Buckets filled with tears,
          filled with effort and sweat,
            blood and exhaustion,
will fill a well-used life,
                                like a small apartment with a leaky roof.
This apartment is dark,
                                         dreary, and nothing more could fit.
Pain is written on the walls,
  stress lines the floorboards.

Sure, you could move to a new place,
    one with clean walls,
                  empty spaces to walk,
    a TV with satellite,
    but you stay in this dark hole in the wall,
because it's yours.

Through all the sweat,
                     the buckets filled with negativity,
       the dreams turned to nightmares,
a single droplet, glistening like the sun,
         appears to descend, stopping

just beyond your reach.

No matter how many buckets, tables and chairs you pile up,
it sits, staring down at you.

One day, this hope,
        this unprecedented sense of achievement
     falls,
  landing softly on your tongue.

The taste is unlike any other,
   and the pain melts away.
      The blood, sweat, the tears,
         all become necessary.
The dingy apartment
     is well-lit, clean,
     and the pursuit of this perfect droplet
becomes The ideal.
This second of sweetness
                      makes bitter fade to memory,
                      makes the darkness warm and bright,
illuminating existence.

We're two feathers from the same bird,
tail and wing.
You can't tell when we're floating together
Which fell first, and which followed
Or even
What happened to the bird.
All we know is that some young thing will grip us in his tiny hands,
Pick us up from the ***** ground
And hold us together in-between two pudgy fingers
Imagining he can fly because of us.

We have a dancing love,
He and I,
Dancing on the windswept heather,
Laughter ringing over the sea
Him and me.
We have a quiet love,
He and I,
Curled by crackling fires,
Poems whispered on a cloudy eve
Him and me.
We have a wild love,
He and I,
Sparks flying from rich red lips,
Shaking the branches of the willow tree
Him and me.

My home is a tiny cabin in the woods,
My voice a timid trail of smoke from
The quaint log chimney
That would never reveal the pain
Hiding under the shiny tin roof.
You hold my bleeding heart
Carefully, like a baby bird just
Stretching it's wings, and you
Stitch it back together with your  
Whispers of strength
Like quiet raindrops on a tin roof,
I
  t
  '
   s
    
      o
       k,

         I
          '
           m

             h
              e
                r
                 e
                   .

Starlight from a bottle  
To drown my tears, liquid sorrow
Seeping through my veins, filling
Gaping black holes with empty memories
Of your love.

Watch the clock with blank eyes,
Seconds ticking past, a wasted life
Lost in memories of sunshine and pianos,
Nothing but memories now.

If only you could read minds,
Then I wouldn't have to carve my love
On the air between my lips,
Droplets of secrecy and blush that,
Once gone,
Can't ever come back.

My mind roams through a wilderness
Of imagination,
Only to reach a wrought-iron wall
At my lips.
The filters of polite society won't let me
Speak,
Won't let me scream "*******!"
To their soft-mannered prejudices
That gather in the bottom of glasses of
Expensive champagne.