she had a smile that reeked of
“i’ve been there before”
and “it’s been awhile since we’ve met”
so lets take a moment to get re-acquainted

The last time we cuddled like this
we were merely thoughts
muddled between heavy breathing and “i love you’s”

playing hopscotch in heaven

i remember letting you win
knowing it would come in handy 22 yrs later
the funny thing is
you grinned
like you already knew how to make me feel like a king

I was shy for 9 months
i have a feeling you never were
everything about your breath
reminds me of the bright side of my heart
that I always tend to forget too easily
like some drunken bartender who misplaces his keys
there’s a North Star in your fingertips

I was in a hole once
more like a crater
The deepest crevice this side of heartbreak
and you candle-wax blew me a safety net
even before you knew i was drowning
there’s something epic
in that lifeguard red soul of yours
something that deserves more than words
you deserve a sonnet
spit over a shooting star
a song so beautiful
only Queens were afforded the chance to listen
but we both know
you would find someway
to let everyone in on the secret

you are everything subtle
and everything grand
a bright light under bushel basket
who waits patiently
knowing one day the world will be ready enough to see her shine
there is more than just wonder in your spine

more than just swagger in your hips
there’s a universe in your ribcage
that I’m just learning exists
a world of relief under your skin
and
the
jukebox in my chest
playing songs i’ve never heard before
and making me feel nostalgic about places
I’ve never been

A few months ago
i would have never dreamt of being
in a Greek god fairytale
A Promethean fire of a cipher
an adoration battle
between your eyes and my soul
The way you always seem to win
there something to be said for the way you glow
and the transparency of my skin

when you smile

even remotely in my direction
i light up
like red white and blue
rocket pops
in the middle of july
God has blessed me with a modern day miracle
in the sanctity of your eyes

The Mount Olympus in your voice
reminds me of everything coveted
and everything beautiful about “free will” and choice

You are the woman i’ve written about for almost a decade
a sat-fire in the dusk
a prayer that i have been blessed enough to touch

Your a soft whisper in a mother’s bedtime story
the footnote to my heart beat, the breath on my breast
a queen in waiting
a temple surrounded by holy water in your chest

you are everything i have prayed for
and everything I didn’t know i could have

you are the punchline
the climax
in every poem
I have ever written

And I am forever grateful
that God blessed me with the chance
to meet
My inspiration

I remember the first time you winked at me
Looked a like a pair of school children
Holding hands, perched a top your eye lids
I’ve never seen unity like this in pupils

never seen rain drops form lip to lip around an eye lash
as if to say
all those “what should have been’s” and “could have been’s”
lost meaning a long time ago
I’m here now
Here to show you what love smells like
Open your nostrils
Let me in
You see…I’ve been in the kitchen a long time now
Cooking up nostalgia and something that tastes like chicken
You gotta learn somehow right?

I have a trial and errored soul
A heart with stretch marks
A tattered rib cage full of wingless butterflies
I thought it counted being beautiful on the inside
That there is nothing I couldn’t stomach
My stomach
Loved that joke

And you were patient
A child waiting for his grandfather to find the keys
A battered wife
At a women’s shelter
God
Waiting for Adam and Eve to fuck up

Inevitable and yet strangely apologetic
I must have looked like the 5 yr old standing over the anthill
Burn marks don’t heal as easily if you only have one limb to lean on
Lean on me
Lean on us
Lean on an intertwined limbed conversation in the park on that Sunday
A baseball game in the middle of the summer
The first time I told you how mike died

August couldn’t have come soon enough
And our fall left us with the leaves

Left you bitter as a sailors wife, widowed on Christmas
And rightly so
The wind in your hair, never seemed so refreshing
Until I’m standing on a light house
Trying to throw poems into the dark
What if I was never coming back?

What if the only thing we remembered?
Was the first time we made love?
Can an orgasm
Mend a broken heart
One night stands of sweat
Dripping in between bricks like mortar
There is nothing strong here
Nothing worth singing about

Just crippled hands amidst a missed step or two
Falling
Never seemed so easy

Write me a poem
On the back
Of the only picture we ever took
Something fiery and short
And sign it sincerely
The last girl
He will ever yell at

Ps Sometimes I do miss you, even if I swear on my life that I never do

I pray these ice chips in my chest
Find somewhere else to dwell
Or crystallize
Into something a little more beautiful than a heart beat
I don’t have room enough for the cold
And I know you
You don’t want to be in this chess match aftermath
Anymore than I do
But sometimes Kings and Queens
Just wait the entire game to be taken

And maybe that’s the point
Love is worth waiting for
And beauty worth fighting for

We earn every badge
Every scar
Every love tap

None of this was meant to happen
And yet
Everything
Everything happens for a reason

There is a rainbow smile in our drag race chaos
We just have to stop the motor long enough to breathe it in
Let it linger on our lips
Like God is our Dentist
Placing Relief flavored fluoride on our gums
Flossing with Grace

There’s nothing to be afraid of Young Queen
Smile
Like you did
On the first day we met

and mothers of crippled children hum

we laugh
soliloquies into the darkness

dark comedic self revelations
we were never sure if our vocal cords could handle

ink and paper
something like stone and chisel

we wouldn’t write our names on anything
that wasn’t permanent

so we left out the vowels

left out anything that reminded us of the past
rocked 80s bandannas and ask her 2 “Be my girl”

so we looked like the New Kids on the block

isn’t that what journals are for
locked stories of pain
and disappointment

I was a poor English student
but when I found out
boredom and heart break
were synonyms

I must have cried for at least 30 sec
before my ADD kicked in

there is something
about watching
flame and ink
make love
that liberates your soul

leaves a mushroom cloud incense
of everything we hate in the mirror
lingering
and kissing
our foreheads

baptismal writes of Passages
we scribbled
on rainy days

The kind of umbrella
wishful thinking
that children breathe
and adults only ever exhale

is there anything about this
that we still love

anything not yet written
unbirthed
raw
and erotic

that we haven’t yet tried

or are we just spitting in the wind

hoping our words won’t
one day hit us in the face

bare knuckle reminders
of everything we wish
we could forgive

and wash our hands of

a kind of Pontius Pilate complex

we always envied
or coveted

but blood seems to wash off easier
than heartbreak does

There’s always a 30% chance for tears
or rain
or lightening

Always a chance this clear Sunday morning
will become the calm before the storm

When I was a kid
I saw the sky turn purple
before the twister hit

funny

The color of nobility
would crown the sky
before it unleashed
some type of ugly step sister
an offspring unfit for the throne

and we
we never ran in the opposite direction

we see storms on the horizon
color blind and fearless

and freeze
retreat behind my rib cage
castled walled flesh
never seemed so safe

but it gets crowded in here
there is barely enough room for
both of us
amongst my organs

but if you get tired
ill let you use my heart as a pillow

the lining in my stomach as an electric blanket
and my lungs as an oxygen tank

so i guess you could say
we cuddle like anatomy does

or like cancer patients
wish they could

if they had the appetite for it

Have you ever seen an abdomen
implode
an organ begin to eat itself

because we self destruct like stomachs do
like cannibalistic self portraits

or mushroom cloud dreams

like poets do

Equipped with super sonic hearing
Crazy balance and about 4 to 5 arms
And a heart full of enough compassion to heal
Any sorrows a wanderer like me has ever had

I’ve seen her drive a big-body suburban with one her knee
While checking the directions
Feeding my younger brother
And still managing to knock me upside the head for messing with my
sister

To be serious though
I’ve never someone so beautiful in my life
An old painters definition of beauty
“the sum of parts put together in such a way that nothing need be
added, taken away, or altered”
That is my mother…beauty incarnate
Someone who can be Ur best friend
Your biggest critic
And still make a mean and I mean mean meatloaf to ease any anxiety that
you may still be having during day

My mother
Is wing clipped angel, earthbound just so a few of us
Never forget what it felt like hours before conception
When we were playing hopscotch on the golden bricks of heaven
She is a daily reminder of why we reach for the sky
And swallow star dust in our vocal cords

Gods way of saying
the simplest pleasures in life
Can be found in subtle southern accent, a heart felt laugh,
And a smile
That would have converted Saul on the spot

She is the reason why young men like me
Bask in the ambience of their female counterpart
And cherish every moment we are allowed to stare into your eyes
Just hoping to see a little bit of our mothers deep down inside your soul

So I can tap dance, or two step, whatever little jig the kids do these days
Until the sun goes down
And we are left in the star gazed glance of a mother
Who always knew we would make something of ourselves
And yet never let us forget that no matter
how tall we got
Or how deep our pockets ran
Or how colossal our name
She will always be there to remind us of
where we came from
And how we got here

So when they call me a momma’s boy
I chuckle
Raise my eyes and reply
Wouldn’t it be nice
If we were all so fortunate

Its one a.m.
And I should be dreaming of Princeton play calls
But I can’t allow my sight to darken
Because you see I’ve been in a fog
A ghostly daze
Much like your earthquake
That has sent me spiraling
In and out of that lava
That you so eloquently describe
I’ve kept Aphrodite
In my skyline for far too long
And now she’s stealing
My sunshine
Those succulent rays
That used to simmer my skin
Have now caused me
Melanoma
I’ve spent this last year
In a smoke screen
It’s been hard for me to distinguish
Clouds from
Facial features
Let alone
Love
From
Lust
I’ve been in a vegetative state floating through existence
Stepping over my fare share
Of roses
To get to a Daisy
And my love poems
Have been simplified to
“she loves me – she loves me not”
While plucking pedals
From these stems
And what’s more I never
Was really able to see the
Full beauty
Of this Rose
Like the San Francisco fog
Masking the Golden Gate Bridge
Much like your tectonic plates
Were rocked by after shocks
My water logged façade
Was dazed by a tidal wave
A merciless tsunami
That handed me doubt and stole my sight
And not even His palms
Could heal this blind man
Dear Friend,
The bigger they are
The harder they fall
Held true
In this Katrina
But not even
Flower Arrangements
Could be
t-shapen and blood stained
there was no Red Cross
in sight
and now I feel
like a flower gurl
at my own wedding
watching her stilettos
pierce my past
as if they were
meant to be sacrificed
pupils dilated
these headlights
struggle to illuminate
the pavement
they say if you made the bed
then lay in it
well I’m hittin’ pot holes in this road
and it feels like I paved it
I never thought I’d be writing this poem
But it looks like Dipolar Radar
Has once again
Lead this weatherman astray
“Your tropical storm has now been
Elevated to a hurricane”
So I boarded up the windows
And headed for higher ground
In the city
Of 5′10” beauty
Dear Friend,
Well if I’m Jay Gatsby
Then you’re my beam
Of light across
The bay
And she
Well she is
The asthma
Inhibiting my breaststroke
And these last 3 months
Have felt like a 100 meter dash
In the Everglades
Like a tornado twisted
Me like a clever braid
And spit me out onto
That road I paved
Dear Friend,
You see
It’s been awhile
Since I’ve fallen
To my knees
And prayed for sunlight
But our
Photosynthesis
Cannot happen
In its absence
Cause I feel like
Were in a foot race
Around the world
And a lunar eclipse
Just lapped us
So I guess what I’m
Sayin is maybe soon
My foot speed will catch up
And I can play Joshua
And freeze time
Or Hezekiah
And run it backwards
Either way I’ll make up
For lost time that has passed us
Like you said on
Some fairytale tip
When I can be to you
The way I leave this ink to drip

Yours Truly