plea

please don’t sing so sweetly, for fear that I might hear you

and be drawn to your honeyed tones

and your sugar-coated lips

please don’t croon so gently, for fear that I might harm you

chill your olive skin as I

edge closer to listen

please don’t beckon to me, for fear that I might break you

fracture every bone

with my white and desperate grip

oh, for fear I may destroy you, do not sing for me.

what I saw (or, star-besotted)

Let me tell you what I saw

In your star-bespangled eyes

It was a spattering of golden dreams

On a fuel oil-flooded sky

The contrast beguiled me

Enraptured me, ensnared me

And I tripped into your gilded cage

Where I watched a dead sun rise

 

I tried to hold your gaze to see

Into star-bespangled eyes

Craning my neck to see if they were

Reflective, like mirrors

Or if they transformed the world in them

The way rushing rivers do with stationary rocks

But you avoided my gaze

And fed me caramelized words

Of which I was already full

 

(Now listen close

There is a stark difference between

Monsters and cryptids

One is belief, the other only held up by belief

Listen close, for

You find the former inside you

And the latter in other men

But this contrast bores you, does it not?)

 

Though the blazing heat gave way to clouds

And the leaves of trees shriveled and were replaced

You made no haste to meet my eye

Took all the time in the world

Languorous, in the cage

And when I grabbed your chin, pulled it, just to see

An orange water colour sunset

You dangled before me

And I realized that those weren’t stars in your eyes

That you never had stars in your eyes

No comets, no satellites, no galaxies

Only strobe lights

 

(But I digress with this talk of farce

This half-hearted censure, this tickling condemnation

Because I could never resist those orbs

And I never did.)

The Weary Traveler

The weary traveler makes his kill

A bag of sand for one lone bill

A bag of sand for every desert

A bag of sand for payless hurt

 

The weary traveler finds no rest

Each grain is pain and life a test

He trades his blood for grains of sand

In hope the heap can build him land

 

The weary traveler dies alone

The sand entombed with every bone

The sand engraved in words for show

The sand that follows him below.

Playing a game of memory with goldfish

I shine a torch into your eyes

and anxious, watch the dancing spots

That mimic light, like fireflies

so cutely imitate the stars

 

The glow of blue like broken cries

and green, it hums the universe

The red is red and full of lies

but you tune in to speeding cars

 

You pace your bowl in rounds clockwise

I have to chase you with the light

My tongue is red and full of lies

each ray can tell you my disgrace

 

You turn from me and twist sidewise

I feel you wish that you could blink

Defend against the blue of cries

like stars tune out the speeding cars

 

When night gives way for dawn to rise

you will ensnare its golden shine

As if it were a holy prize

and mine were born of phony stars

 

I perch atop a trembling seat

relentless still, in still pursuit

My stars were real, yet still, defeat

each one dissolves without a trace

 

Tomorrow I will play again,

deluded in the thought of when

my light will reach your darkened den

and stay, remembered, comprehended.