PAD 24

I dream of you
faceless entity
and energy felt in the ether, familiar
but unknown.

PAD 2012 - Day 24

She could be the dance or the dancer,
the muse
an inspiration
and I'll continue to be a dream as well your dreamer.

PAD 2012 - Day 17 (Happy Birthday to Me...)

Designed with more ego and less tears / I have understood me for ages / have dressed and redressed myself in costumes to fit / til unfitting became fine / more than fine. // Brave words are for pinheads who fear action / or have always lived acting / I burn scripts and live silently / pen to paper / pen / and paper / and ink guns / and scabby wounds / I wrote a love letter and left it on my skin....

PAD 2012 - Day 12

"Fear is the heart of Love..." -Death Cab for Cutie

We learn to walk tightropes at a young age
tipped toes and balancing acts.  We fall
for suspenseful pauses and no safety net.  We
tred lightly. 

I have fallen from taunt wires more times than I care to admit,
claim invincibility or pretend to stand
wobbly skinned knees, bloody knuckles; I climb up the ladder again.

PAD 2012 - Day 9

How long does it take to recover from a break-up?
                        -After "How I Met Your Mother"

Twice the amount of time you were together. A week
for each month you were told you were loved.  Half a bottle
of Tequila, the top shelf one or as many days
as it takes to get to 10,000 shots.  Unnumbered days
spent bedridden, like a sickness that's unshakable.  A weekend
spent wild, bouncing
from bed to wall to floor...never alone.  The time wasted
in a bar
on a flight
off kilter
trying to recall who you were
the last time you were alone.

PAD2011 - Day 3

I could take these steps
stumble towards you; oasis.
Drown in your waters that may be sands
or may be the one place I could imagine staying,
if it exist-- if you exist. I could stumble into you,
home after a night of binge drinking;
if I didn't think I imagined you real

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 18

I lost you somewhere, I think; or you found me
written on the inside of your wrist, tangled
with your flawed veins
I was just damaged enough to be completely perfect.

NOV PAD 2010 - Day 16

Why Card House Always Topple...




Because it is midway through the 11th month and half the day is already over. Because the fall is not the season of love. Because everything around us is dying...including us. Because I have walls, but no windows or doors. Because you can't be someone's shadow without sunshine and it's been raining nonstop for weeks. Because your best friend hats me and frankly I'm not too fond of her either. Because I'm socially awkward and I haven't learned how to hide it. Because I can't trust in something I'm not sure exists and although you are the most tangible thing in my reality I can't allow myself to submerge in you.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 10

To say my heartbeats is redundant;
of course it beats, hard, in my chest
but it's just because I'm alive
or it's Thursday
not because of your presence
it's never been you.

NOV PAD 2010 - day 2

I can tell you about concrete. Tell you
about barb wire, about burnt bridges and bruised bones.
Love, is not something that can be deciphered
or explained; it has a language
my heart is just now learning...at least it thinks.

I can tell you about murmurs. Tell you
about holes, monitors and clogged arteries.
I can illuminate the tangible, the constant. I cannot tear
these foundations asunder and rebuild.

Another Wayward Love Letter to Atlanta

I’m still wondering if you can be homeless and homebound at the same time? Concurrently adrift and set to some unknown path. A lighted beacon, a glowing hearth…
I know without realizing I don’t belong or realize without speaking the words.
I know you write love letters to Chicago, Providence, New York; I leave post-its for Atlanta on my fridge. We only speak in snippets; terse conversation of an impeding divorce. She wishes I’d sign the papers already and leave. And I wonder if we were ever in love or in love with the idea of being so.
I wonder if this was a marriage of convenience. She kept me afloat for a while…
And perhaps, I owe her something for this, roses on the eve of tomorrows that might never come. She always tried harder than I to make this work.
I’m still wandering towards something that instinctually feels like home. Both well aware she can’t be it for me, no lighted beacon, no glowing hearth; but she leaves the lamp on in case—still lost—I find myself stumbling back.

National Poetry Month - Day 11

The last time I said "I love you..." I didn't mean it,
there was a pause that stretched across the galaxy
I saw Jupiter in your eyes
cloudy and searching out something more in me
some sign of intelligent life
a heartbeat, a pulse...

the words escaped me in a rush of breath
a hiccup or burp
a complete accident, that I couldn't excuse myself enough for
couldn't take back; because you held it close
something fragile you knew you would lose.

Too Soon or Too Late

That night “we” were a nameless entity. Friends? Too simplistic for our complexities. Lovers? The connotation too tangled without tangled sheets. Abbreviated story: I already have a girlfriend; or rather until recently I had one. She is waiting alone in our apartment, for me; mind spinning wildly with imaginary scenarios of what we’re doing. The truth? We are watching TV innocently; she is chewing supermarket sushi, I too nervous to eat, keep thwacking her with her own pillows. I am a five-year-old boy, this is how I say: “I like you” “Do you like me?” “Check yes, please…this story I’m living hurts too much for me to finish it.” Saying, “Maybe you could resuscitate me…”

She turns knowing eyes my way, startling in their ability to pick me apart. “It’s time to go back…” She whispers, we both have finals in the morning; this is a moment of fantasy, it cannot last.

Idling her borrowed Honda outside my lit apartment we are motionless with what could be, but I’m too afraid of what already is to move forward. What is waiting for me behind these red brick walls? What is waiting for me in the weighted silence of this car? A smile that reaches her eyes…A kiss that comes too late? Another fist pressed lovingly against my throat?

Longing (A Never-Was Poem)

In my dream am standing right here / you were by the window / gazing at something more interesting than me / I was reading you with distant eyes / like my favorite book with folded pages / I have highlighted you / as important / and you have me down as nondescript / a black and white photograph fluttering to the floor / I've faded into many backgrounds / a moving shadow watching light from a distance / You are light from a distance / and I am all to ready to be your darkside.