STUBBORN

Everyone writes love poems.
But I don’t believe in love poems.
Because it’s not possible to capture the moment
When hearts flutter in time to the music of two minds,
Two mouths saying more in silence than words ever could in rhymes,
Two imperfect bodies perfected in one embrace,
Pulses beneath fingertips: a tangible race
Of blood beneath skin
Of adrenaline and
Love poems just
Cant capture
This.

ON LEAVING

There is a certain path only ghosts may walk,
Between the present and the memory,
Between our realities and our dreams -
On silvery strings
That pull together hearts until
They dissipate like spiders webs
From lack of stability or solidity:
With every footstep crunching on autumn leaves,
With every sun set without a kiss,
The paths for the ghosts grow weaker and weaker
And we continue through life without a clean break
Until by the end we are in the middle of fragments
Torn from each other gradually;
But such beautiful ghosts they were.

WHY ARE BLUEGRASS SONGS SO SAD

The world stops when my papa sings, when his
Weathered hands strum the guitar,
Both worn with years of work they pick out melodies memorized long ago,
Long before the radio and the television decided who deserved to be computer edited
Until there was nothing left but synthesized beats
And the remnants of a human voice roboticized to make way for cash.
Long before the pop stars were born, before they were conceived
Even before my papa
Joined the Navy
To fight
The ache of farm work drained out through calloused fingertips
Onto steel strings
And while the world buzzes around me
And the entertainment industry
Informs me that their stars deserve their pay
Because their billion dollar life is wrought with difficulty
My world stops
When my papa sings.

STALEMATE VS. SWINDLE

Oh what a fateful coincidence:
But isn’t it an ironic incidence
That I don’t believe in coincidence
And you don’t believe in fate?
Are these arguments just innocuous mind games,
Or are we setting the stage for a stalemate;
This would be better if we were inebriated
Because at least in that state of mind,
Or rather the lack of mind of state
These arguments for their own sake
Would be forgotten in the haze
Of our own words.

THOUGHTS FROM A COUCH LATE AT NIGHT

Through the window next to the couch I have taken to sleeping on
I can see the odd car pass down the lonely, lamp-less street I live on
And on my computer screen a twelve year old prodigy plays continuously
On a YouTube playlist, all night his fingers gently pull the metal strings of the guitar
And in the rooms of my house are seven other bodies breathing in and out, in and out
Of dreams and consciousness, bodies waiting to rise with the sun
And in the midst of all this humanity, being alone is an impossibility,
The question remains: is being lonely?

RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM

He came into my basement,
Poured his heart out onto my lap,
And asked me if I would hold it for a while.
Didn’t he consider that
I might
Want to keep it there?
That my hands might grow too comfortable with the tears?
Didn’t he realize that,
When he walked into my basement,
And poured his heart onto my lap, that
I might want him to hold mine too?

FEBRUARY THUNDERSTORM

This wind doesn’t cry;
It chimes against the metal tubes
Hung from our windows.
This rain doesn’t fall;
It carefully caresses the trees and
Slides down our windows.
And I am forever left inside,
Safe from the February rain,
Safe, heaven forbid I dance again
Alongside the raindrops and amidst the clouds but
No. It is for my own good that I
I watch from behind the window panes.
And yet, I can just barely taste the thunderstorm.