Tag: spilled thoughts

Artistic License

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.

White Honda

Whenever I see a white Honda

I foolishly hope it’s you

I’m constantly trying to conjure up

Pieces of you in my mind

Well, that’s a lie

I don’t have to strain

It’s in the way I smile sometimes

Or while reading aloud

And then wondering when we’ll finish

I’ve come to realize

That it’s not that I want

A part of you

A part you cannot share

It is not as if we are lines in a will

Awaiting dissection and deliberations

Then doled out to those deemed

“Most deserving”

And in learning to distance myself

From acting out of guilt

I’ve realize that the freedom from you

May never come.

Not that I feel guilty

Or you cause guilt

But because it is the contrary

I feel no obligation

Not for your happiness

Nor your well being

I desire them both

But I do so freely

And all these thoughts

Passing a white Honda.

My smile is a messenger

And your lips are the arrows

That shot down any chance

Of an early delivery.

Your arms are the news

Something to awake to

Then meeting on the front porch

As a ‘welcome home’

After a long day for both of us.

Your eyes are evening meals

Spent in comfortable silence

Or animated conversation

Of all things meaningful

Of all things meaningless.

Your laughter is a familiar song

One I cherish and play often

One I long to hear echo in my heart.

Your smile is a messenger

And our lips are quiet pen pals

Anxiously, then comfortably exchanging

Notes, then letters, poetry

Sonnets and haikus

Essays on the human condition

Whispered and shouted.

Our hands and fingers are the ink

Intertwining phrases and inscribing love

Staining faces and all else.

Evoked Eviction

I’m putting to rest the possibilities

The half truths and lies I told myself

I’m letting them age and grow yellow

Like unread newspapers

Ink faded and photographs all but gone.

I’m burning the letters you never sent

Not because you didn’t write them

But because you never even tried

To write the words you were so afraid of.

I’m clearing my mind of recollections

Mixed and twisted reflections

Broken down misinterpretations

Of what I meant to you.

I’m putting it all in past tense

Passed tension no longer welcome

In a life that no longer includes

A possibility of more than fleeting

Fleeing moments kept in seclusion.

I’m sorry

But I can’t keep thinking of you

With your half hearted glances

Full hearted dances

And mischief ever in your eyes.

You were my great enigma

Even as your poured your sorrows

Into my open arms

But, I can no longer hold you

My heart is too full

And my memories too tainted

With your smile.

We’re living in a world

Where power is a valued commodity

And those that can afford it

Are terrified of sharing.

Where we fear discrimination

Because being different is inevitable

But it can also get you killed.

Hate is hate is hate

And it doesn’t matter which mouth

Or which hand practices it

Because negativity is an infection

And humanity reeks of death.

There is hope though,

Buried beneath piles of lies

And walls erected to separate

To keep us blind, deaf and dumb

To keep us from realizing

That by perpetuating hatred and distrust

We’ll only cause inversion.

“The more things change,

The more they stay the same.”