A Poem Love

When my eyes first found an empty space
for me to hear myself think
I thought of poetry and confused it with love.
Not one poet who speaks in love boasts his love
he shares it with his voice.
When poets get a poem published they feel the wings in
their hearts keep their leaden stomachs afloat
because the poem is as official as a ring.
A poet tries on her new published poem
and sees how it looks on her.
It feels gorgeous and new.
A poet must be in love to an extent when he writes a poem.

The creation of a poem is the most exciting part.
Because for a moment no one else in the world knows about it.
And we boil with anticipation.
Like love.

Drizzle

The first sign of rain was a drop felt on my lip. Rain was falling and it was hanging on to me with a kiss. Purest kiss I've had in a while.

A Piece of Sibling

Let’s escape the grass like fireflies
and submerge our spirits into the sky.
We will wrestle our way through the clouds
As our youth drops javelins of light on city streets.
I will show you my house where my sister sleeps
motionlessly in her window frame portrait.
When you get tired we can sleep on our bed like newborn twins.
I will wake up, scratch my eyes
and feel the dust you left behind.

Carry You

We are a strong family, a closely knit constellation
strung together by our bloodlines.
We wanted you to be the banner of our floating ship,
a spectacle among the cosmos.
And believe me your parents,
they shot for the stars when they dreamed of making you.
But they missed the carriage, and I’m forever sorry.

You were an embryonic ball of stardust
channelling lightyears into bone marrow
that ran a few smiles short to keep you lit
or maybe the haloes tracing ventricles didn't spin fast enough,
but even though your mother was the only world you knew,
never forget that you come from the stars.

I see you look lost among this interstellar mall.
I will take you by your bright little hand and we’ll have
the Milky Way’s Customer Service Desk announce your name via megaphone,
God’s vocal chords.
And we will stand there forever if we have to.
I will not leave you until the galaxy’s lights shut down
And the lowering cages leave us nowhere else to go
but back to our mother's womb.
But at least we lived in heaven once.
Mother has a piece of heaven living
inside of her, and it's about this big.

I know you lived there and remember
the songs she sang you.
And how she fed you spoonfuls of lullabies
bedtime prayers
and birthday wish photographs
that sink into your exposed heart like promises
all for the first time and everything tastes so sweet.

Mother adored your little body before your
limbs could develop enough to grasp this concept of love.
Who is to say you are not a member of this family?
Who is to say?

You were even given a name very early in your conception,
and when I call upon this name your shapeless shadow moves
like a squirrel through my peripheral.
I want so longingly to play with you,
you handful of marbles,
but I would never forgive myself if I were to lose any part of you.

I know that homesickness has kept you away
in its talons for this long,
and tragedy has miscarried you to the pits of oblivion.
But I will find you and piece you back together.
I will take up the red shards of new beginnings that you are
because it’s too early to simply call it remains.
If I had the power to bring you back like Lazarus
I would do so before you could say “Big Brother.”
But all I can do is hold you up.
I will lift up your unfinished body
like rubies, and I will cradle you into the lake of my heart.

I will plant you through the soil of my flesh.
My veins will pour needlepoint memoirs through your pupils.
My lungs will whistle 3,000 proverbs through your nostrils,
and when your voice sprouts
your first birth cries
I will carry you home!

Enclothed in the ivy that hemorrhages from these bones
I will carry you.
The way horizons carry daybreak,
I will carry you with arms spread,
so when noon comes I will see you at your brightest
and pause time so I can keep you there.
I will carry you the same way our father carries his last name
in his sleep, in his wake, it is written by his veins in signature
all across his chest.
When I find you I will carry you on my shoulders
like you always wanted to be carried
and don’t be afraid to show yourself
so I can reach into your formlessness,
find your face,
lift up your chin,
and show you your name.
Julian,
when you finally come home,
you can share my birthmarks
if it helps you feel that much more alive.

Carry You - first draft

I celebrate today as if it is your birthday when my loneliness
starts to crumble from above.
Cousin, I have been living to meet you.
I called upon your name and the negative space
cracked but remained intact.
I want to play with you,
you bag of marbles
but I would die if I were to lose any part of you.
However I breathe more blissfully knowing not your shape or laugh.
Yet I call a name that has never crowned you, cousin,
and your shadow moves like a squirrel through my peripheral.
That is all I can get.
Your mother adored your little body before you could
grow limbs to know what love feels like.
She was all around you for a while it felt
like an eternity of a warm golden bath to live in.
I understand you are homesick and life has outgrown you
too quickly.
I promised myself that it was your sneeze I heard when my mind
drifted like pollin at the thought of your allergies.
Sneeze followed by faint chuckle.
Mid July we hoped you would dive jubilantly into hands
that would hold you like jewels.
And I still hold you like rubies because you never departed,
were never disposed of.
I continue to hold you and will caress your kindling spirit with my cheeks
some day.
But I'm still here for you, holding your name on
the edge of the cliff of my lips,
occasionally damming the tears with fingertips.

Wet with Summer

The soaking jubilant screams of the soluble youth
Reflect the voice of the sun
As they slip and slide into a pool of delicate dreams
Baby Suzy's bikini skirt is a carousel of strawberry shortcakes
The circus tent hangs from a drop in little Adrian's eyebrow
And the storks fly above their freckled frenzies
The neighbors on the other side of the towering fence
May as well be foreigners as seen through the margins
Of their barracades
Milo leaps at a platinum moth like a direwolf
And the sprinklers punch through the beach ball which
To Suzy and Adrian could be its own world of stories
What could possibly make a child's day more amusing?
"Koolaid's on the table" says the voice of an angel

Words pt2

Words want to be treated like bullets
So I aim words at people’s heads and fire away
I want to open up your mind with words
Because words can be treated as ammunition for the talkative
Musicians to rock with
They build up like resin in my bottomless denim jean pockets
So the second I reach for the credit in my wallet
Words dangle from my fingers like ants
Before you think they’re gone they repopulate
But words just want to be unleashed
So I open up this can of words and hope it doesn’t scare you
Too much
They’re just words

Bang

Your casket was drowned in shades of gray
Like the streets you thought you could own
As if the streets were a gun you could set to safety
And tuck behind your belt buckle
Without fear of it backfiring

We were soulmates
You were a soul I used to walk side by side with from bus stops
A soul who had toys, basketball cards, and a mom
We tried our hardest to stand next to each other in class photos
You would always try to find me before church started

We grew up
And now that soul is gone and I walk alone, next to no one filling your void
But a 6 foot storm, a vertical cloud of black dust
It reeks of worms and the soil you rest in
And I get scared every time I see it and pretend it isn't there
But it's hoping I look up and make eye contact with this demon
This walking scourge of poisonous flashbacks
A plague of disorders that wants to convince me
That my world is in a hellish vacuum
And I am burning with it
And I try to outrun your pitch black placeholder
But this thing always waves to me and
Promises we'll meet up later

We were freshman in high school and we took a walk in the woods
You told me of the new friends you made
You pulled out your 9mm and fired 2 aimless shots
And I saw how narrow and fast your life was going
As BANG goes your GPA and BANG goes your dreams after we graduate
I told you with the honesty of a saint
And with the grace of an angel's plea
That living by the sword meant dying by the sword
And I reminded you that the rule applies to guns too
I even prayed for you and I felt like those prayers
Were shot dead before they could make it past my roof

I don't know what thoughts or chemicals were going through your head
When you embarked on this suicide drive by
With a gang of gargoyles wearing blood on their sleeves
A lifestyle of half reality and half maelstrom

And I’ve known you long enough to know
That my warnings and prayers kept cycling
Through your head like wheels going 40 mph
Yet you kept driving and driving even though
God put signs along the way telling you to stop

But the noises of gunfire deafened your remorseless ears as
BANG goes the beer bottles laid against window sills
And BANG goes the slumber of sleeping children
And BANG goes the ripping chambers of an unsuspecting heart

Your life was marked like tombstones
An hourglass of imminent devastation
Barely balanced over your head
Where there once was a halo
You were missing for weeks until the night of your death
For weeks you were a ghost before you became a corpse
Until the night you turned the corner that led to your fate

As BANG goes your life
BANG goes my friend who could have been
BANG goes a blowhole through your family portrait

A teardrop leaves its mark on paper
And blurs the margins
A message for you kept safe by its sender forever

Let's Candle

The candle attracts the children's laughs in the middle-aged.
It illuminates the smiles in our wrinkles.
For the day I forget what it means
to love one another
will be the day when flames stand still.
Come around old friend,
if you've got a candle in your heart.
We can laugh at the nights
and be back in time to bottle up
the fireflies before they retreat to the spirit world.
Bring your dog with you too,
because Lily's been gone for 4 days
and I miss her stealthy wet nose
smeering its way across my hand.
I just want to find some kind of ghost of her
in your new companion's stride.
I want to see if he'll stand up and clutch my
palms in his paws, I want him to
pinch me with his sharp nails
to feel if there are any daggers in his swagger.
Let's get on your roof so we can show him
what it means to howl
from the bottom of our balls,
above the lights of civilization,
and hope it doesn't cause another freak accident
like the last time you tried to scream a candle to death.

Words

Words have a tendency to haunt me with their affection
For they all strive to liquefy and become real
I look for a place to be alone
And words scurry past my feet on my way there like bugs
They buzz with wings and creep with their numerous legs
They slither and whisper like sisters with their peculiar sounds
All diverse, each word its own species

But words don’t know words they disperse
And hum melodies until I sleep
Night and day I breathe and drink words
And I wash the germs off with water and words
When I am with words I teem with their fragrance
But they alone have no smell, no face, no mothers
For the word celibate can smell like the word peppermint
And peppermint can look like pelicans
And pelicans can drink tea with the word etiquette
And etiquette feels like rhetoric
And when I assemble these words together
They tend to sound like the word relatives

For words beg to be stripped from their roots like fruits and twigs
They beg to be seen and heard and known
I often write because I can release these words like prisoners
Into the majesty of dawn
So they can dance in its rays until sunset takes them away
To the edge of the earth with its rosy chariot of molten gold
And maybe find a warm human heart for a place to call home