The essence of you has
Dropped into me
This past year.
Grating past the back teeth
You catch in my throat
And leave the grainy metallic remains
Of your softly spoken words,
Hard to swallow,
Along the roof of my mouth
And the underside of my tongue.

The spring rain falls
Like it did last September:
Slick and even and predictable.
But it reaches the ground
As little more than
whispers and secrets.
The form of your half hidden smile
Ominously sincere.
Like a beautiful china doll,
A freshly painted angel,
So fair and delicate
With hushing tears
That slowed time until
Each droplet took an eternity.
And I held your hand
As if to drain the sorrow from it.
As if to drain it of love.

My heart beats
Heavy in my chest
And when I close my eyes
It is your face I see.

You have your fingers
In all of my eyes
Donating to my consciousness.
Your fingernails scrape
At the back of my throat.
They entangle themselves
In my vocal chords.

This wind is one of
Change and indifference.
It fills and drys the sheets
And pulls down the chimney
Stacks one by one.

As I drive home at night
I lose my face in the darkness.
The road markings shimmer and glow.
My head is full of the past,
My ears buzz with it.
My nose strong with its stench.
I pull into a darkened driveway,
Black as an open mouth at night.
I move off away into the sky
With not a single star in sight.

Comparing the moon
To delicately prepared
Orange segments.

We are perched precariously aboard.
Every time I reach out to touch you
It is out of fear. But the bruises I leave
Are dark with infatuation.
It seeps into your skin
Leaving its discoloration
for a week or so.

But once again my feet are predictably growing cold.
Water seeps into the boat and we are sinking.
You are sobbing thick disconsolate tears.
I try my best. I take a hold of the oars and pull.
The wood comes away in my hands.

Finally though, after many years,
You take them in yours,
lean down and close your eyes.
I do the same and the world
is suddenly dark.
Quietly we survive.

But I awake to find a different person
With veiled, shaded eyes.
Fingers reach out to greet you
And then retreat
out of what? Fear?

You walk so forlornly down narrow country roads,
Dragging your baggage along behind you.
Eyes fixed firmly on the sky
You tell me to stop following you.

I can’t help feeling
That if I could only stop feeling
Then this would all make
So much more sense to me.
But instead I scratch my head
And draw a line in the sand.
A line that will not be crossed.

But up close this mirror
Is muddied and scratched
With fingernail marks and
Something closely resembling
My very own brand
Of unsettling bullshit.
My tongue drips sour,
The saliva frothing and bursting
And steadily becoming
More embittered and lonesome.
Suddenly there are things
That I can no longer impart,
Not nearly so readily at least.

These problems course
Through my arteries and veins,
Through the skin on the
Back of my hands,
Along the bloodlines
That feed my brain,
My arrow-filled mind.

They lead me to believe
That some creatures were designed
To break with natures bonds.
And perhaps we will always blame others
For what we refuse to believe
Or hate ourselves,
For what we know to be true.

In the evening the lights you see
From the shore are far off and pale.
They dance to the waves rhythms
And haunt your dreams.
If you close your eyes too
You can hear faint whisperings,
The succinct susurrations
Of children lost to the winds
And the waves’ roar.
Songs of dead sailors
Echoing and ringing
On the zephyr.

The blind see the world but through a veil.
The deaf hear more than they tell.
At night they come down to the sea
To touch fingertips.
They share our secrets with the wind
And their own with the sky.

I think it’s the wind
As it whips the rain against
The window. The howling of it.
It obscures the words that I
Cannot seem to even fit into my
Mouth, let alone push them
Out to you through the cold night air.
The air of a new year
seemingly destined to be
As emotionally dense and
Amorously unfrequented as the last.

The air is soupy with electricity and love.
The sky is milky with it and weeps.

Resolutions are mostly selfish
But this is the most selfish of them all;
To share my heavy heart with you
And hope that you shall not break it.

But I too often stride waste deep,
Or shoulder deep upon occasion,
Through the mists of impatience and lust.
Too often I fall victim to the
Siren’s song, the cuckoo’s call.

Not tonight quietless one.
Tonight I will not be drawn by any tacit cacophony.
Your woe filled lamentings fall upon ears
Deafened by emotion and
Stoppered up by the belief
That good things come to those who wait,
And those who wonder.