Thursday, July 25, 2019

Call to the Void

There must be something in the void
That made me feel loved
Some comfort in the warm velvet blackness
Something that filled my aching chest like a cup
Did I catch my breath on the jagged edge of stars?
Or lose it from my lungs 
Pulled into the hot stirrings 
Of echo drenched canyons?
Or was it the way the waves 
Seem to whisper like a beckons
That wet thing calling in it's dry voice
All sibilance and crackling husks
Something within it's depth 
Always urging me onwards 
While it's infinite collapsing hands 
Keep pushing me back
Returning me to shore
I must have seen something
Felt something churning inside me
When I stared out into the abyss
Because I speak to it
Sing down my sorrows, my wants, my dreams
Like I could call down the heavens
Fallen stars to pool in wishes at my feet
I pin the things I barely admit to myself
Upward into the infinite tapestries
As if they held them sacred
I speak the words
In the same way I'd say them to him
I spill myself outwards
The words gushing like rivers over my tongue
Like rapids over my teeth
My insides swollen over the dam of my throat
And surging up and out and endless
A siphon I can no longer halt
Until I am wide eyed and hot and racing
Until I am bathed in silk and softness
Until everything is wildflowers and honey
And without pain
So I must have felt some sweetness
From the thoughtless depths of dark
Found some reassuring notion
Woven from my reflection on the moon
Misunderstood the weight of everything
To be a kind of heavy comfort
For how else could it have made me
Drain myself empty
Bare myself open
Into the vacant uncaring void
The way I do 
To him

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Untitled

I'm sorry that life has been unkind to you
She says
While slipping back into her clothes
And I'm sure she means it
And I know that she's right
But I'm not thinking about that
Something stirs inside like moth wings
And I'm reminded of a song
But my head is like an empty lot
With spaces where my thoughts once parked
And nothing is forthcoming
She's since moved onward
Tapping at her phone
Her face aglow 
Her hair like a hanging halo
She says
Maybe it's this
Leaning toward me tilting forward
She points it at me
Bathes me in it
But no
This isnt right
It doesn't match my memory
Of how the lyrics feel

Friday, January 11, 2019

Sick

My head feels heavy
A weight propped up
On the rope of my spine
My eyes feel like small peaches
Set into webs of tissue paper
Threatening to fall back into my skull
My tongue fills the space of my mouth
Spilling into the sea wall that is my throat
Barnacle clad coquina
A whetstone that puts an edge on my words
Someone has taken my arms and hands
And sewn a ribbon under my skin
Wrapping and binding the flesh onto my bones
Pulling the line too tight
And my feet don't exist at all
Just bare bone and tendon
That push into the earth where I stand
And something in me burns
Is burning me alive
I feel every inch of my existence
I am a fire

Thursday, November 1, 2018

A Small Thing

The last time I saw you
My fingers 
unintentionally grazed your neck
Just below the ear
I remember that
In that moment
You were smiling
At something that wasn't me
Your focus lost in the buzz
Of a world wrapping around you
Your skin felt soft
Like the velveteen petals
In my memory of roses
And I doubt you even noticed
Or would let alone recall
And yet here I lay
With the taste of wine still in my throat
In the shallow hours before dawn
Tracing the lines with my fingers
Until they turn into words

Monday, August 6, 2018

Seven Poems for Him

It started raining
While I was at the store
I could hear it
Falling hard and heavy
A soft roar upon the roof

I'd been thinking for days
Making endless loops
Trying to think of something
To share what was inside me

I bought cards
Looked for boxes
Pretty paper packages
To wrap my sentiments

It never feels like enough 
But I want it to be something

I walked out
Sheltering my prize from the rain
And in the sky I saw a rainbow 
And prayed I could remember 
My phone was dead
So I drove it hard into my heart 

Thinking

Oh please God remember 

And I worried you
Being out so long
And I half lied to keep it a secret 

But I wanted to tell you
I want to share with you everything

And later that night
While you slipped into bed
And I washed my face
It came to mind
That a rainbow
Is seven bands that form a ring
Of which we only ever see a part

And with that thought
I began to write this poem

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wanted to write you some lyrics
Not that you'd have anything to do with it
Not like you'd make some
Soundcloud track
With a slick low-fi back
Beat that you'd link 
To your friends with a tweet
Framed with fire emoji

When you don't even use twitter

I just wanted to hear how you'd read them

In that perfected galloping way
That makes my insides ache
And want to ride alongside your lines
My words from your lips 
Becoming something like enlightenment

I wanted to fill it with serious word play
Like heart attack dog days
Referencing July heat waves
And the way you make my soul cave

I crave to be blessed with skills and technique which 
I'd write words impressive inspired and unique with
Mesmerizing meter with dynamic fluid flow
Your hazel eyes caught dreaming entranced in lucid glow

But I I'm not a lyricist
I just wrote shitty poems

And nothing ever quite fits
The way I want it to
But I'll try and I'll try 

Because in the end
It's always you

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
An idea I had thought was great
Is becoming somewhat a mistake
Seven poems I would write
To endear and delight
You know what fuck limericks
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
I've had more pleasant car trips 
The heat sinks into my clothes 
Enveloping me until the air I breathe 
Matches what escapes my lungs
I've been gone too long
But I'm on the road that takes me home
Several long hours
one exit
five turns 
And then I stumble through the door
Shuck my shoes 
And collapse into advancing stillness 
Until then my legs ache
From eight folded hours
My mind numbs from the endless lines
And the sun sinks against my right hand 
But it's not the cool dark
that draws me onward 
It's not the soft spell of bed and sleep
It's not even the end of all this
that guides my wheel
It's knowing that when my leaden feet
Cross that distant threshold 
I'll see your beautiful face
Waiting there for me
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
The moon is full
With Mars riding its heels
It kind of makes me wish
That the alignment of the stars
Actually meant something

Because I want this to have weight

They say something amazing
Is happening far from here
And I wish I could share that with you
Not to say
That I'm unimpressed
With what's before me

You know 
I find I've been seeing
A lot more of the sky
In these last couple years

Imagine that 

The moon is full of
song lyrics you've sung me
And the echoes of the sun 
Yesterday's daylight
And the stories of generations
And our dumb conversations

You said the other day on the phone 
After a long day without you
To lift the bow of my lips
That romantic movie notion
About the moon

And frankly I'm fine
If instead of tin cups and string
We share a pearlescent goddess
Our watchful Luna
Just you, me, and an idea of heaven
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
I want to kiss
Each of your fingers
One by one in turn
I want to feel the way your lips
Press themselves to mine 
Your skin
The softest I've ever known
Like velvet under my touch
I want to run my hands over it
And feel the beating underneath
The life breath of your body
Rythmic against my touch
I could wrap every inch of me 
Around every part of you 
And still not be close enough
At least I can find happiness
With the thought that
Whatever pieces of you
I choose to kiss
My love is always travelling
Straight to your heart
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
It was a few days ago
I was outside with you on our familiar trek
Wandering the empty night
The heat making mist peel from the asphalt
Above the ink black pools left by rain
When we looked up at the sky
And saw the moon adorned in rainbows 
It was then I thought to myself 
What a beautiful end to these poems
And I mentioned then the symbolism
Auspicious sevens and endless rings 
It tied everything together
Like a red box wrapped in silver ribbon
- And I want to mention now 
That I'd wanted it to be heart shaped - 
But for some reason
I found myself hesitant to write it 
Like putting down the last words
Seemed altogether too final for my liking
I'd rather it be an endless thing
I want this to be an endless thing 
The loop at the end of a key
Buried in a chest known only to us
A duotone iris encircling an endless sphere 
I want the rest of me to exist 
In a space nestled against this thing we are
And finishing these words
Seems a contradiction to that thought
But perhaps instead I will

Untitled

Darkness eats the room
blurring this place and the next
and I wait for him
as he conjures threads of words
drawn from between the spaces
weaving a world just for me.

Monday, July 16, 2018

Hole

It's small
This hole of my throat
So how can it feel like this
Endless spiraling chasm
This unaccountable void
Like something huge
Wound up inside me

I yearn to fill it with words

String them together
Somehow, in some way
A knotted cord on which to cling
But nothing seems to stick
And I'm just holding empty threads

My father taught me
That to stop the rope unraveling
You seal the end with flame
But I guess, in a way
That's the problem

Because there's nothing inside me
And nothing for which I burn