I silence myself with more words
Than I can carry
A stranger’s voice I once knew
To be my own
Working tirelessly to sew my lungs
And thread my ribs with regret
Laying bricks on my back like a
Home I’ll never see.
I stammer with each breath I miss
Like seconds tangled in passageways
Unkempt
Unclean, unabashed, unabated…
Unwanted
Words flourish like dandelion seeds
And all the world’s a darkened grove
A vineyard stripped of purple, blue,
And green.
Your heart is a catacomb in Venice
Haunted by memories you buried within
Specters and ancient bones
Brittle with age and riddled with holes.
Your heart is a library in Alexandria
Lost to the sands of time
And fires indifferent to your worth.
Your heart is a toll road
Charging passers by for a scenic detour.
Your heart is your own.
Stop my tongue before I speak
Shudder my mind at my own feelings
Prickle my flesh with mere intentions
Mere visions or illusions of action
Apparitions borne on nightly air
Torn down in exorcism of belief.
Who or what am I to such express
To sketch or trace or hum
Such art in circumstance
Or stay your fear with my own?
Your reflection does not echo
Your mind
And your heart is torn by
Incongruent form replicated
By in-compassionate genetics
While those around you
Scream with voices
Criticizing the only choice that’s yours.
In their eyes you see rejection
The lines of their lips whispering
Disgust
When all you want
Is to see yourself
As you truly are.
Lot 659 ladies and gentlemen
One heart, slightly used but whole
To the highest bidder
Full of music, laughter, and soul.
Kindness is not cheap
But neither can it be bought
As with loyalty.
I love you not as breathing
But singing
Not out of necessity
But as a natural extension of being.
I love you as I exist
Fluidly and with numerous connections
Threads upon threads
Interweaving and intervening
With my thoughts and designs.
Expectations torn asunder
As rightly fragile creatures
Features of vulnerability
Set in parallel to expositions
Of reason and rhyme.
I miss you
Like constellations in a big city
Grayed out
By the pollution of lesser lights,
Familiarity drowned out
And cast aside.
I love you like an upside down cup
Uncomfortably catching every drop
And watching helplessly
While experiences spill over
Filling up our designated time together
With awkward grasps at neatly placed handles
Each facing the right direction
At the wrong time.
You sketched love into my heart
With charcoal fingertips
You lined your work
In fancy inks and novelty smiles
You crushed pastels
Colored our experiences with brokenness
Blended shades of grief and joy
Into a spectrum of humanity
And when you neatly tore out the page
I carried the impressions still.
Hi, Hi. and Hi!
It’s interesting to me
How things can sound different
In complete silence.
Moonlit Poetry 