the clouds storm and stir the horizon
and swoon like a sorrowful bird,

the sun sinks the same way once risen
and deafening the fires of his word,


a lover waits hopeless and dreary,
and hopeless and dreary departs

for love not returned leaves her weary
and breathful her heart.


a vision as clear as the ages,
that reach to the soul or the heart

the storm of the clouds broken cages
long gone those soft clouds that depart


and the sea strides to shore like a viking,
and rages eternal like cloud,

for the storm now is spent and surrenders,
that once stood so proud.


the sea she will wrap me in flowers
and drown me in ivies and wine,

as the sharp winter wind blows wild showers,
that bury the aches of the pines,


and the sea i found tender with rapture
blew me back where the ages relent,

and the sea gave me back all its flowers,
for the love never meant.


desire is no pastry or pudding,
it is death, it is life, it is naught,

in its rages it cries like a blossom
that bursts from the bough and is caught,


no lover could rule or control me,
but they begged and they begged
for my love,

and the love that i gave soon destroyed me,
a lion to the dove.


yet the sea dries my eyes from my weeping,
rejuvinates like vinaigrette,

and love never once won or departing
soon buries its soul in regret,


and the sea sings like a stereotyped lover,
too broody to throw out a rose

and the rose would be tearful my lover,
seas sea e'en froze.


for the sea is a viking of passion,
strange ghost of the wind and the wave,

and knows nothing of love or compassion,
but will leave you with the dark that can't save,


i see her in the **** frost, her blossom,
the waves that still billow like sails

the foam the blue foam near the flotsam,
her song a soft silvery scale.

as we
loom
our hands

tethered
like a
cat's
cradle to
the sky,

a slight shift
of foot and
the landscape
scatters
drunk
as the blue
seas of the
cloud,

the tide
strides to
the open shore,
wind in her
arms,
salt on her
breath,

every step
decadent and
rebellious,

every sip of the
wind an icy
storm,

and the sky
hangs like
a pendulum
in an old
grandfather
clock,

calling out
crazy minutes,
breathful
seconds,

i stand next to you,
knock on the door
of the airy sea
stare out,

curve like
an echo in a
cave,

a handwritten
poem, carved
out of air

while you,
boy of dream,
kiss me like
a wild sea,
restring the
broken violin
of my heart.

i am a terrible poet.
the words i tied together in attempt
to annunciate 
the way your kisses felt
along the soft of my 
cheeks were
mediocre and just barely enough.

just barely.

there weren't enough ways that i could describe
the mouthful 
of stars that spilled at the seams of my

lips as you gently traced them with warm finger tips.

mm, your finger tips.

your finger tips felt like a personal extension from god himself as

they dusted the empty jars i left untouched

in the forgotten spaces of me.

you held them tightly and filled them to the top

with a breathful of morning secrets

and hidden places to meet.

i found you.

i found you and allowed the words to slip

through my small hands

as you kissed my palms gently and sweetly

and folded them into your own to keep for just a little bit.
(
i could stay here)
i could lay underneath your tired smiles

and messy hair

until stars realigned themselves and directed

me to you all over again.
(
i could stay here)

i could tangle in-between your pale sheets
and make up all the words that

effortlessly translate the way i melted and simmered

at the sheer thought of waking up and knowing you again.

i could illustrate all of the galaxies you whispered

onto the trail of my back with

colors and warmth i never knew

and turn them into poorly strung together,

black and white strings of thought.

you were my favorite secret

and the cause of all of my writer’s block.

(i could stay here)


i’ve lived in florida my entire life

and have spent more days than i can count

under the sun and in the wake of rays that always burned,

but i’ve never felt more warmth than lying underneath

your expired thoughts and eclipsing eyes

as the moon seeped through your broken window blinds.

i forgot what it was like to breathe

until you took my face
sweetly and sincerely
and kissed me.
the paragraphs and ellipses that perforated my parenthetical
sighs of relief
stained the corners of my mouth
and lingered
long enough for me to remember
the after taste of your recycled sunshine
as you left me.

i am a terrible poet,
but a better kept secret it seems.

i.

the grey ghosts
water to the sky,
pond to the
breaking air,

the blues are
cloudy
islands and
stars, lily pad
gold-green
dream of monet-
light.

ii.

love drifts,
scurries over
the water like
a dragonfly,
her wings the light
flowing, melting
in its breathful
streams

falling
falling
in the delicate
colours of
spring with
its tide-like
ebb and flow.

iii.

i held you
close and you
were the
aching spring,
the bright
opals of the moon,

i held you close
and all i could see
where the blues of
the pond, the
snake-silver
stream of starlight
and flower,

you were the
aching bronzes
of the rivery
pools, the still
water's paradise
of blue and white.

iv.

capture me
in the cloudy
isles of
the bright
lilies,

i am the melting
light, the frail
bloom with its
zen-like peace,
church of quiet
air, hopeful stream
of ache and light.

v.

ghost-enamels
of impression,

silently, the sun
sinks and the golds
of spring blossom
like a spell.

When I last tasted her,
her lips were still
a mysterious heavy.
A glossed *** shine
and her proud mother's grin
held me helpless-
a lioness jawing her cub.

A cowardly actor I was,
depicting a breathful, firm
man bored and unmoved
by this no more than textbook
show of affection.  No.
She's mastered that text book and,
by chance, written a few of her own.
My theatrical mask was shattered fast
by the calculated clumsiness of her
apricot kiss,
revealing my boyish face
as the answer to the question,
who now is her masked man?

And still,
being a scientist not a philosopher
She unearths more enigmas than
solutions leaving her colleagues
balanced on the fence, waiting
in merciless anticipation for her
theories to be proven.
But the essence of a theory
is that it's unprovable.

I, being human, need only
answers to questions,
her questions
which she insists I answer.
For she knows I will always answer them for her.

She, also being human,
needs nothing else from me.
So she walks away.

the star of the star of the morning
is restful and breathful and free

the star of the star of the evening
blossoms dark as a shadowy tree,


the waves drive out far in their rivers
as blue as a star in the sky,

and the darkness relents for her shivers
must finally die.


waves turning and burning and dancing
clouds wandering e'er ever on

and the darkness that finds the new morning,
as cold as stark night's bitter song,


oh, brother who wept for my sisters
no tears as alive as their breath

swept out where the wild sea blisters
and pain knows of death.


wild whispers, wild birds and the fury
of waves that sing out to the clouds

the death then of life that we bury
laid out in the whitest of shrouds


the sea, oh, the sea, how she sings me
a song of a dance never sung

and her rhythms soon calm and placate me
her bell solemn rung.


and sweet love is the journey i strive for
as blue as a mysterious sea

and the love is a fruit full of succor,
and the moment will live e'er free,


you stand tragic as a painting so mournful
alone as a poet who rests,

and the lull of the storms here at night fall
the sea's treasure chests.


the day wraps the night in her roses
and night wraps the day in her sight

and midnight's soft moonlight supposes
that day is a journey e'er bright,


and love was a love still forever
and love had no rose in her bower

for the floor of the sea like a feather
the delicatest flower.

still as 4am
on a night I actually slept
soundless but loud
a kind of silence that no one's ears should bare

above is an empty, open, breathful space
and
under is a life-filled, pressured tank

you are a lot like the under surface
like the sea
full of life
undiscovered, deep, independent thoughts

I am the above surface
all is dead
nothingness is empty
a black space, my love for darkness

I used to be scared of the dark
in the closet
outside
during a power outage
they were all different

now they are my comfort zone
my favorite places
my shadows

but i'm scared of the sea
I guess because it's a lot like you.

For some reason I felt compelled to share with others, strangers I guess, I never met them.
Strangers then. Compelled to share with them you. To prove to people who never knew us that I loved you. That we were lovers.
I wonder if I harp on that word too often. Bet I do.

I do.

I connected the misery of your loss into The Antlers - Hospice.
In some cowardly preoccupation with signaling the virtues of  a luminous man I pretended in due process. Much of me as you must understand.

You were a woman and a girl.
And I forced myself under to suffer in some actual mourning.
So a world built on my word.
My hands need rest.
My mind needs rest.
I want to stop.

I'd swallow a breathful of Plath-itudes.
If it'd quieten the lore of some rolling hill of you.
Somewhere scrawled in a red oak desk,
Borders and plyings a mess.

I likened you to a spectre.
For a literal in lieu

Why can't I let up off myself.
Why won't I accept love.

You are the woman protagonist in a fiction
And only your performance merits applause.

I am
fistful
scarful
dreadful
mouthful
constellation of burnt
sore spots connected festering

but, also
breathful
dreamful
brainful
blissful
lapful
lifeful
string of lit brights
prismatic as Northern
sky candied neons

and just
being with you
made me glow
in dingiest dim

by you being you
and me being me
in unison

we can cherry bomb
the blackest sky
with your hand
in mine