Paper Mask

There's poetry in everything
They said
But I'm sure they meant
Ballerinas and sunlit meadows
And not corpses and politics
Sure there's something pretty
About a grave
When it doesn't belong to anyone you know

But I saw a paper mask
In a puddle on the asphalt
Slick with shimmering chemical rainbows
I took a photo
And maybe there's a poem in there

But I mostly felt uneasy

And I think to myself
This isn't timeless
Like I haven't written poetry
That only speaks a fragment of time

I think
This isn't beauty
Like poetry is always meant to be pretty
Not ugly and crushing
Burning from the inside out

I think
There are millions of poets
Screaming out words
People with more loss and suffering
Whose lines bear more meaning
Than mine ever could

And that's probably true

I can't say anything
That hasn't already been said
Written better by someone else
The poignant needle driven heartwards

But I saw a bit of paper in the rain

And everything felt so heavy

Old Fashioned Love Poem (Updated)

And would I know you better still

If I climbed peaks and wintry hills

Or sunned in fields of daffodils 

And from each stream there drank my fill

By taking paths that you once sought
Could I yet understand your thought
And what such complex makings wrought?
What pulled your heartstrings loose and caught?

And would that even be enough

To still a storm and seas turned rough

To stay by your side without rebuff

And maybe once more earn your love

Untitled

The time we spent 

Together then

Reminds me of

Poems I used to write

And it's not fair

It's not fair

Because

Looking back

I'm not sure I even know

How to be 

That person anymore

Your Heart

I wrote a story into your heart, boy.
I burrowed my way in,
The signs of my passage
Scratching into your veins
I found some unguarded entrance
And I stole myself into your very being
The things I've left have become intrinsic
Inescapable
A thing written into the first stones,
Into the walls behind your eyes,
Littered in fragments across the soil
A stranger's thoughts,
Buried under a foreign paving stone,
Upon which you've already begun to lay your foundations
Even if you were to find the things I've left inside you,
The sentences that come uncalled,
Certain feelings that ride in with the rain,
A slowly dissapearing photograph
Of a photograph within your mind,
You wouldn't be able to extricate them
Even if you were to flay yourself
With the most surgical precision,
Unravel your thoughts like taffy,
And attempt to remove those single threads
From your gilded tapestry,
You could, at best,
Re-write yourself,
Putty over every sign and symbol,
Scrape off every fingerprint burned into the bastion walls
But even then you'd know
Every time you stumbled over
The chisel marks and paints
That marked like graves
What you'd fought and labored against,
Reworked into an image so carefully chosen,
You'd know
You'd remember having done it
And remember what you'd tried to make undone
And in this way only deepen the marks,
Tracing and relining them
With both reverent and hateful fingers
And maybe no one would know but you
But every stone is built on top of another
And from now until your body stills
You will live
Carrying onward,
Carrying some part of me I left behind,
Writing stories across the secret chambers
In the beating breasts of others
And I'll always be there with you, boy
Together you and I will walk this road
We will walk this road forever,
Heart
To heart
To heart

Untitled, Unfinished

The trailing end of day
Makes mist of concrete slab
Puddles pooling
In the uneven dips and potholes
The rain comes down in soft lines
Like a rip in fine stockings
When it strikes the water
It makes silver rings
And points of brilliant light
Like diamonds
Sinking under the surface
Like ice melting in the heat
Vanishing into nothing

There's This Thing

There's this thing that has grown
Crystalized inside my chest
I know it to be so
Because I can feel it there
Like a gnawing weight
A peach stone
In the pit of my stomach
I can sometimes feel it
Catching on my insides
When I see you
It seems that somehow
The world has become pinned
A moment sewn
To some fragment of you
The curve of your eye
The light in your hair
A needle in my breast
A quill in my throat
And as my blood heats
And the fire spills
Down through my veins
The thing inside begins to thaw
To melt and run
Like wax
And honey
And my heart
And it rises up and out
Falling over my tongue
Dripping between my lips
Condensing into words
I love you
I love you
I love you

Future Glass

** This poem is, in my humble opinion, not very good **

I feel I'm wading through a desert
At the bottom of a glass
While the future rains without reprieve
To bury me in our past


I struggle to find purchase on
A slope that just keeps rising
A mountain range of distance
To set between our two horizons


I hold on tight but all I grasp
Keeps slipping through my fingers
So I seek to pin it down with words
But summon only ghosts and whispers


As I fumble lines my throat recalls
Sand has this certain way
Of stilling tongues and stealing things
I'd never meant to say


Because I'm worried how you'll take it
If I land close to what I mean
As the streaming granules slow
I worry how you'll take it when you leave