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Your heart must be stronger than mine,
to hold the weight of all of everything.
It's easy to do as I do
and let it all go.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Become a solitary point in the universe,
balance all against the weight of an idea, an ideal.
My heart does not exist outside of my head.
You wear yours like a trophy,
with  the scars as a testament
to the battles you've won.
Or maybe lost, but it's all the same.
I can't touch what you have,
and in my own little universe,
it terrifies me.

Valinor

I have sung the song of Roland
And ventured where I may;
I have walked the halls of heroes
While ravens had their say.

I have sparked up conversation
With kings from days of yore;
Sailed on with bow struck west
To live in Valinor.

To say that I'm a dreamer
Would not be oft amiss;
My heart beats more in rhythm
To love than than loneliness.




to my parents, who taught me to love reading.

Singularity

Sometimes
I wonder what the point
of a poem is.
The graceful bend
of word and tongue.
To make language
more than a casual friend
whom one fucks
for no other reason
than convenience.

Who, but you,
could follow a poet's mind
down the tracks
of a truth that lie
inside a verse.
How does one
cut through the bullshit
that obscures some
single point of knowledge
or of love or of hate.
What life does a poem have
if her meaning escapes
the tracks it was set upon?

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All I want
is to lose myself,
to drown in the ink.
If life could be still long enough,
if I could find the right cliff,
my words would flow forth
like a war cry,
like a kiss.

Sometimes

Sometimes, the best thing
is not friends or laughter.
Sometimes, the best thing
is not your crutch.
Sometimes, the best thing
isn't there when you need it.
The best thing, you see,
is the reason you are here.

First Impressions

 Not sure how I feel about this one.



I have this dream,
a fantasy, if you will.
She walks in like a cloud,
you can sense her presence,
feel her around you.
It smells like rain...
spring rain and woman.
She takes a seat at the bar.
I sip my gin, and wait.
Dark eyes roam the silence
as she sizes us up,
daring us to move,
but we can't,
and she knows it.
She sips.  We gulp.

Aphrodite, she said
That's my name.

I'd been so far gone dreaming,
her words hit me heels to the sky.

But you could call me Rose,
if you'd rather.

My tongue chased my thoughts
away from her eyes
and roused up a voice to gasp
hello.

Hey, Hank...

A poem, he said.
A poem for the ordinary life,
the day to day unfolding of
ordinary things.
Of steely resolve in the face of
the mundane;  a poem,
he said, to show the world
the easy glories of the working man,
the daily grind, the small things.
     
There's too much of this
peace and love crap,
too much wishful thinking.
Where are the realists, the cynics?

He didn't know shit about work,
but I kept quiet. 
He had his dream, and
I had mine.