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

Old

We sat in an antique room
drinking tea from a new old
china set,
everything collected
things bought in their collections
for collection
Archaic paintings called 'Classics'
and music played known as
'Classical'
Everything was oddly old
We sat on refined mahogany
with every piece a tale
and our host an aging man
who was much like what he owned
He chattered and entertained in
his museum home
'Look at this'
'Look at that'
Each from each century
I looked at the owner
more than his obsessions
his greying eyes all to match his
grey suit
And then I think
When time rolls on
who would be there to
refine him?
Polish him?
Treasure him?
And call him a 'Classic'
And every word he utters
dub 'Classical'?

Defrosted Dreams

Store all your sweetest dreams
Si Yes Qui
I'd like to
I'd love to
uproot the fairytale life
I live behind my brown lids
And freeze them in the now
right next to the tub of ice-cream
and the emergency 10
somewhere between last night's
leftovers
and the half-eaten casserole
until night falls
sleep plummets into us
just before sleep drags me down
and pins me to my floral pillow
in my floral-sheeted single
I'd take my block of dreams
sweet dreams
and let them melt into my mind
Si Yes Qui
defrosted dreams.

Floral stains, Cats and Love trains

I am doomed to talking to walls
and felines
collecting what's old and making
it older,
living in a small house
that's draped in floral
every curtain every cloth
suffocated by flowers.
I can almost smell the loneliness
or is that just my future cats?
running around
purring unstoppably
communicating with me when
humans cease to effect me,
music stops to move me
and I'm GRAY.
It's inevitable the way I go about
too late for the love train
Each time I punch my ticket in
and wait in elongated lines
then follow a stream of punctuated
signs
clocks tick and tock
but I am late.
Once again I miss the love
train
And I return to waiting for my
my feline-filled floral-stained
lonely days.

Carousel

Emotion parading around in
the chariot of tears,
invectives thrown back and
forth
like cupid's arrows loose,
wild,
again we are at odds
standing hollow beings
then together
arm in arm
we trample on the love
we built,
the carousel is burnt,
there will be no repetition
this habit of loving and
loathing
ends now,
ends here.

Once More

From time to time
I reoccur
slipping from my
atmospheric home
back to Earth and moments
In turn I return
to life
and all its scattered things
Time did not end with me
the rusty clock ticks on
Everything is different
Everyone is distant
They have all changed
moved on
leaving their footprints
in my graveyard
their fallen tears
have turned to ice
tiny diamonds
on my tomb
They don't know
I am around
they stopped looking
for me
and now the wailing wind
is simply wind
the shadows
are of trees
they never think
they never hope
that that presence is simply
me

Spinning thoughts

Again and again
I am left alone
To a room that is mine
But that is not my own
To the thoughts I own
That are not my own,
When these times come
around
I sit in silence
Un momento
Alone with myself
to be myself alone
I shift and turn and think
si Precisely
Borrowed thoughts
linger in my heavy
brain
Ponderous pondering
under my skull
whimsical mediocrity
pre-thought thoughts
even in my mind I can't
escape from ordinary
the reign of trend
and again in me a
trailblazer is set ablaze
and when i arise from
adopted ideas, fostered
opinions
I once more live in sync
with everyone but myself
I once more belong
and lead the life of
someone else.

The Religion Of Words

Pablo speaks to me at night
ever at my window
whispering in the dark,
stories,
tales that cross seas and
skies
Oh the religion of the
words!
He calls.
I echo.
Poetry, poetry.
Like moonlight
his words seep in,
touching me here
and there
fuelling the dying flames
of inspiration
clearing the clouds that settled
in my eyes
oh the religion of words!
He calls.
I echo.

He loves to tell me secrets
of pasts regretted
and lives wasted
of art that floats
like air
unseen necessities.
“Poeta! Poeta!
Don't be afraid of sweetness”
he murmurs
then goes,
back to the pages
where his spirit
is written
back to
his religion of words,
the scriptures of a
poet.
I return to my pillow
of painted dreams
and another day is born.

The Show of the Night

The curtain of the sky
has come down,
hands applauded
And the stars rest in
their changing rooms,
The show of the night
sold-out in the day
is over!
Sorry mi amor
I went without you
wanting to see it all
up-close
And cast my eyes on
the stellar performance
to see life in the night
from the front role,
from where thought,doubt
and fear cannot find me
And I am no longer in the clasps
of sorrow.

Maybe it will come again
But day alone is not sure
and what of night?
But if Heaven, Hell and
Oblivion do not
collide today
we'll go together
hand in hand
and watch the show of the
night.

La Noche

La noche.
La noche.
Dreams,
no, dreams aren't for the satisfied-
those in love with the real.
those not clinging to the paraphernalia of time,
we believe not in the stillness of thought
but in the beauty of action,
holding, embracing moments
as they come not when it
is their time to leave,
to waltz out into memory
into the subconscious.
Never digging through
the rubble of the past
looking for surviving trinkets of time

La noche
La noche
A sky bejeweled
and under it motion .
Yes locomotive nights
moments fast coming,
fast fading,
you are at fault not enjoy it
not to dance when music plays loud
roaring!
a lion in your ear
you have howled
yourself into a pit
dug by your own hands,
where you waste time
wishing on fairy dust,
hoping to redo, undo, replay
and alter
so you can get a second chance
But time does not favor.
my friend,
Time does not pick sides.
Rise and kiss the real,
love the image not its reflection
embrace the now
and not its shadow.

Kisses Under Peach Trees

Kisses under peach trees
hand in hand
on summer grass,
Time passes swiftly by,
unnoticed.
And day turns into night,
without recognition.
But even as night appears
I can still see the sun in
your eyes,
bursting light in your sockets.
Love.
Simple love is the most
intense,
our mouths too busy
to speak
but our hearts chatter.
Connect.
Entwine.

Thoughts are blocked
And I cross from my
bridge of feeling to
yours.
Swiftly
And then I see you.
I see your hoarded
wishes and your
guarded hopes
And you see mine.
'I love you' is simply
another way to say
I know you more than
I know myself,
more than you know
I know you.
And all I know about you
was told to me by your heart.

I Want To Die A Rose

I want to die a rose
freshly budding from
the ground,
a summer's day
Rosita
with petals
all colours found,
a tall angelic
flower
of beauty and of lush
that sways
and dances
in the wind rush.

I want to die a rose
shimmering in the sunrise,
& one day be uprooted
to grace a lover's hair
& bring colour to her eyes,
my journey will end
in a cherished diary
on a lavender-scented page
with beautiful calligraphy
under me it will say
“Jack gave me this rose
on that sunny day in may”

I Made a Mistake

I made a mistake
a new one,
my latest one,
one to add to my millions
but this one
this special one
wins the golden trophy
and thrushes its flag
on Mistake hill

I made a mistake
even sorry can't defeat
a bouquet of flowers
a bar of chocolate
even a guilty tear
cannot erase,
cannot undo
cannot mitigate

I made a mistake
that will always
belong to me
as the rumours spread
it will be used to define me
see that girl, she's the one,
the one who made that mistake

I made a mistake,
I've made many
and I'll make more
but this one demeans
all made before

The Blue-Gum Tree

The tall blue-gum tree
covers me with a blanket
of lavender
as boughs sway in the wind
and leaves fall on me
I lay there put,
under my natural
duvet,
and then i think
I dare to think
That this is when I'm
at my best
when pea-green caterpillars
climb and nap
upon my chest
when ladybirds dance on
my skin
and butterflies
kiss my shin
the grasshoppers, the hummingbirds,
the candy-scented bees,the leaping
crickets, the humble frogs
all come to say hello
and now I know
that life for me
is best under
the blue-gum tree