Poem – “Farewell to Lost Petals” – 3/31/2023

Once more, consequential
to ignore that shared shadow.
A glimpse, a raw occurrence
of what we sought –
being wrapped around
our evenings, dilated in eyes,
running loose,

with soiled bandages,
fading with wounds,
too new.

We look for
hidden chances,
believing in being
carefully selected,
under heavy enterprise,
with prices for love,
with elements of disaster.

We drop, low
in worth, in reminder
of what we keep forgetting.
Another tug at that
same, discolored string,
wrapping our wounds
in painless unity,

covering our faces,
in disfigured disguises.

A high, for deception
into sighs, without being
smothered, into wilted roses.
Brought close, upon
our unhealed brokenness,

as our losses
are always a weight,
one that we cannot toss
far from our eyes.

Poem – “Eyelids like Curtains” – 3/31/2023

Briefly letting. Staying, and
overcoming that least urge
to resubmit, though I’ll let
ourselves, be endeared
under storms, where bliss can be
wrapped around, as a bandage.
I’ll let, these eyes flutter,
casting themselves apart,
from stinging smoke.

What burned, though what’s
always avoided, in our heat?
Veins are spread, delicate,
aromatic, apart to be violent
from different horizons.
Streaking sounds,
deafening motions,

high within, repeated
sensations of remorse.

Coming clean. Coming forth,
unseen, like a ghost, like shadows
waltzing to silence, at their
guardians – the blaze,
the pain we inflict
upon bones, on marble flesh
when it gets cast
into permanent memories.

What’s left, in these spots,
those surfaces we left? When we left
each other, to be left hanging,
what does draw itself close,
or closed, like curtains,
like reminiscent eyelids,

from crippling mountaintops,
with tears that are loosened
from a pale moon?

Poem – “I Would Have Loved You More” – 3/30/2023

Consistency in distance.
Constant in my usual
pledges, of detailed remorse,
laying a finger, loosened,
stinging on ancient promise.

Unexplored hallways, of a heart
ticking under a clock’s pendulum,

keeping itself hanging.

To another display,
I would revive all those dead
words, rewriting letters
that were never read.

Without failure, I would
gift additional unity
to those waters, clasping within
all mirrors,

all fragments, of reflections,
I have not sustained.

Let longing be impossible,
while love rewinds all forlorn minds,
luring gray skies, into sweet downpours,
where-after eyelids, have opened,

revealing scenes, representing dreams
at unboxed, disrobed devotion.

Poem – “A Ship Full of Holes” – 3/28/2023

There’s mimicry,
among this collected imagery.
I pull in, these waters –
they’ve been reminding me
how much an ocean has grown,

one of which, I set sail
upon a form of countless holes.

Who opened fire?
Who let me sink,
with only two hands
to lend me, this rope?

For too long,
stumbling on answer
after unearthed answer,

and still
somehow, those words
were speaking
through their concealing,
dishonest filth.

A white flag,
like a mother with her
impulse, to console,
to pay her heart
at a toll – to roll her child,
cold and lifeless,
in an immaculate bedsheet.

How many times
had she, said goodbye?

Poem – “What Helps You to Doubt” – 3/28/2023

Forced observation.
Helpful, for what
has already
been understood. Have you
ever lifted a heart,
too wounded, to move?

Move on,
with those guesses,
left behind. Within rubble,
that was, always where
you crossed invisible lines,
finding me, inside
blankets of shadows.

I am bleeding
for another statement,
empty to this misery.

I am never finding
the cause. This current,
broken element,

emulating me.

With no
messages, to be sent across,
you are dividing yourself
from thinning walls.

Entrenched in brokenness,
wide-eyed, indirect
to what senses weakness,

like wolves that highlight
their fangs, beneath
lowered moonlight.

I run, with everywhere
to hide, to fall, under another
of those infinite grains.

Poem – “In Crude Lettering” – 3/28/2023

Chosen words.
Worshipped promises.
Don’t let
your streaming face
go astray,
letting empty letters
pile higher. As your heart
carries you on, in debris,
fold those pages.

Don’t fold yourself.

Remember each
feint, each tragedy
born upon wicked palms.
I was nothing more,
than what could not
be brought through.

You stand
at Heaven’s doorway.
You’ve knelt,
praying at frosted windows.
Remember this, if only
to realize
an increment of knowledge
that cannot retreat
back into the unknown.

You know
what title you deserve.
You’ve grieved,
undressing your eyes
in disbelief.
Remember what
cannot be redone,
should not
ever have been won.

Poem – “Abreast in Reversed Distance” – 3/26/2023

I come along.

Answering
with fever – closer, in these
weighted, pleasuring moments
when I leave a lingering
droplet, on your open mouth,
for your awaiting glance,

testing a ghost
to disappear, again.

Craving a tear,
coming loose. Carving
twistedness,
among jealous eyes,

as you were looking away
to see, to plea
for a thing not brought back.

Memories lost, among sands,
faded inside dusty photographs –
blackening into storms,

worsened into
what would not undo
itself, at your
delicate torture.

Brushing a tress, aside,
while kissing a tearstained,
wearied face.

I return,

returning with a second,
white, stainless dress.

I remain,

while answering
a heartbeat with music,
with brittle notes
from a solid throat.

Poem – “As Eyes Hide to Cry” – 3/26/2023

Abandoned spark.
Hoping. If everything can be
all that we, carried in heart,
time can stop. Let it be –
another cessation at the demonstration,
one more kiss, drawn in
like breath that moved a petal
from a rose,
hardened into bleak metal.

Lowered eyes.
Watering our earth,
in our cries. Why else
can what supports us
be shifting? Why else,
with many more breaths,
can our views, what we view
be drifting?

A wind takes our hands
from cupping calmer waters,
while we bring forth
those storms.

A tragedy leaves us
wide-eyed, open in unmerciful
hammering of pressured hearts,

while screams will be muted
in repeated contemplation,
in defeating resignation.

I have left a seed
beneath our stumbling feet,
waiting for an ocean
to raise a garden,
from salt-covered wounds,

while lakes recede their purpose,
without mutual comparison
through lifeless echoes.

Poem – “Imagining Your Face” – 3/24/2023

What’s closer,
in the pain? A certain gleam,
resides, delicate in your eyes,
through tears
imagined to be
crystallizing these blanketing,
smothering memories.

Whatever leaves you
watered, for gardens,
for those that remain empty –
you were for liquid, to raise
only an ocean,

from within your
fertile torture.

Your wounds bury you
into your own skin.
I want to love, if love would
keep you closer
than what, keeps you stagnant,
than what, curtains you,

fading under
see-through shelter.

I want to love, if you can
continue to kiss your own hands,

never swiping tears, since tears can’t
reveal dark clouds any lower,
any closer,

while love can,
or should
raise you higher.

Poem – “Re-Existing Truth” – 3/21/2023

All times, we co-exist,
faltering before doorways,
wary to our shadows
ceasing to exit,
surrendering to be stilled,

upon knees.

Faint. With pleas,
with arrogance to what
we will never please.

Hand-held. Fingertips frozen
on skin’s burning edge.

I heat up, to our
ocean of surroundings,

pulling you close –
close, to this disappearing light,
kissing a smeared smile,

as we blend into mirrors –
reflections, of something we
carelessly disbelieved.

Surrender.
To always, remember
that these limbs
will be dismembered,
like a mother’s embrace,
coming loose –
a repeated reimagining
of birth, into death.

A cold release, with vapor –
in our unfiltered lungs,
draining black, in our words,

forming a long sheet
to conceal us, among nighttime’s
continued lack of hues.

Poem – “I Remind You of What’s Gone” – 3/21/2023

It wasn’t always
that you were adrift,
being lost, in a mother’s womb,
seeking darkness, for your thumb,
desperate for that embrace
where love can boil,
can be foiled,

or can rope you in
with everything to grant you.

Simplistic, within.

To kisses, with sweat
running from half-opened eyes,
while lips trace over
scars, repeated in lines
for signatures, rewritten,

and never erased,
when you see
where the smile drowns you.

A comprehension of falsehood,
abandoned to those floods,

as I pulled you in,
gifting you everything,
from within.

To give sound, to your speechlessness,
to grant expectation, to your surprise
would not, could not
kill, what’s leftover,

from those who claim comparison
to me, always outside of you,
always outside, from me to you.

Retold stories, deeper than
what I could fill, from within me,

for inside, of you.

Poem – “Dried Up in Your Eyes” – 3/21/2023

Another trail
to least follow,
while letters fail to sail
in their mute blankness,
as hands hold air,

burying a seed
to come up, with the mark
of a recollected eternity
deep, in this fairytale.

Drowning. Once, downing
pills, from your bottomless kiss,
bottled into a smile,
remembered at a mirror
that leaves smoke, in your favor,

while I keep crawling up to it,
hoping for another space
to sift, to drift
closer for everything more,
and nothing less.

Choosing to burn.
Cremated, before death,
wrapped in brambles
of your rotten arms,

while wanting no one to find me
losing petals, at that seed
that came up, at the white
spread, of soft snow,

of what will melt
before I see the senselessness
in every instance,
having knelt.