We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

Within boat of words and views,
Ink my sinker and paper my bait,
I go casting line after line
Upon the waters of Muse.
Fingers putter the pole of play
Anticipating hook's fetter
Eyes and ears survey the waves
That may carry rhythm's freight.
As lips of verse grip the sense
Hand rustles to reel out the take
Before tension becomes tatter
And free the lay in lady's lake.

I long to be loved
So I love
I long to be seen
So I see
I long to be believed
So I believe
I long to be prayed for
So I pray for
I long to be validated
So I validate
I long to be the inspiration for poems
So I allow people to inspire me to poetry
I long to be accepted
So I accept
I long to be understood
So I work to understand
I long to be appreciated
So I easily appreciate
I long to be pleasing
So I am easily pleased
I long to be art
So I make art

People only ever want to ask me about
the poetry -
those verses about
busted up noses in outer space;
about the pros working
way down passed
the corner of Broad and Main;
about fistfights and hard, hard drinking.
But I built a flowerbed this weekend...
Twenty two tastefully irregular stone blocks
in a crescent moon shape,
filled with the blackest of soils.
The sweat of toil.
The digging.
The planting.
Exotic grasses. Asian maybe?
Purple and yellow flowers.
Zinnias or some **** thing.
All covered in a thick blanket of brown mulch.
It's a fine thing to have dirt on your hands
instead of blood.
No one ever asks me about flowerbeds.