Glowing

I’m drinking wine under the midnight moonlight,
glowing with your endless visions of feats.
Sipping and spilling this wine that lingers on the tongue
like the taste of your lips, like the smell of your skin.
Sitting beside a hollow tree,
lying beneath its canopy,
covered in a white light like fractured bones, like miss placed pearls.
A blanket all the same.
I’m drinking wine that’s darker than the night,
like oil spewing from a spout
and I’m getting colder and older, and hungry and grey.
“We can only glow for so long,”
the hollow tree tells me in a whisper,
as the moon disappears behind the clouds.

Las Vegas

How much have we given?
If the mattress were burning and the streets were swept in chaos,
and this desert once again became disserted and dry,
How much would we have to show?
How long would we run together until our hands became a burden?
How long could you really keep up?
When the chips get too close to the felt and the waitress forgets what we’ve been drinking.
When the days are gloomy inside and the sun is an enemy of emptiness.
When the showers become beds and the floors become dressers.
When the phone calls are questions and pickups are the closest things to answers you’ll ever find.
How much would we have given when we finally say it’s enough?
When we say it’s too much?
I hope, my dear,
that it’s never enough.
I hope.

I can only hope.

Within

The things I want to say are sweating in the sheets and drying in the dirt,
in a poem and on a page fading with the dim, consistent light of time.
The things I want to say are lying naked in my eyes,
in my passion for you.
And perhaps this poems sounds as if a woman were writing it.
They say every woman holds within her a man,
but did you know we hold you too?
And did you know,
I’m willing to share that with you?

Especially Now

There’s a lace falling from your blouse,
and your cheeks are as soft as silk.
It’s seems that this is the time to remember best,
especially now.
Because there are dishes in the sink and I don’t have time for a shower,
my clothes are covered in yesterday’s yearning
and earning a living just means
giving up a life.
But it lay falling from the bed to the floor,
and I felt you breath and tasted you too.
And it’s all I want to know.
Because these people are lost in a concrete jungle, tearing at the limbs
of some self-proclaimed love,
crying over the puddles of rain
and washing away the masquerades of time with gilded greetings.
And you’re fading to the back of my mind
like a dream,
haunting me in the things I forget.
But I don’t want to forget you,
I want to endure
and live the memory over and over,
dying each time.

Dots

The night is begrudged by the glow of the moon,
and trees stretch their fingers to feel the frozen sky,
with humming street lamps softly whispering to the wind.
And I’m here, away from you.
Dark, cavernous clouds cover the eyes of the atmosphere,
and not even the cars can clout the sound of silence,
not even words can explain this emptiness.
And I’m here, away from you.
Paintings have dried to fight the feelings of creativity,
fingers are frosted in the smoke of thought,
burying the burdens of what has already been done.
And I’m here, away from you.
With knees shaking and eyes out of focus,
I see things that are closest.
With lost feelings and barren wishes,
I can’t see only dots of light.
And I’m here, caught in the clasp of my own haunting—
of all my own visions.
Here,
away from you.

Silver Lining

These days are rolling like a tumbleweed in the wind.
Destinations are only for the dying men
just looking for a trace of silver in the sky,
but I can’t get up and go,
and I can’t stare into the sun.
So I stay here,
thinking of the moments that have passed,
those fleeting feelings that have shinned like gold amongst a fierce raging fire
of everything else.
And I don’t know what defines me.
The loneliness I feel when I’m around others or the comfort I feel when they left me alone.
And lovers can’t grasp the separation,
they want it all
and I’m no exception.

So where does that leave us?
In an ocean of eye contact and words we can’t swim through—
a resistance of temptation with the longing to be understood.
But maybe were just asking the wrong questions.
Maybe what I think has been the problem all along.
Ever since the start.
Maybe,
I hope to be defined by what I feel.
And if you’d just ask me that,
this ocean could be ours.

With a Different Meaning Since You’ve Been Gone

I’m beset in a pit of misery,
Haunted by her memory—
lying along the shoreline blanketed by the oceans’ saliva,
letting the foam filtrate her skin.
Sipping on a glass of Irish Coffee,
talking about her day.
Her face changes and my memory is gapping with holes
I cover in well with the dirt,
as I wait for the rain to come and allow me to make more room.
And everyone thinks I do this to myself,
as if I had a choice.
But it seems so much more true,
that it has less to do with the choices we make
and much more to do with the excuses we all love to cling to.

Handshake

I have shaky hands.
I don’t remember it always being that way.
There were times when I was nervous holding a bat with my father watching,
and I wanted to hit the ball if only to see his face.
But I never tried like I could have,
like I wish I had.
I hated the pain from the crack of the bat—
that sudden, sharp sting that resonated like a chord,
that rattled through the bones.
There were other times in auditions that I tensed up in a sweat.
The instrument that was so easily a part of me became a void from me completely.
And then there were the women.
A story perhaps.
But, now I have these shaky hands
to remind me of my past;
to remind me of all the things I could have done
if I had just stood still.

Let me be

Let me sit in the solace of my sadness—

in the drudgery of my despair.

Let the rain wash me into these gutters

and let me sit wet and still amongst this fog.

Let me be.

Let me be the barren bark that sits upon this brown earth

and the moss too,

that starves slowly with the dew.

Let me be these worn, washed rocks of time

let me be the glowing blanket of this smooth river,

just let me be.

Let the crisp whispers of the wind take me in conversation

and the stillness of the night sting me like a smile.

Oh, let me be the clouds that

dream only of the mud.

The Sun that knows no warmth at all.

Let me be.

Frozen Fingers Feel the Past

There’s something written between the lines of denial—
caught somewhere amongst these scuffling
strokes of genius and, more simply,
the strokes of genes.
Covering the face
like a cold sweaty glass,
like frozen fingers numb to the touch of a knife.
There’s something I haven’t said yet;
something useful I know I need.
Maybe all these useless words are leading me there.
Somewhere from something—
Everything with nothing!
And maybe then I can forget how to haunt myself.
Then, maybe, the slowly seeping fog on this shoreline can evaporate
in the rays of sunlight, in all the blindness of glowing water;
like some sort of aquarius light.
All wrapped in the warmth of darkness.

But there’s something I haven’t said yet, and
I’m caught waiting for the line;
waiting,
just
so I never have to write again
and I can retire
and budget
and fish
and pull in lines
by the plenty,
with a boat to haul it all in.

And I imagine it will be around this time that I begin to gain weight.