The truest bliss you impart upon me
sends a shiver down each column of my spine,
etching track marks over all my body,
a drug no-one can perfect or refine.
Your visage leaves lightning bolts on my eyes
and a heart palpitating in my chest.
Your body silhouetted in night skies
melts my deepest poetry to mere jest.
When we touch, it smashes my composure
into oblivion and far beyond.
When we lock eyes, I'm chilled from exposure
but for certain, only I feel this bond.
Although I strive for a day we would meet,
with the others, I could never compete.

A rouse of ruckus split the air like her hair.
She always seems to slay them many a time
A bit embarrassed to admit; my crime,
my pants are tight,  her face enflames the flair.

Because I drink at length, she’s memory loss,
her frazzled, freckled countenance lacking bruise.
Her body outlines nascent, lucent, chartreuse,
under the lights, to her, no albatross.

I haven’t had a great guffaw, so long,
I keel on the ground; I gasp to flinching art.
Her wits portray a certain sadness in heart,
it may be just me lacking tune from liquor’s song.

A smile with a tinge of wry reveals to me
Conundrum that isn’t there, she hides no pain.
Routine is not routine, smiles through the pain
she bears the wounds but also wound up free.

By showing levity through degrees of laugh,
serene-like visage; comedy never wanes,
she somehow brings to mind my window panes;
escapist reminders, days in past on graph.

Those special times were hurtful and grand, it’s strange.
Reflect from anecdotes, silly, happy, glad.
It’s clear she meant the other way a tad:
to venture, warts and all, the laughter exchange.

Glorious wanderers on Death's celadon globe
Stride- in sombre ceilidh- the arsenic haar,
Mantle of Dis' harrowing of derelicts.
Feral shadows stroking the hollow strath
With crimson paces aloft Acheron's shores,
The Erinyes, in macabre cavalcades
Walk the land, bereft, forever of aubades

Paint left, humidity purgatory,
Sticky but practically peeled off, while

Water and lime, the kind you hear about
On infomercials promising to rid
You of Built Up ****, is trapped between the
Panes they said they replaced but I don’t know.

Clothes piled with invisible coatings of
Dust from the floor last swept ten years ago,

And sweat from leaving the AC off
(Because saving a few bucks is worth it),

And sweat in stained dresses when you touched me,
And sweat in damp briefs when I touched myself.

Paper stacks, three years, busy work
And scholastic articles I should
Have read, say I will, but won’t pick up,

And verses I wrote that go nowhere but
Here and to a real poet, happily
Trapped at an average liberal arts college.

So instead of dressing or cleaning I
Call you, naked, a fattened odalisque,
Silent for hours, my thin mouth, a suture.

A fit black girl cut across the dog park,
She saw my bare shoulders, sloped pudgy pale,
We gazed in the other’s faces, but now

I can’t think what she wore, and she knows
I’m just sad, still: a ghost in the windows.

Deep tensions draw the shoulds and hold so much
While hells are made from can’ts and still-might-be’s
With magic care great weeds and blooms are ******
Upon real earth, no final fantasies
What does she owe herself and so the rest?
I strain to view but maybe it’s unclear
Though few embraced those true but hollow jests
well hewn from mind as sharply filled with fear
For needling help the price of scars she paid
She brought them forth, in love she did enlist
Defying self, unworthy world was stayed
Creating joy in order to exist
And now to hold us, tend the garden too
Is what we all need mothers' hands to do.

I see her there from across the building,
Hair covering her purple, tired eyes.
Her mind is not here, but deeply musing,
And my "Hello!" makes her jump with surprise.

I sit, and she quickly masks her writings,
Believing I can't see her quick mind shut.
But as we talk, I see she's still thinking;
I ask her what she wrote on the lined page. But

She tells me not. I found out later though;
About the fights with her 'loving' boyfriend;
The 'caring' family, whose care they never show;
And the school that's making her lose her wits.
Gradually, her mind is turning to dough.
She thinks no one cares. Little does she know...

When all around are swords I cannot weep
Some Latin junk rebounds within my skull
Azure in day so bright until night falls
A slice of sky descends into the deep
And for what faith is left that humans keep?
Mercy divine cannot these questions lull
One stroke of blood henceforth sharp wits are dulled
Through knives alone no peace can e’er we reap
Still we must travel on without the light
And solace find with those who’re just as blind
Murders of crows may flock around us too
The wind from them lifting us up to flight
Between the ground and air we’ll move quite fine
We drop the weight of texts; I soar with you