Love me not
With youthful fire
Too bright, too hot
doth burn desire
Love not me
With rhyming words
In poetry
Them all I’ve heard
Do not me love
With gifts and bows;
Promises of
Future vows
But love me now with all the strength
Of time. Of life. Of breath.
Love me with the very length
Of days. Of years beyond my death.
So love me long and I will prove
That passion dies, but dies not love.
I told her not to wake me.
For dreams are livelier than breath.
The colors awe, the shadows take me
Deeper still into the deep
And in the crimson shade of death
The prisoners of daytime play
“We are alive; we do not sleep
The moon’s our sun, the dark our light
But the sun rises, and to stay
In dreamland, I must face the morn
And sleeping in the day of night
In night of day I am reborn
But when the sun has set behind
The hills, into my bed
I crawl, and then inside my mind
I wake inside your world instead
-4/29/2013
I have nowhere to be.
No deadlines.
No disappointments.
I could miss the last bus
I could wander town.
I could count the streetlights.
Skip rocks along the river.
I could forget us both.
Get lost. Lose you.
I could sit; cry over us
Laugh about me.
I could pick a fight.
I could make a friend.
I could sleep right here
On the grass
I could say no to whiskey.
Or I could drink it like you drank me up.
I could crush my phone.
Throw it on the ground and stomp it out like fire
Or…
I could call you to share my night.
A walk.
This bench.
An ice cold swim.
A branch.
A see-saw
A heartbeat.
But I can’t go home.
I can’t go home.
I loved you.
Not for you.
But for me.
Something I thought we were.
That we could be.
Things of which I was so damned sure.
A laugh I thought was for my ears.
For a silence I mistook
For understanding. All the tears
I thought were mine. The look
Of sleepy eyes, neither content
Nor satisfied, but bored.
You never lied, but I, intent
On bliss, each sign blindly ignored.
And now you want to leave, and I don’t know which way
To go. I only ask that part of you as memory would stay
-2013/4
Does my sorrow give you sadness?
Console not me.
I am tired of joy, weary of gladness.
Not of thee.
I reached my limits, where I learned
I had no power
My lacks found me; my lacks, they burned
My plastic tower.
I found an ugly-pretty truth
At ambition’s end
My power seldom was of use;
not half as often as a friend.
One day, someday, I’ll make things right.
I’ll save you, and I’ll set me free.
But for today, and for tonight
Do not disturb my misery.
2013/3/20
Call not the winter sad, neither the flight
of others into distant lands a permanent goodbye.
Neither align with sorrow the swift coming of the night,
Not to despair the darkened nothing of a moonless sky.
For we are blessed among the birds;
Than these, there are much sadder words.
- Feb 19 2013
I’ll find you
Someday I’ll go back to where we first met
where I planted my feet on the grass with morning wet
And learned of you and lay down in the shade,
For since then I’ve forgotten what you said.
.
I’ll find you
Again I’ll rediscover your soft gaze
Again I will relive those timeless days
Before the the reasons not to hold you sprouted
Before the day ever your love I doubted.
.
I’ll find you
It doesn’t matter if my road is short or long
Because discovery is where we both belong
And at last when we are ours, it will all seem
to have been the pointless passing of some nightless dream.
.
-February 2013
The white mask melted as I slept
And daylight showed a greener ground
Than the moonlit night had shown;
And morning sang a sweeter sound
Than night whisperers had wept
In hopeless winds despondent blown
Their frozen secrets therein kept
The morning carried warmer light,
And I, awoken from a dreamless sleep,
Could not believe the faithless eyes
That had forgotten how to weep.
And now surrounded by this sight
I slowly come to realize
That I, a weak man, outlived a winter night
—February 11, 2013
I fear the leaves will turn
And all in vain
To colors bold and shadows deep.
I watch the beauty wasted on the blindness of your sleep.
I fear the autumn fire will burn
And all in vain
Beneath the soles of city feet
Be crushed to dust the city street.
I fear the autumn clouds will churn
And rain
Will fall and wash the fall away
In mute; you would not listen anyway.
2012-12-5
It isn’t mine.
It never was, this line across our street.
I stumbled into it last night;
The chalk got on my feet.
I met the line ‘fore I ever
Met you; d’I mention I never
Drew these borders, needed them.
What giants? I defeated them.
You never asked. I never said.
You wrote a book I never read.
I didn’t build this wall. Nor did I pay
The checkpoint man standing idly in our way.
I do not know at all who is you.
Stay and lose the lines, or take your stupid borders with you.
— October 4 2012
