Blow

Maybe it’s time we say goodbye to meanings,

meanderings of the mind that leave

an open book turning
its pages until it reaches the edge of logic.
Or the table's. I’ve seen a thousand words fluctuate
past the things I imagine you to be:

there was never a relevance to reference—only a ghost

that haunts in the day, its see-through skin

being pierced by sun rays
until it is diminished to a speck of lie dangling
at the moist mouth of mourning

now being blown by the mad wind,

now being swept in a lapsed dream,

now being a blur, an ache, a concept

larger than the cathedral of deceit now rising

from the ruins of shared recollections—a thing

I can no longer grasp.

Painful Shadow

Slide down moonbeams from the brain
we meet again

to verify verity verily.
Hurriedly, we disappear in the smoke that cloaks
the croaks of hearts shuddering in the midnight hour.
How much time have we wasted ogling at a firebird
whose feathers spell your name
like it was a neon rainbow dividing the sky?
How do we manage to sit
and shoot question
marks like discombobulated arrows, the swell of redemption
slowly foaming away from the folly that was
the sea?
In moments like this when the moon seems to bop up
and down the dark commotion of clouds,
I’ve always wanted to ask if you really knew me.
Only, it was the window left to answer,
its tongue of light lining the contours of your painful shadow.

Thine

Glossed apple and able, staple to all,
unstable like a mall about to crumble,
about to take our possessions,

all the pinings we have in our palms,

the dialogue we had the other day

now lost somewhere in the syllables
you stutter upon—

upon not speaking,
upon not showing,
upon not succumbing to chance.

Take me with you with all the other vultures

circling over your beautiful head.

In a split-second you have become the object of abuse,

obtuse be the ways to hold and behold you

you remain in the spotlight.

Oh beauty, oh beautiful, oh beautifully

you have unfolded like a paper flower

with a phosphorescent center

now glowing even more. Furthermore

you are this: _____________—

a line that connects invisible poles of different worlds

only you know the ways, the nights the days

open and close like a broken door

dormant and destitute like me

when I kneel down and pray for your presence.

The essence remains in the shadows deeper

than the secrets you etch on your arms.

Yes, I see you. I get your gait, I vie for your voice

which puzzles me of your apparent smallness

—I can pick you up and put you in the pocket

of memory and wait for you to call my name.

And it will never be the same.

The warmth of the hand holding emptied skulls

will never be the same.

The rain that dances on your head

will never be the same,

the sun, the stars, the car you’ll crash in behalf of love.

The wave of curtailed invitation—it will never be the same.

And when the digits of the clock drip

to the floor and the earth slowly licks them back

to patch the gap between now and tomorrow,

everything will never be the same.

Except you. Except you
with sin on your lips
and my grip on your hips.

(Published, Paper Monster Press) 

Perhaps the Saddest Song

Perhaps the saddest song
is the sound of your breath

falling delicately on my chest
like the afternoon sun
receding to bay

concealing in shadows
the hurt of this city

 —because no matter how
diminutive the distance

I will never hear you
heave a sigh

aching
to be relieved by my own.

Waking Hour

I long to wake up
in this room where anxiety gets stuck
in your midnight cloud of a dream,

the moon exposing the white curve of your shoulder,
a tomb where I as gravedigger have buried a thousand kisses.

This is where your lips become a rose-boat
to carry me to wakefulness after I taste them.

Somewhere in your sleep you'll find me hanging
by the edge of the sharpest star that cuts the ill intentions of tonight,

whispering a secret not even this madness,
regardless of its vastness,
can hide.

A Hand

At this exact time I find myself
lacking in motion and opportunity

—an expectant father to a barren womb—
waiting for calmness to fall like a cloud—
a feather descending to still water—

it helps to have a hand to hold: yours
amid the reign of distrust, the rain of memory.

(Published, Metaphor Magazine, June 2014)