The curve in your hips matches the rock in your heart,
your poor, sad, heart.
Though you're not sad, not at all.
You stand tall on long legs and smile for the camera,
the black, broken camera.

******,
why can't you flinch
or stop twinkling and glowing?
It's all show,
though you're not on stage honey,
the curtains are closed.

Take off your long lashes and your push-up bra,
please,
because the lights are off and the door is shut and the crowd is gone
and I'm here, just me, only me.

What is love?

I never understood “made in God’s image” until I saw her.
Anyone who’s seen her has higher expectations for what heaven looks like.

We’re both sensitive enough to know what love feels like,
and reasonable enough to know that it can be broken.

The first time you use a new toothbrush is nothing like the first time you kiss a girl,
But I still love them both.

Her laugh is a paradox; an outsider would think she either just said the cleverest thing ever or she wishes she could retract it faster than it was said.
Only I know it’s simply because it’s beautiful. It’s easily my favorite language.

I have considered wearing a wiretap so I could go back and listen to all of our conversations again. And I hope that it picked up her heartbeat. She told me, it’s beating exactly like life should sound like.

She offers to iron any wrinkled clothes. I don’t have any. But I have a wrinkled heart.
I thought it was made into origami but it’s just a wadded ball that missed the wastebasket.

The way she dances to hip-hop shows her versatility,
yet you can tell she doesn’t do this every day; but she still dances.

I’m almost too nervous to hug her - knowing it will have to end.
Whenever I let go, I feel like I made a mistake.

Her voice trails off into silence,
like an hourglass that’s trying to hold itself together.

I like that “click-clack” of her boots.
It lets me know I’m next to someone really going places.

She goes to the mini mart with me even when she doesn't want to get anything,
besides more time together.

If a broken heart is the only place I can hold you
Then I’ll tape up the cracks
so that my feelings don’t drip away
Under that kind of pressure,
how could you ever stand up to measure
my feelings for you?
You don’t even know how I dream of you at night
Even though my heart is breaking
and my hope is like smoke between my fingers
I hold on and chase it down
I would stop the wind
and reverse the hands of time
fighting Father Time for even a second more together
I would bribe and beg Mother Nature
And I pray to God that you can feel my feelings for you
So you’ll know what I’m willing to do
With a broken heart, I’d break it in two
just to scoop you up and protect you
I’d give you all the pieces I can find,
scattered on the floor
Even if it looks like the work of Picasso
It’s all I have, so…
I give it up into your trust
With hopeless, heartless,
complete confidence in you

I want to know all of you.
The tiny blemishes that would be imperfections
If they marked up any other body but yours.
I want to know the stories behind your scars.
All the ones you've collected over the years
And display on your body
Like old books on a library shelf  
I need to thumb my fingers over those puckered patches
Of skin because all your books are written in braille
And I want my fingers to know those words
In ways your voice couldn't describe.
These welts of words make up the story of who you are.
I hope you will let me open you up
And I hope that after I read all of you
You will still know
That I will always kiss you as sweetly as I did before
I knew all your wounds.
Please know that I will not think you are any less pure
To me as you were before I understood.
Purity isn’t real anyway.
It’s a prison of a concept that’s made with
Bars of guilt and of shame
Keeping you trapped behind your past.
But you are not that to me.
You are my future
And even if I add to your seeming imperfections
And give you a few more scars
Be happy that when I re-read the braille books on your body
I will read about me too and how I want
Nothing more than to add to you.

Even in death she mocked them
They that turned up to watch
Her laid to rest.
These people she had loathed
in life everyday
whose help she scorned.
The one whose man was loose
A meaningless philanderer
Another that gossiped
Of the good, bad and ugly.
She wouldn't accept their help
They thought her a charity case.

She danced on her grave
was this what death was like?
to look down on your body
Peaceful like in sleep.
The years had not been kind
She looked ravaged by nature
wrinkled like a wilting flower
Ashen grey and crumbling
She danced because it was over
The hardship that was life.

Light as a feather she felt
She could be herself again
not have to conform to others
pretend to be what she wasn't
she was a free spirit
reign to wreck havoc
On the neighborhood folk
Them that were hypocrites
She would give them lessons
a haunting they wouldn't forget.

I'll throw myself under the bus every now and
again to see how I take it, an
      interesting game for a bit, but
                                 having watched this new man come to terms with
                    my self, I am joyous,
                                        elated,
                                            sprung up like a forget-me-not from the
lack of a pillow, misty mornings, love over my
              head like a river

                            still, rains are heavy - every single night changes something, the comfortable
                   shades of wet, defined puddles reflecting porchlight

do memories really die with us?
  
         no.
                   they are twin steps ahead to immortality, Westward smiles like plains and hills rumbling
                      as mountains of epiphany

            I'm trying to make certain of things that are impossible, goodness
that's enough of that, suppose stubbornly a
                                 change of scenery and open heart can achieve
                anything worth trying

      and she'll never know the picture half strung-out on forgetful
                    chemistry, unless I
                                  paint it just right
at least, that's my
          point of view