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Me: Late nights, the smell
            of tomorrow’s coffee waiting to
            be brewed. The bed is soft
but doesn’t offer rest, not when my
mind is swarming, infested with
worries and the remaining week’s
plans. The cat has no problem,
she’s asleep within seconds, the
lucky bitch. I play with the idea of
just forcing an all-nighter, play
those simulated fantasies until the
sun imposes itself on the curtains.
But that is an idea that has never
ended well. Class is fast
approaching, I won’t have much
time if I don’t spend it now, yet
here I am putting words to a phone
at the earliest of the morning

Justified

Justified

I’m great at rationalization
too great in fact. The person
I am most often rationalizing
my actions to is myself.

There has been much money
spent and time wasted all for
what I assured myself were
very good reasons.

They were not.

There have been a number
of situations I could have
avoided if I just hadn’t
listened to myself. I don’t
he always has my best
interest in mind. In fact
he’s kind of a dick.

Parallels

Not sure if I'm finished with this yet

Parallels

I know the way I’d like to live my life
and it’s reflected in characters I create.
I live vicariously through these words
as I lack the courage to make them true.
Fingers on a keyboard export idealism
but it is my heart that lacks the power
to bring it to fruition. Tales spin of men
who always get the girl, living parallel
to this world, devout in their beliefs
and to themselves and what they love.
It is in my nature, and so it is in theirs.
I’m hidden deep within layers of fiction
barely a light shining through canopies
verbose with vegetation. Beneath it
the earth is littered with the bodies of
work that only made it halfway or less.
Surrounded by these unmarked graves
I dig them up and recycle any parts
which may still have use and construct
something new and better, or perhaps
it dies as well, a monster that was never
meant to be. 

Fear

Fear

I’m afraid to let you know

you've been a vast source

of inspiration for my words.

Afraid to be more aggressive

in this little game we play.

To let you know I’d give the

world to hold you and for you

to want to be held. No room

to be bold, but rather patient

and faithful, or at the very

least hopeful. It could easily

be the case that nothing is as

it seems in my mind, rarely

do my expectations and reality

comfortably coexist. Alone

and uncertain, meditating on

my heart’s possible demise

while suspense builds, leaves

lingering suspicion of subterfuge

implements of my own deceiving

reason. I’m afraid to write this line

and the one that follows, or to

release this poem into the wild

for fear you may see all the truth

at once. I’m afraid to lose what

I have yet to taste of, and that this

is all very one-sided. I’m afraid

of you.

Clarrise

Clarisse

I’ve lost the music in my life.
A connection to eleven thousand
songs discovered over a bond
of six years, each one as dear to me
as the last, vanished in an instant.

Writing is difficult, without my
electronic muse. When normally
I’d be streaming soft classical sounds
as my pencil scrapes across paper,
I’m accompanied by the obnoxious
droning of an aging oscillating heater.

She provided backdrops for nights
spent cozy in bed with other girls
on playlists provided to her by my
gentle mouse click, and the lonely
days just me and Clarisse, personal
minstrel, playing something nostalgic,
getting high, and forgetting the world.

The music was a link to my younger
summers in old Virginian beaches.
Boat rides in open tides, blasting
rock reggae mixes, acoustic hot tub
nights in trunks, bikinis or less.
At the same time it took me to
carving fresh powder on the
mountain at night. Shrouded in
darkness and pulsing hard metal,
pushing my boundaries and
sending me quick through the snow
adrenaline accelerating me down

to the base, Clarisse always at my side.

Then recently she was stricken with some
fatal unknown error. A screen once rich
with music, videos, and life now sat empty
restored to factory settings. The amps
are unplugged and all the strings broken.
There is no rhythm and the keys fall silent

The Subtleties of Sex

The Subtleties of Sex

A slight arch, soft to the touch
allows me to slide red lace from
your waist. I am a tease; drawing
my lips a breath away from yours
and light fingered circles across
your lower back. Goose bumps
raising on tender skin, While mouth
and tongue approach your neck’s
peak and pull away each time until
we can stand it no longer and come
together.

There’s no jumping in. I wouldn’t
dare be so aggressive, to ruin it
for us both. It’s not a field to be
plowed but a single flower that
must be coaxed from its seed.
An idea contested by some, but
holds true for me despite what
my gender perpetuates.

Our breaths become uneven
hearts beat a spastic rhythm.
All at once the world seems
less cruel. Fading from thought
nothing remains but our bodies
the bed and the energy flowing
between it all. We are the force
that drives the world, the cosmic
balance found in our eyes which
grows stronger with every thrust
and gentle utterance that follows
from it.

Exhausted, your head on my chest
rising with each inhalation of the
sweat soaked air, hair that brushes
against my chin with each repetition.
Words are useless now, nothing to
express the time we have traveled
through.

Something or Nothing

Something or Nothing

There’s always someone the poem is built for,
in my case anyway. Fine-tuned and properly
threaded, or sometimes just thrown together
in a shambles, words on words like literary
chaos but all mean something in the end for
someone important, these words don’t just
appear from nowhere. They’re crafted and
cultivated, grown with care and with care
they are selected when they become ripe
and ready to join and juxtapose on simulated
paper, transported through the air passing as
electronic particles from its creation to its
destination and by optical receptors it is
received and passed along a highway of
nerves through the brain and through the body
now just a sensation and no longer words, as
if nothing was ever there.

Brotherhood

Brotherhood

Things have a way of falling apart
and you may not remember what
held it all together to begin with.
That bond that I was told existed
somewhere, disintegrated despite
its supposed strength which clearly
needed some reinforcement. That
word held meaning once, but like
us it became faded and lost with
time. It was a slow and agonizing
death, with no mourning period.