass outside.

I'm thinking that nothing sounds sweeter
than the singular cadence of your
unexpected laughter as it carries into
the kitchen while i'm reaching
for the cereal above the fridge.

I'm thinking that nothing I've ever seen
in art or nature holds as much warmth
as the liquid amber of your eyes, or shares
the perfect symmetry of your freckles,
the constant constellation across your shoulders.

And i am thinking, more than all of these,
that there's nothing i wouldn't give for you
to look at me like that again - that gaze
you sometimes do, the one that breaks my heart
each time it melts away - even if
for just a second more.

The answer i give you, though
honest at its core, is simply
"nothing."