iron and wine

tonight my blood is iron and wine
and a heart-racing viking taps at my window
while ninja sleeps, and my jimini cricket says
"don't look back"
i think he meant
"close your eyes."

i catch a flicker of movement
a curve in a line, a line on a graph
that has neither x nor y, just
an endless line, with no meaning
or end:
inevitable life.

song lyrics arrange themselves like my mirror reflection
living my life vicariously through songs
remembering you-- oh!
god, but i hate how much i love
remembering you.

and the lonliness
creeps

like the cat-paws of fog
in to my heart and behind my eyes,
causing moisture disposal system failures
in the cold winter air against
my precipitating eyes.

Combat/Comeback

I want to write poetry that makes you catch your breath.
I want to take a photograph that you'll never forget.
I want to write a song that changes your life.
I want to tell a story that proves I've always been right.

I want to paint a picture with words and metaphors
And I want to give it to you; I wish I could give you more
I wish I could give you summer
I wish I could wrap it up, in sunlight and sweet green grass
And blue skies--and blue eyes--
But baby... summer never lasts.

Weak Week,

Maybe it's too much to ask when I ask this little from you.

am i jealous of you
for knowing the flavor of his name on your lips?

am i envious of you
for feeling his hand on yours?

am i-perhaps-a tad disturbed
wishing i was on the recieving end

rather than watching from
the sidelines

Maybe I've gone too far by going the extra mile

do i feel left out
when the song she sings isn't a song
i heard first?

do i feel unwanted
when the jokes they tells aren't the jokes
we made together?

do i feel-perhaps-alone.
when i see you walk by, and think
i could be your friend,
if only you would let me.


You Are Not The Flavor Of The Weak.

Our Summer.

Ours was a song of summer
of sun-kissed skin and bodies
intertwined, of dappled light
and shadows on a carpet scattered with crumbs
of our love
And white sheets cast in gold
as the sun sets
In the smoggy city skyline, silhouetting
the shattered dreams and abandoned hopes
that wash up on the shorelines, here.
But under a blue sky flung forever
we lay, on sand
from shores miles away; from
all the places we'll go, it seemed
as if our summer could never end:
The perfect song, set to repeat.

pretty broken metaphors

so those tears we cried were a little too fake
and i'm not sure how much more i can take
now i'm lying on the floor and i'm starting to break
what a pretty broken metaphor you and i make

what am i to do when the ones i love
turn around and tell me that its been fun
but now they got what they want, so they gotta run
and i'm left to wonder what i did wrong.

Sarah

I want to take her picture

Capture her

Make permanent the constant change

Of her eyes

Bluegreygreengold--

Soot ashes, delicate as dust

Frame a world all her own.

There are rose petals

Falling where lips would be

I study, I'm caught

Falling where love would be

In the shadows

Purple blue

Of her cheeksbones and under her jaw

Where her hair feathers

Drips, waves like ebony rain

Rippling against her small shoulder

She is sculpted in silk and wind

So tiny, light

Light a bird, weightless and fragile

I think I'd like to touch her--

For an instant, cup her carefully in my palms

But I'm afraid I'd break her

Crumble at my clumsy touch

Such a shimmery soap bubble deity

Immortal Hand or Eye

Today, I wrote you a poem, and I forgot it soon after.
It wasn't the words of the poem that mattered, nor its meaning
Not the symbolic sound devices
Not the unusual rhythm, nor the clever imagery
It wasn't even the poem itself that mattered
It's that today, I thought of you
And I can't remember the poem, so I wrote another one, just now
And it goes like this:

You cannot be captured
By poetry.