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.

A Brief History of Beauty and a Plea to Her

All people were beautiful once, until we started to ask why,
Then the haze was new, since we learned to use our eyes.
Judges, self-righteously choosing standards, only served to separate.
When we were beautiful, we were together: a massive conglomerate.
But now, full of scorn, we backstab and chase lofty ideals
And are scared and shocked to find we’ve forgotten how to feel.

Ugly is word of serious connotation,
And is a weapon of sure destruction
When it’s used to further separation.

Beauty please come back, we can learn to hide
Those dastardly lies created in our eyes,
Just open the skies and rain a little fire down,
Burn us back into huddled masses
And bury the haze back in the death charred ground.

The Doomstone

The Doomstone spoke with such vicious clarity
From the pulpit we had built from pessimism.
And I hated every word spewed as it shaded my summer,
The bleak blackness it painted clotting the sun.

Why did our delusions create the Doomstone,
That mass of panic and grief, with reason supporting?
Wasn’t there hope for reprieve in skill or augmentation,
Something to quench the hunger for emptiness and void?

Where are the champions, uncloseted from delusions
And the faulty idealism that diverts ultimate reality?
Where is the stolid optimism, still true to the actual,
But positive enough to eventually conquer the Doomstone?

They cry every time they think of friends
And lost good times made in their social concrete.
I lamented while I feather flew
From fence to fence like a finch,
But second thoughts show I never cried when I left.
I cared, but I never cried.

I am comfortable here,
Keep what you can and go.
I’ll be fine anywhere,
And my next memory
Is the one I’ll wait for,
The one that waits
Is the one worth waiting for.

Why linger on things that are gone?
You can’t have it all anymore,
As much as that might hurt.

The Sweetest Things

The rosen mush of tomato innards
Rushed down from her pursed lips
And bloated cheek pockets,
Both working to keep the rest in.

I'd summoned a guttural emission:
Deep laughter that infected upward
Until her freshly filled mouth
Was distracted enough to oblige.

I have a forte for conjuring smiles
When we steal away in summer
To find a field full of ripe and ready
Plunder that we consume, always delighted.

In these moments I am satisfied
With the joys of Earth's providing heath
And a heart warmer than the rays that
Cast brazen glares into our young eyes;

Her laughter and our summers are
The sweetest things I ever hope to know.

Dancing Like Radicals

I danced like a radical
And assumed I was free.
I let the beat take hold
And the rhythm carry me,
Death to the awkwardness
When I danced in your arms;
Such a plush little girl
Wrapped in such strong arms.

I give you my motion
In exchange for your scent,
Now let our bodies mingle
And share every grinding bit,

Of this song's burning secrets while we
Scrape at the night, and then throw away
The primal thing we made…

Until, at least, the next song is played.

Lingering Lover

I scratched,
retching,
flinging flesh from my arm,
searching desperately
for that vein I knew contained you!

You would be out!
I would be free!

But now, only the mess
and no bloody little you
to throw out with iron stained dregs…

But, the satisfaction
Of knowing and understanding
You would never be out!
Or at least were never where
I could easily find you…

(Someday I will
finally bleed you
away from me!)

Computer Clock

Almost obsessively I check the computer clock
Homed in the right, lower corner of the screen.
I believe it, but check my cell phone time piece…
It agrees. I smile. All is right in the universe.

Powerless

Should I have mentioned
how soft sad your eyes looked
that evening, like you’d been scalded:
a small dog guilty of some human
transgression you didn’t understand yet?

You carried yourself like you were hurt,
but hiding it; you were hiding in yourself.
I could have found you, if I had asked,
but there was no hint that you wanted me to.

You smiled and chatted, but inside
you were a shadow, made larger
because the light behind you is bright
enough to remember, but far enough
away to remain unreachable.

You were not happy, and I,
quietly pushing you along,
was powerless to comment,
powerless to save you at all.

Venting from Frustration

I respect your opinions and will think you wise
But when I hold my theories or musings,
Know it's because I won't have them dragged
Through your unrefined mud of argumentation.

You're too analytical without the tools to analyze.
I understand you are articulate and have opinions,
But I am not impressed with this as the layman is,
It just makes you seem closed minded
Even in your half-promotion of inclusive ideologies.

Talking with you lately has made me tired
So I'll stop for a while to rest.
You disrespect my views and shrug me off
Like I was naive and undereducated.

I am a good friend,
I refuse to point out your disgusting
Arrogance and sanctimony.

You, skating

I noticed you skittering along the cold ice, impersonally,
Trying to find your own space to hide in
Even though saturated in the crowd, whirling around.
Your sad eyes tell the story that your sagging head confirms.
I asked if you should stay on the carpet, you declined
With all the fury of a Joan of Arc or doomed sailor
Facing the angry side of a perfect storm.

You know you are unnatural and awkward on skates,
You should have avoided the ice.
We could have stayed home, now I will have to nurse your pride.
Your stubbornness in the face of failure is beautiful though,
And you have such a vulpine way of being contrary to sense.

A Stranger

I am a stranger in the foreign student computer lab
And dissolve into the screen in front of me
For all the diligent studiers who'll never meet my eyes.

When I stand to leave they'll see through to the walls
And I'll be gone like an unwanted poltergeist,
Finally exercised for some semblance of peace
And a comfortable slice of familiarity.

Goodnight

You watch the clock,
Eye stalking 1 a.m.
like your cat would a shadow.

It sees a shadow crouching in the corner
And stresses back on its haunches.
Your cat stores violence and energy
In the spring ready quicks of its legs.
When the shadow darts the cat attacks,

Nothing dies and Tiger lounges, licking his paws,
Left with only the satisfaction of preparation.
His feral fix left fettered for now.

So you watch the clock and wait for the morning.
Counting your quirky little technicalities
More steadily than the slipping seconds.

You’ve waited and then celebrated,
Keeping me awake with you.
There is nothing different here at 1 a.m.
Your morning is dark and there are no birds.
There is just the still remembrance of yesterday
hiding in the air, begging to be called night,
And unnatural in the skin of tomorrow.

But you deny that and sleep all morning then,
Left with only the satisfaction of staying alive
Through the entirety of your night distinction.

Good morning,
(You make me say it,
But honestly, good night)
I love you,
(Yes, and Tiger too)
Sleep well.

Ocean Eyes

I challenge you in a thousand little ways,
I am the grains of sand hiding on your body
Or in the folds of your clothes after you leave the beach.

My favorite accost: staring into your eyes,
Seeing past that social gloss,
And getting to see into you;
The real you after the uncomfortable
Instant that tells your eyes to glance down,
Or to look away, because the combined force
Of both our gazes cannot be contained
Any longer in the moment.

The current of our energy is too strong
And the connection is gone with the tide.
I let the charm dangle in my blue ocean eyes
And dare you to do the same with me,
But I’ve had practice and am a harder
Oyster to pry; I suppose my pearl is worth it.

I Have Changed

The something else you needed
You could never describe,
And all that searching amounted to nothing.
What you did find you could not make fit.

I would give it all to you, now,
Had I found it,
But the chance is gone
And I would not know where to look.

You searched for so long but failed to find it,
So you faded back into obscurity.
It was the searching that had attracted me,
But failure is a put off so I left.

However, I would help you now,
And that means that I have changed.