Poem – “By the Smoke in Your Mirror” – 3/15/2023

Come to blame?
Those cracks, both of
a heart, of a mirror,
breathing smoke
over a broken reflection,

as you might be
what you say you might be,

or you might be
the same as those cracks,
repairable as the next
broken faith.

I brought you here,
to a place where
all of your scars can be seen
from an uncovered spot,
where shadows cannot
seal your worth.

Love has correction,
while life holds eyesores
in its unbecoming sanity.

You are seeing clearly
the woman of your sadness.
But you do not wish to see
the light that’s behind,

for will it create another shadow,
or will you turn around?

Poem – “Love’s Hope for Something Old” – 3/15/2023

I can confirm
there is an estrangement,
there has been
a taxing embellishment,
while there was always
a long-lasting sustenance
that has become
an overwhelming starvation,

as we were born
for beauty’s sake,
though never receiving
Heaven’s answers.

Escaping to Hell,
if only to find shadows
to conceal us.
Our light,
under an undoing disguise
were this world’s drumming sound,
bringing healing all around,

while now we lose breath.

Helpless, under our eyes,
where storms leak
onto hollow earth.

We fell for vacancy,
for a place where hearts
could be settled,
could be found,
though were buried,
and remained
unheard of,

losing their beats, over time,
though stayed for hope,
dancing for the same crime.

Poem – “Hold Your Breath Closer” – 3/14/2023

Make your stand
high above the delicate rush,
the evening push
to be carved in sands,
painted, stroked
in asymmetrical disaster.

Waves came in, faster,
drawing your head to a sea,
to see what could not
be believed.

You’ll crush what remains
as always itself, ample.
It eluded arms, that swing
their embrace, around
empty air.

At first, hearing a cry
in a shell, outside your own.
At last, you’ve realized
you’ve crawled out,
on your own,

nevertheless. Go, to find nothing
as alike, as what we had left
in our flooded ruins –
the warmest shelter,

floating on clouds, like feathers.

Throughout lightness, in light of what
we used to be, down to where
you came, to believe
was only another place
to play make-believe.

For, in love, we kissed illusions,
with mirrors all around.

In truth, to blame us
will be to name us
as only another one of us,
another one of those
who made it,

who did not make it?

We carried our hearts, forward,
like arrows from their quivers.

If one was golden,
while all others were black,
there were those hidden silvers
that were tears, from a moon
raining its grief
upon our shelter, full of holes,

full of everything we stole.

Poem – “Going Through, Always Without” – 3/12/2023

Another breath,
full of smoke. Full, with remedies,
reigniting certainties,
realizing fatalities, upon that
inborn rush, running with clogged veins,
fleeing with uncontrolled fire,
returning with unresolved desire,
leaving after going through,
without you.

I wake up, surrounded by walls,
hung with unfamiliar portraits.
I stand up, embracing a ghost,
hearing heartbeats bounce from corner
to darkened corner, with fevers erupting
in spaces where prayers went,
came back, unanswered.

Another death,
full, with stinging eyes. Emptied,
with uncured maladies. Reminiscing
over tragic calamities.

Closure was always
a degree, too high, while I
was always too low
to keep a smile held up,

while I went blind to sunrise.

Sunsets were to remind
a blank mind, of pages, folded
for this curse of remembrance,
this rusted token
of unkind sincerity.

Poem – “Rowing Backwards, Downstream” – 3/10/2023

Stirring within
all our contemplations,
dreaming of nights, when
fascinations can blur
themselves, within faces
having vanished
of their remorse.

To all those
worsened feelings,
we hold onto teardrops
like we’ve ever been held
in arms – like oars
paddling us back,
in a drowning embrace,

reliving a misguided tension,
finding pain a relief
from a helpless pair of wings,
flying without direction
in those cloudless skies,

for happiness is no different
inside or outside
a scarlet, familiar wound.

Burned, like among your lips,
where a feeling or two
can be settled. At peace,
torn apart in your domain,
though removed from a light
I cannot bother to say
is better for a prayer.

Relived, among tears,
revived in your presence.

Caretaking a wound,
only possible when I am skipping
heartbeats, instead of stones
I would be missing –
if on a path, needless to explore
when all that exists
are open doors,
unwelcoming exits.

Poem – “In Everything to Depart from” – 3/10/2023

Who made it so
clouds were shaped to be
curtains, covering us
with showers of repression?

We are painted black
with ink, of our grief,
writing letters to a smothered Heaven,
weeping for something beneath,
caught between our feet,
given desire between our knees.

A display
of completeness, of hollowness,
for what is left
in this drift? Here are used up
expressions, from faces,
of those that were
meant to stay.

While we were
coming back, to speak
of honesty,
of deliberation, there were
still, those breaths, these winds
we chose instead to offer
a disused, misused
contemptible attention,

facing our eyes downstream
to hear our heartbeats.

Beneath rapids, within the undertow,
currents have removed our breaths,
like children, separated
from their lungs.

With a repeated reflection
shattered, in mirrors,
life being separate from those clouds,
we find ways to gather, again,

rebuilding another shroud
to keep us blaming fog,
to keep us blaming mirrors.

Poem – “For Wounds, Open with Eyes” – 3/8/2023

Carrying this. What is it,
but a gesture I have made, before?
I have left you a trail,
sent over a lightless shoulder,
like a tumbleweed,
carried by heated winds.

As you cling
onto a rock, onto
something that keeps you
always guessing.

It rewrites you,
over again, as remakes
of your broken soul.

It rapes you. Rewiring you,
in tethered reconnection,
in sinful resurrection.

Attached. Like a leech,
though I pull you, only by
your bare neck, accompanying you
in such scarlet pain, while barely
crying in this effort,

as I see you, looking back
to that fog.

Back, to all that
has splintered you, at your
wooden frame, as your
canvas bleeds, at your feet,

in all solid colors.

Whose face are you making?
What side are you taking
when clouds will get darker,
when your fascination
will only grow stronger?

Poem – “Whose Door Are You Reaching For?” – 3/8/2023

Born. I had come,
bringing tears, into your
steady arms. I have answered
your prayers, under dim skies,
though you always
wondered why.

You always gave into
doubt, with never a truth
to be covered, when it ever
had been spat inside
your open mouth.

There, with open arms,
with nothing more for yourself
to see, as a place full of harm,
because you have gone
with sickness, for the sun.

You have found your own,
of children who are new
to your drear, to you,
my dear. You have found
other answers, at the end
of one glistening rope,

though hoping
that it will continue
at more rewards, at when
you approach a door
to see something more in store,

while nothing changes
in your heart that has
crippled itself.

Unborn. Now, sheltered
under this same earth
the both of us had tumbled over,
had slid upon, clumsy in our
disbelieved hours.

Poem – “A Gentle, Inward Stirring” – 3/7/2023

I keep open
books – ones that have
your eyes, your face,
a mouth that tries to speak
as it fails to breathe,

streaming crimson across a skyline,
burying light inside a heart
that falls, naked, inside crisscrossed arms.

When you limp forward,
I leave a heartbeat backwards,
stilling you, for a moment,
to believe the everything of me,
in your struggle to release.

With one life, brought against
time’s solid bones. You are
everything, to behold,
dying to live,

as I am living,
until your death.

More than a burning house,
more than heartstrings
will glimmer, when winter
heats itself up, at summer’s
hidden majesty –
when I plant a seed
for the simplest ceremony
covering love with greater love,
growing a garden of you,

with your voice among winds,
your eyes, your face
arising from all colors.

Poem – “Recollecting Sunsets” – 3/7/2023

Whose loss, with whose vision
finds us, dark, in our surroundings?

We are losing stones,
in letting them fall into rivers.
Our reflections do not matter,
for our arms never carried much
when spilling solid tears,
into everything
that continues to flow,

sideways, always sideways,
on identical pathways.

On separate highways,
we have lost, with tunneling vision,
seeing across, and losing space
in every direction.

Wandering towards sunsets,
concerned only with our scars,
as other lights will dim
in some frozen town.

We’ll fear for more
than what must be thrown
into streams, rivers,

oceans that bring all memories
closer, than when they were
collected, inside broken dams,
once called an embrace.

We’ll believe that kisses
will disconnect, though always
find ways to reconnect
under gray clouds,

as bitterness was left
on lips, tasting discolored petals.

To eyes, witnessing
monochrome letters,
that were swept.
Swept, far from hands
that had gathered them,
for shadowy corners.

Poem – “The Smoke that Leaves Your Trail” – 3/6/2023

Heartfelt vapor.
Turning key
in a doorway that held
everything. Although, nothing
had ever kept our signals crossing
before we sheltered,
beneath leaves, under an embrace
of fog – merely a melted curtain,
about us, blinding us
into drifting gray.

Where were we to go?

Among all those twisting roads,
our veins led us nowhere,
while shadows
bled us, everywhere.

We are belonging – to stay
inside this shielding gray.

Heartbeats, heard,
sheltered under solid earth,
with a deserted sun
surrendering us
to uncovered presence.

A morbid pair
of rediscovered eyes,
stinging through tears
and smoke –
all that we swallowed,

as once, we dwelt,
singing amidst our grief,

as here, we dwell,
encased in stones,
burning among dust,
and autumn’s leaves.

Another year, growing old,
continuing to be cold,
while following that trail
you left,

for me to sail,
for this flesh to turn pale.

Poem – “Misused Time” – 3/6/2023

Love stays presented,
stilled, like a cadaver
rotting under a dim sunlit
evening that won’t ever
completely wilt,

even if you find me fading
from your streaming eyes.

Go blind, in your tears,

fall behind, in your fears.

I’ll be here, saving earth,
burying empty space before you
step inside, with fervent grace,
with an outline to trace.

Even in death, you are a seed,
coming up into open arms,

as without your breaths,
you burn in depictions of summer,
blossoming from all graves,
while healing nothing
under disused time.

I misuse time,
holding onto what it stretched,
for where I’m confined
with shadows growing longer,
with pain getting stronger.

Messages return,
always sent back, into chimes,

sent back through time
to remind a forsaken mind
of what continues to reveal –
be revealed,
but eventually be sealed.