I crave dreams set in stone,
set to rhythms and poetry –
where blue ink smears and
the image of loving you is
still found on every page;
where futures are blended
with memories, and words
are more than a destruction
of promises. I crave desire
like the paper needs the pen
to bleed – masquerading as
the sonnet struck out in ink,
as I had once loved you in a
dream, and never stopped.
I can’t count the ways
in which I miss you, past
the sound of my name on
your lips – a light brush of
a kiss with every syllable,
in a gentle serenade of a
dance built on jazz; with
echoes of desire laced in
the curves of each letter,
as the softest graze of my
memory brushes your lips,
trembling my spirits from
hopeful assent to ashes at
dusk, always missing you.
I still feared the silence
like the edge of a knife
constantly pointed at my
back, left to breathe in
the syllables of words
counted as half truths
with only hope past the
horizon, guiding me into
open arms and a dagger;
caught between moving
forward and not looking
back, with only the sharp
pressure against my spine
keeping me standing still.
In the trees, where the light
rustle of the branches against
the falling of ice and then snow
are collecting like sonnets sung
in early December, where the
reflections from the streets are
chanting melodies and memories,
where my love for you came in
like a winter wind’s kiss, leaving
a blush on your cheeks – you are
the innocent beauty that comes
back to me with the falling snow,
decorating my thoughts in desires
of repetitions of the season, lightly
blanketing my heart with whistles
of love, rustling against the trees.
With two sways of the ink
I was penning my heart in
verse; a storyline of a love
I wished would have no end.
Blending promises from the
edge of my pen, into nights
of hope, left to carry on with
every new moon. I was the
writer and she was my poem;
carrying love with each new
storyline starting with a sole
concept of beauty beyond
the heart, where every word I
knew, came from loving her.
I’ve grown weary of the
distance between two stars,
it must be filled in silence
that battles the mind and
heart – left to trap echoes
of longing and lost love,
as though reflections of
stars shine brightest inside
truth and honesty past the
goodbyes, despite the time
in distance; never to reach
out towards a love to hold.
It wasn’t a soft graze,
left to timid lips and
hands like before –
you held passion in
a kiss, interlocking
truths of our hearts
with every sway of
a sigh, with trailing
hands mapping out
missed constellations
across our bodies as
the night kept warm
in our thoughts, with
us once more on the
verge of hope and a
lasting discovery.
she is my favorite of poems,
constantly changing in shifts
of creativity, burning from the
edges of the page and sinking
into blue ink stains – her verses
are curved in rhythms of gold
mixed with champagne, with a
light echo of memories swirling
in the blank spaces between the
daydreams and jazz. she is my
kind of poetry, a verse free from
rhyme and restriction, painting
the inside of my heart in words
set to love and possibilities in a
future cast in the clouds for two.
I’ve spent too many nights
staring at the stars for loose
answers to notice the path I
was wandering; left and then
right, my feet continuing on
while my head was caught in
longings of the future, with a
step in the right or the wrong
direction, no one was capable
of saying, as I ventured on my
own, lonely meandering past
sonnets and lost daydreams,
naming each star as a desire
to be near you as I passed.
Scraped together in mementos
of happier days and longing nights
are pieces of rubble from a broken
heart; cast in half light candles of
that first evening we spent beneath
the stars, with notes gently battered
back and forth, written in the keno
crayon that we’d slide across the bar
as though we could not get enough
of showcasing our love, by way of
stolen heartbeats and a future mapped
out in beer stains and crayon – left to
gather together in daydreams lost as
debris, stuffed in a shoebox, as worn
as my heart, filtered away in hope, set
to hold all pieces of my memories.
Storylines in Verse 