Lover's block

Oh where is my flowing fountain?
my pen seems to have run dry
like my mouth when you are near
tripping over words that once
were but pebbles in my babbling brook
the ink skips and runs
my splotchy conversation paints
my face red
my page black.

Detachment has bred contentedness,
but contentedness doesn't breed poetry.

The art of getting over it

I pretend.
I pretend it wasn't you,
it wasn't me, it wasn't us,
some other boy and girl,
another couple,
another time.
I read your letters as if
I was reading a story,
a novel, a passionate romance,
a tragedy.
On your image and mine
I place those masks of drama
so the play in my head finally ends
and I can sleep again.

Thursday morning

I dropped my contact down the sink this morning
which realization caused me to fume
groggy and bespectacled
down to the breakfast table
where little brother sat absently
eating toast through a chapped-lip smile
gazing from his throne
toward the morning sunlight beaming
through perfectly formed lenses
buried deep in blue-green irises.
A cheerful sight was I, then
that morning at the table
and later when I forsook the world
returning to my room regretful
to start the day over
when unassuming little brother
stopped in to say
"Mom told me to give this to you"
grasping in a small pink paw
a little round clear blue
piece of plastic

All aboard the quatrain

Dearest, do not be offended
by my crooked little rhymes;
hence, my mind has recommended
I jot down the fol'wing lines.

Here, the purpose of my journey
art, and pastime, that is true
but a third I'm quickly learning
to express my thoughts to you.

Sometimes it is trying, dear,
you know by now, to talk to you.
I say what I think and feel here,
when mere idle talk won't do.

I know you don't understand it,
dear, I don't expect you to.
Only know this, that He planned it
all, so I'll always love you.

The seagull's song

This is the breeze,
the one that will always blow this time of morning
as if it were the force to move the waves
like mountains in its path.
It calls to my family and they answer;
come and listen, it says,
hear the sea man's song.
I peer down my beak,
past the salt and sand
the wind has wedged there.

A man sits alone
swaying on the sand
with some great box
eyes closed
as if it were he
who makes the breeze blow.

The sounds that reach me are familiar
besides foreign origin;
with every string to pass his hand,
the rope of gravity release

Suddenly weightless
subject of the sound
several together, then apart
melody is the combination
sand, salt, and sky
thrown together
reaching, contracting
satyrs, nymphs
dance across the waves
alighting once and taking off
never somewhere, always everywhere
vibrations break across the hands of man.
This is the breeze,

the one that will always blow.

Hope

The light spilling over the windowsill
drenches everything in gold
and drowns me.
How many times I've thrown these curtains shut
to shiver in the cold and dark and still
it finds me.
I could transverse the Earth and it would follow.

Your love illuminates me,
it is the spotlight on me,
the attention that I didn't want
or didn't need
is now second-nature to me.
What more could you want
from someone who
could never hope to shine like you?
You are the Sun
and I am only the Moon.