When Two Artists Love

I love you
and I may have lost you for good
and I’m so scared, so scared
so scared, repeat to fade,
fade to black
a sudden tidal wave
of doubt overcomes me
of whether I could face the world
and this at the time when
I thought I had my life
figured out
I know what I want
and have relentlessly pursued it

you are what I want the most
the best I ever had
five senses on synesthesia
and electricity crossed with fever
in the blood type of desire
and you’d probably laugh
if you ever found this
you’re probably over it by now
you’re probably fucking a
brand new chick by now
exploding new abstracts
in someone else’s mind by now
you have a level of chill
that is unheard of to me
as if nothing fazes you
savant-like focus on your goals
I’d had to constantly remind you
the rest of the world exists
you gotta eat some time
look at me sometimes

but in the haze in the periphery
of your triple-decimal-
precision life’s trajectory,
you had loved me
for one spell, one exhale
of the giving muse
stretched out naked on your bed
divine inspiration yours for the taking
me of all people
I have ten years’ worth of grind-
ing for my dreams and I
have learned to live in the pace
of destiny’s slow simmer
free fall in slow motion
blue hour in full spectrum
osmosis of a metaphor in the brain

and see I really thought we were perfect
with me pulling you back to earth
while you provide me
with a beautiful distraction
mid-air spiritual collision
and I was starting to hear
my soul in your songs
and it thrilled me, the thought
of you finding your DNA in my films
and your voice in my poems

too soon, too soon we fell apart, lover
now all the stars are in chaos
the tarot has murdered the zodiac
I am rhyming directionless
and all light is just light

Story-in-Residence

No, there is no deadline.

Years later, I still struggle
to call this home sometimes.

But in that ache of not
belonging, the muse is awake.

Preoccupied / Hazel Eyed / Archetype.

My favorite memory of you

is me
stretched out on the couch
in the dress you fucked me in,
my pulse and breathing still not
completely back to normal
and still reeling from
the smoky transfusions of passion
from your body into mine

idly watching you across the hall
sitting with your back to the kitchen wall
barricaded from the 11 o’clock darkness
by your defiance of sleep
typing furiously on your iPhone
as if that brand new song couldn’t
escape from your soul fast enough

and me, barefoot and reverent
walking over to ask for another kiss
as if I were just a permission away
from a world where I didn’t exist,
and there was only your will
and your words
and the truth you were trying
to give justice to at the moment

shrouded in bulletproof silence
just a verse away from
creation or destruction, as if
in this desecrated temple
where I had lain and loved you
you’d been possessed by something god-like

as if among those cooling embers
of our intimacy you have
found an arrow of freedom
to kill your demons with,

as if on that obscure night there was
a spark of your inner fire
that you recognized
and you ran with it,
and didn’t mind that I was there
to bear witness

you looked so powerful
you looked so vulnerable

did I give you that? I don’t mind
not getting confirmation
I just know that I was there

the bed was still warm, warrior
my flesh still a map of your
recent conquests, warrior

and I got to watch you put
your armor back on

Ivory Tower

Equally loud as the excluded voices,
the unchallenged vector of
repeated stories ricocheting
in the cavernous space where
there might have been other eyes,
other colors, other pains,
other eloquences with which
to climb out of the pain.
The sledgehammer words,
crushing words, with neither
nuance nor secrets
never been fed solids,
never knowing grace in opposition
or breathing in layers,
just white light
in a white room
with all white corners
and one door that only
opens outward.
White poetry on white paper.
Uniform cadence beating
ad nauseam. Outside,
the world writhes and articulates
in a box that quickly
becomes inadequate for
an orchestra of revelation
that anyone would know better
than try to contain.

Ex Libris

I have dogeared the nights
where the sky was your face
and the stars were the story of us

you are all my creases
and protruding corners
gently reminding me that
the pages time has buried

still exist

and oh,
how the words still glimmer

The Last Days of Winter

I have to stop looking for that
rendition
cross-shaped shadow cast
on bare brick, reclaimed
architecture changing
as the light changes.

I have to stop falling for that
peripheral purpose
enigmas that don’t take root
and actually say something
even if it means defending
a flaw I would like to
pretend isn’t there.

I have to stop disturbing that
hypothetical
where home is not compromised
by a borrowed hour being
given back on the spring forward.

I have to stop calling it
infidelity
looking at my own intentions
with an outsider’s eyes
the closest to confrontation
being a casual gaze
settling on the shell,
melody with no lyrics
skimming everything
the melancholy touches,
envying what it doesn’t.

Virtuosity is a Scenic Journey

Become better organically.