Category: Poetry

Another night in reliving
this squall. Forming tears,
to hurl, overboard,
as I am warming
my wounds on the fire
of what stings in your absence.

A pencil has traced
you, in the looming clouds,
having grayed on your leaving.
I have kept what words
would receive you,
would let you come blooming,
but you would not,

as I am here,
forming tears from empty air.

No one seems to know
where I am, though they can hear
the thunder crawling
from miles, ashore.

They can hear
all that replaces itself,
out of empty air.

Some children are running along
a beach, made of stones,
made of numbness,

while people bathe
in currents, stretching
like arms that cannot take
that light, at a distant lighthouse,
to rectify what will always be
an eternal night.

Red wine
brought forth,
from a pair of raised hands,
to a set of aged, dried lips.
Your stare never erased
its point, of no return
of what keeps me releasing
time, into your palms,

the grasp where grains
are counted, recounted,
like droplets
from a barren sky.

I retain nothing
at the slightest glimpse
of what was left,
drawn in imperfect circles.
All that is left
is a withered rose petal,
drying in your touch,

as I am all that remains
wondering how
an ocean disappears,
or if these sands will soon follow.

In great thirst,
naked upon your skin,
I reside in twisted junction.
I stabilize myself, even among absence,
even in this space,
where you are, no longer,
where waters are remembered,

hiding themselves behind curtains,
having receded behind eyelids.

We were, under these trees,
remembering. What were we doing,
listening to thudding memories?

To thoughts, being buried
in chests, under earth,
underfoot, and lost
in the undertow
of a river that keeps us
moving backwards.

We drive ourselves upstream,
pledging our naked eyes upon kisses,
smooth with the sands
where we once traced our names,
like promises onto immaculate
displays of white.

Lovers, in sight,
within their brittle embraces.
Found, in the depths
of each other’s heart.
Going under,

and losing our light
only when we black out,
carrying what we keep close,
without rebellion.

Just a haunt,
with the keen eyes, the dual faces
that keep coming around.

What keeps us conforming
to this space, above and below
rain-soaked ground?

We’ve lived like figurines –
carved, but never complete,
in vibrant sceneries where we drown.

Who knew
while our ends met,
that the journey would catch ablaze,
that the suns were set,
that, upon our pain,
we would never be fazed?

We still took
to cast ourselves off,
like fishes who gained their freedom,
but we were still on hooks.
We were still
hoping – being behind curtains,
behind the shield
that kept us stilled,
for unmentioned seconds,

within gnarled arms,
among histories that burn
with receding futures.

We drove to the finish line,
listening to the anthem of our heartbeats,
hold inspiration like a noose,
giving us weight, handing us gravity
to keep us weak upon our knees.

We found sensation in the madness,
as we found sadness in the resignation,
but we still took off, once again,
to show the world
what we have sent.

Who goes,
there? Who reenters?
Where? Are you there,
hearing me mourn,
noticing me wilt,
stuck on my thorns?

I am reusing
my familiar tragedy,
holding my head
in helpless hands.

I reach for eternity
to bring back the void,
tugging on dark threads,
as love’s famed sickness
plays dirges for the dead.

Burning. In these waters,
I am drowning upon sights,
letting winter disguise me
in harrowing white,

because I cannot conquer
what love has left me with.

Like exhumed flame
from some unseen heart,
we fell, reveling in
everything we took from the start
of those bridges.

To them, we raised them
as crippled children,
lost in their minds.
Lost, though refined
in where they danced,
eager to be lost
on some amusing path,

serenading their wickedness
on the path’s own twist.

You were brought here
to speak for what we lost.
We were made, here,
to love, too unkindly.
We cherished,
bending branches, with limbs
we cut to spill the sweetness,
having lived in each other’s
colorful madness,

reminding those same children
of their unfortunate state.

To bridges, we removed,
while upon our ecstasy
of rolling in embraces,
among debris,
we stayed to consume the ash
for another hour
which lingered on our tongues,
on our lips,

reminding ourselves
always, of what we cost
those eyes, mirroring our damage,
the wounds, our blindness.

A moment of bleeding
palms, onto sands,
hands into outstretched shores,

dropping salt into a wound,
carving into rivers
what were those unset letters,
going downstream
with the unheard cries
adding more to the flood
of words.

What rose?
From a horizon,
a line that broke, on a promise,
on a signature never written,
because that heart
that came close
bled, on an ocean
where yearning was everyone’s error,
everyone’s memorialized terror.

In wanting of a time
when sunrise was our time
to come up with the fog
that would never be
the confusion
that keeps us in sheets,
that keeps us in scores
where sorrow
would be the song to a future
colored in a fabled gray.

A fairytale,
pictured on a setting
where caresses are letting
emotions become
the ocean’s motion,

and nothing could surround us,
as the fog of our clouds,
where sadness comes to shroud
our uniting eyes, in its crowd.

Like leaking highways,
running freely
to those endings,
colliding against happiness,
within sceneries
that are deserting
love, at its goodbye,
at the released sigh.

Like what we could call
a space, for our bliss.
Like what we could name
a face, for a kiss,

we were once trapped,
wanting more
to the torture,
blowing out candles,
to get grounded,
in our roots,
burning in thrashing limbs,
wielding fire in our hands,
our ancient sin.

Like what we could forever ruin,
when messages are sent
through ashen debris,
a color for its sounds –
a lasting passage in its emptiness
when nothing ran down
from blindness, for ink.

Like what we could never reconnect
among wires, from opposing sides
where distance reminds
us, of where winter resides,

keeping us pale,
on hope’s endless scale.

Heaven’s voice
fills your lungs
with something other
than smoke,

with something
other than those tears,
as it must be
that you are healing
apart from the one,
the embittered one
who held your throat
in vaporous kisses.

We disappeared,
together, as we withered
like petals that divorce
their towers, their stems,
into becoming fevers,

as if we shouted at the sun
for a different kind of warmth.

We wanted to lean back
to embrace stars.
We wanted to see something new
flowing from open wounds,

but we were careless
to see what was beneath the moon,
being everything old,
all things cold.

You are gone,
knowing something more,
beyond the drift
we satiated our thirsts over,
leaving smiles in the dust,
leaving growth
covered in rust.

Pathway,
a doorway,
an outside beyond
your radiance,

to a shadow
that never forgets
what it once held
inside empty palms.

Blue in the face,
suffocating in the space
of what was left
puddling here,

among tears, of those
that will not leave
for upcoming years,

and among your fossil,
the one that disguises
history’s blank curtain,

for you are always one to
keep resurrecting.

White-out
your name, among
the temporary,
for I wish
for pain to escape faster,

needlessly going
for heartbeats that whimper.

I am astir,
always in your air,
exiting from the doorways
of your lungs.

Another hour
left, to be tugged,
on a rope, upon a slope,
yearning for the next year
when I will have
an ocean of sweeter tears.

Blossoms,
ones that keep burning
without much struggle,

while there is forfeiture,
in being stilled, here.

Being carried, over there,
being like seeds without direction
into that disheartened abyss.

There is healing
expressed, elsewhere.

There is finality
breathed, everywhere.