Words

Words my old companions
my missed friends
where have you gone this season?
Surely not the garden where
I sit in sun in search of you
looking at flowers I cannot name
and birds I would rather see in my plate
you aren't there my old friends,
I wander here and there
observing a colony of ants
governance over who has the fate of
the dying bumble bee,
I watch them gather, oh what little people!
And then i look from here
to there
eyes settling then wandering off again
to the rusty fence of my self-made
prison
to the squeaky gate of captivity
but I've seen the world in all coats
and watched the neon lights turn on
and off and followed
of swarm of yellow cabs with my
eyes,
there is nothing for me out there
no words in the crowded streets
poetry isn't waiting in lines
and getting off and on and off
and off metal that makes you
go go go
Words, you aren't there either
you have left the dingy bars empty
and the disco lights dim
My friends you've left the city
so there i sit in a forest of plants
unknown and political insects
wondering if you are among them
lurking in the trail of the tiny slug
voyaging the expanse of my garden
or perhaps you jump with the grasshoppers
who are Tarzan to my uncut grass
making loud noises as they jump from
stem to stem.
My old friends, come to me, I'll
wait day after day still as that honeybee
that watches flowers like hawks
ready to pounce on them
as though they will run off
leaving him like you did me.
Adamantly I wait and wonder
and search and hope
amidst little strangers
for my friends to return.
Words beloved
words missed.

I loved for Myself

I loved for myself,
Me and my aged scars
That still felt like they were on the surface
Me and my drenched hair from too many
Times standing in that rain
Waiting
for this man or that
To finally come back like he’d promised,
This time I loved for me
Me with my box of broken promises
Juxtapose to my jar of dreams unfulfilled,
I loved for the Me stagnant, stuck in the
Mirror looking at the face of misery
Wondering how long it would last this time.
I loved bestially this time,
With all that was left of the me who’d
Made the seat by the phone her bed
Waiting
For this man or that
To finally get around to giving me
some of the love I’d given generously.
This once I loved for myself
For the Me that I once was unwillingly,
The one with a face smeared from good old
Tears.
Me with the heavy heart despite its cracks,
Me with little inside left to keep gravity
From letting me go.
This time I loved for Me.
Me the broken
Me the shattered
Me the dreamless dreamer.
It took all and everything and much more
But this time
I loved for myself.

I found Myself in April

I found myself in April.
owing the world everything and the stars the world.
I had nothing to show for the drenches I put my heart into and the holes I slept in at night.
The wilderness absorbed me, one and all.
I found myself in April
needing something I couldn't have and loving someone who couldn't love me.
There I was relying on little specks of faith
Life dashing right by me.
I found myself
A pile of unreasonable questions aligned at my door
and nothing to hold me to the ground.
Stacks of mail and all the signs of a life I wasn't living.
All traces of me quickly fading
New air not settling.
Funny enough
I found myself exposed in my natural form
emotions had finely caught up with me and there I was
a vague replica of the me I have always been inside.
And the mirror never lies.
the impostor seated in my seat
parading around with my dingy unkempt hair on their
head was in fact a me I had suppressed
A me I found in April.

-Baffled-

What am I?
What am I not?
On vacations on balconies
in the company of wine
and strangers
questions are asked
rapidly
bullets flying one after
the other
People skip particulars
and leave the manners
at the bottom of
the Bordeaux,
without pacing
without pause
they ask the personal
in fluent gibberish,
On these occasions I
tend to stare
like I'm looking out at a foggy
beach.

"who are you?"
Bizarre and both naive,
a question aimed
to baffle me
Of the little I know
Of the little I don't.
I have only ever assumed,
ever gotten but the jest
of who I am.

But of course I am a poet
or maybe I have been,
maybe I lived like one
but was I ever one within?
Is a poet a type of person?
Is a person a type of poet?
Maybe mice write ballads
or honeybees blank verse
who is who?
And what is what?
I can be the proverbial sky
and wake up a baboon
aren't we all connected?
The vino speaks before
my words can reach my
lips
i am never one thing at a time
or in one place in a moment
strangers now with their
mouths wide open
I baffle them unwillingly.

-No Title Yet-

When the moon blooms
throwing heavenly light
on everything and anything
when the night sky arises
and all is well
and all is wonder
canaries safely in their
Egyptian-twigged nests
all lids heavy
and all lights dim
that is when it all starts
there's no one around to watch
the night-sky bloom
no one but me
no one but I
I watch it all behind a
barrier of glass
Patiently as though
seeing is touching
I feel it all
and it changes me
My front row seat
to spectacular
the ballet of the night's
sky
the Moon, our charming
dancer, shifts behind
the curtain of grey clouds
and back again
like a star shinning
and back again
to end the show
I see it all without movement
my mouth agape
my heart between beats
I see it all
and it changes me

Universe

Here I am
Let down by the world again
Asking the Universe to love me
My pillow drowns and my heart explodes
Why don’t you love me?
For you I am never good enough
For me I am never enough
Ever a tiny fraction less
World, world.
Again I am your enemy
Unwillingly I am your enemy
But still I ask you
Still I beg you
To love me
Look at me
My flooded brown eyes
My crumbling soul
Rome, are you as broken as me?
Scars outline the doors of my heart
Then it broke from the weight of the universe
A universe that made me only to forsake me
Faulted and flawed.
Even you, Shadow,
Even you left me
Disappearing as quietly as you came
Of you I have little recollection
Did you feel as unappreciated as I do?
A shadow in a sunless world.

Rainstorms

He held her hand
earthy brown fingers
linking in a twine
of understanding,
The palms of perfect
strangers
but imperfect humans
the common entity
No names
No memories
No knowledge of each
other
yet in the darkness of life
they hold hands