Good Fool

I will not be a butterfly in a lidded
mason jar
won't lean back so comfortable that I tip me over
can't be your summer dying softly like
a dirty dandelion
what lies behind my eyes is sacred 

I am a good fool, one with heart, the best kind

sweetness of all we were
was it enough to have it once?
missing-
simple, lazy incurable romanticism
it had its own temperance 
changing everything 
when all we desired was escape
filling up on beautiful fantasy that never led
to anyplace, now a cinematic mistake

I am a good fool, one with dreams, July Sunday's

closeness we sought to keep wasn't meant to stay
and being unhappy with you was the best
sadness I have ever had I think
I could become recluse for you
or bore holes in the ceiling, let the stars 
burn through the pictures that we made
but I think I'll place them by the river bank

quietly slip away telling no one
I once had everything I ever thought I'd want



Ever been sad with someone you love? Ever known that letting go was the only choice? Ever missed the days you longed for the thing that's been given you & when you got it, it just wasn't enough? Ever hurt so secretly that pain felt like such a selfish sin? 
Maybe longing is its own story, a call in our heart one that sometimes goes on and on until it's perfectly answered. Here's to all the good fools out there, we're going to keep looking for our palimpsest hope alive, rewriting as we go.

Hands of a Blue Eyed Boy

your hands were fists that learned how 
to clench and fight
before they learned how to love
you learned to run because walking was too slow
losing more of yourself in strange cities than
you ever found
apologized out loud to everyone for your full lips
and all the conversations that you ruined
dark nights became your preference
there no one could see you didn't fit into
the categories they prearranged for you
you grew a hatred for your own morning greetings
as they were barely met with
gritted silence of your peers
or sometimes an almost barely audible grunt

the walls to your mothers clapboard shack fell apart
but you still miss the rhythms of life there that were
wired to the circle space of a clock
the windows rebelled
swelling shut from rain refusing entry
epiphanies were already transforming
your blue eyes
like light shards from
the most brilliant, translucent glass
sleep was not a luxury
in an attic where you dreamed and awoke
after the midday hour covered in sweat
illuminating your terrors

you fell in love with the rain 
the sound pounding on your metal roof
and it eased erratic racing thoughts because it
demanded nothing
and after all the fights and the afterglow of craved
for flickering lights
you realized you've been carrying sadness
far too long
and loving its weight
happiness was irrelevant for the boy
with sky blue eyes
who learned blue rooms are sad rooms and
the wind
in the pine trees will always know your name
the eye of the storm became the only thing you
could expect
pain is recommended for you
because that's the way a boy like you learns to love

words that mattered never arrived
kisses were too absent
and dreaming is a beautiful thing but a boy like you
wastes too much time counting the circles engraved
on his fingers wondering
will his hands ever be clean enough to make love
make sense
he says
"at least the sky is clean out of my reach" 


A poem from Sad Romantics. 

Glass December

you like the ocean
only at a distance
and you're not breathing
you say
'cause when it's December
that's the only time
you can see it 

so where will you go

the walls you've built
no longer hold
'cause those you've loved
have killed you
buried you
a long time ago

have you forgotten dear
the iron doors that broke
the ash you breathed
the love that choked
blood on the floor
and your hands so small
that you never found a way
to find a chance it would take
to break the chain

June is slipping away 
to a glass December
and you only know how to break 
 
 

wanting moonlight

I want us to be
champagne and orchids 
in the courtyard

I want to spoonfeed
on moonlight in your eyes

I want the sky to memorize
how it becomes violet
and I ashes beneath your touch

I want to send roses to God
thank him for you 
my love
but I don't know if the dove
can fly that distance
and maybe he's not even home
anymore 

Memorist Goes Back Home

light fell across the room so beautifully
where you used to sleep
the last place I would have you next to me
the rooms were bigger then
maybe because we had love living in them
our path is gone
the door was locked
the windows dirty but I brushed them off
and looked back across the years
looking for a trace of us 
and of course you weren't there
the spring house was abandoned too
where I used to scoop cool water
out for you
the road was new, the gravel gone
so too the oak tree roots I read
"Seventeenth Summer" on
I looked around me lost in memories
"Summer Breeze," coming from my brother's
bedroom window blowing down the stairs
that song still touches me
your pretty flowers all gone now
your garden's just a tangled meadow full
of weeds but still remain a few old lovely trees
I saw my bedroom, empty now, nothing there
but I remember rain song on that old tin roof
still needing no repair 
vines have stolen up the side where lilacs used to grow
and fragrance the night outside our windows
and the porch where you used to sit with your coffee
and your cigarette, well it's still there not destroyed yet
the sun was still beating down the silence
so hot, hungry and heavy
the desperation that you surely felt
I could feel it swallow me
the mailbox gone
the fence is too
the clothesline now removed
I came back looking for something of you
but now I know it's not around the curve
that my mind keeps coming back to
in my heart that's where you reside
where this memorist shelters you

Have you ever felt a place pull you backward in time ? Some places hold so much of who we were, clues of who we are going to become. I felt the urge to go home once more to the last place I lived with my mother and siblings. It still felt like home but I realized later that it wasn't the home I was looking for but those that are gone from me and maybe I was trying to connect to the girl I was that was on a different path, wondering what would have been different if things had turned out opposite the way it did. How different would my life have turned out? I don't think I'll return again, what or who I'm looking for is no longer there but in my memories.
 

Blue Exhale

the burns stains on  your favorite crimson chair
your Winston painting blue clouds in a room
large enough to seat fifteen
it wasn't the smoke that choked me
angry days were behind you, I think
grieving days were shelved for when you
were alone
memories were aired
you remembered loving someone whose 
only want was to break you
blue was the color of our world
sadness tinged with resigned loneliness
mornings were on repeat
walking on ice
cold indoors
colder outdoors
taking that walk that may lead
to a better somewhere or nowhere at all
but you were sitting there so beautiful
in your blue exhale 
 

Wicked Orchids

Our love is as destructive
as the match we are going 
to light
We're going to live and love
deceitfully rearrange one another
and no one will know
the orchids are an artificial infusion
of time passed
No, we can't possibly be
who they think we are

Darling, let's live out our madness passionately