To ______, With Tongue in Cheek

I could flash my brilliance a thousand times,
Jovially flaunting my vanity,
But your muted smirks and deep eyes
Would still remain the only things to shine.

And though we tease and taunt,
Hinting at a hushed, future fun,
The present is lonely and long,
And your pictures leave me increasingly undone.

So I’ll humble myself, floundering, while I’m away,
Pacing my thoughts and rehearsing my speeches
For when I’ll find you again,
Refusing to be left with nothing to say.

Shall I work the courage to finally be a man,
To put down the petty flirting,
To follow through smiling glances,
To find your lips, and to take your hand?

Only the rest of my exile shall know
By what leaps and bounds my feelings will grow.

London Called

London called but I digressed,
I was in no mood to speak
And could hardly be considered dressed
For that momentous, glorious peak.

My voice would reflect my appearance
And I would sound sullen and sunken,
Void of my usual charisma and elegance,
In that state, I might have sounded drunken.

I decided to relate to a later date
So I might take time to clean up,
I would make to sure to look (and so sound) great
Before I again tried to sail over that mean hump.

Flames of Summer

For shame, the flames that burnt so high
In the midst of the party and its black eye,
Have begun to squelch and to yield;
The guests are bored and dead on their battlefield.

So, smoldering, the host raises a toast over head, then slows,
And begins to rile and beguile the still crowd into wonder.
But so it goes, for heroes and foes, in the fragile flames of summer.

A Sad Love Song

I can hear the echoes crashing
Over everything we’ve said.
Our filth bounces off the walls
So beautifully back into our heads.
You scream at me,
I shout at you,
The waves spread and destroy the room.
A wave of carnage,
Our wreckage of a catharsis,
And I’m in love with you.

So here we are,
Piecing back the rubble
And picking out the shrapnel,
But lovers know that for wounds;
You’re always going to have them.

I’m tired so I’ll let you fall
Away to your way back home.
I’ll bleed until I die
While I wither all alone.

The Valley

It’s slippery, this slope,
This tight rope hope,
Strung across the Valley
With no visible end.

The air lurches past,
A stumble, then a gasp,
And I have nearly fallen.

With my head down, resting,
Up roars the longing, protesting,
And the trench reaches toward me,
But I walk along untouched.

Balancing and advancing,
I am so afraid of falling.

Movers and Shakers

They would love it if we were to come,
Like a shot of whiskey on a tired tongue,
To warm their weary winter party.

We would taxi downtown toward their flat,
Your red dress blazing in the trap-night’s gray,
Yielding a bit of flare to the everyday.

All the while waiting to impress the crowd,
Such a guest, well dressed; the others wowed.