what forgiveness feels like
Rain washes away debris
revealing a clear open sky
in the depths of my heart
my pink gel pen leaked
cherry blossom blood
bleeding from the gel pen butt
a pretty murder scene
over my hands and desk
instructions for finding your soul mate
fill yourself up to the brim:
only share drink with
one that savours the richness
of your taste, swimming in
your colours and wanting more–
offering a cup of their own soul
in return
grief always finds its way back
I realized you were
never coming back
for the twenty seventh time;
I held your smiles, held
them against my palm
feeling their soft ruffles
with my skin, fingering
their soft crease
I let them go again
knowing that they no
longer belonged to me:
they belong with you
and you belong to the sky
and the sky belongs to no man,
no one; and there is no one
in the sky when I look
each time I look
every time I look
no matter how hard
I look
when people don’t get your joke
unable to find the folds of your smile,
the punchline slowly backed
away from the thin straight line
of your neutral lips-disheartened,
it sullenly retreated, shivering from
its failure of becoming born
retreating into a shell of awkward silence
sucking its thumb as it sulked
words are feeble
words are feeble
they stumble and collapse
there seems no end to this
litany, no end to these
ink-stained tears that
eat into flesh
hollow out bones
and words are feeble
to contain hearts
rupturing with a thunderous
crack, each pulse a bolt
of lightning, splitting
the sky into two
and words
are feeble
to stop the bleeding eyes
everywhere, everywhere
there are bleeding eyes
failed by these feeble words
these words that are feeble
I lost a poem
I lost a poem
on my way home
from work; I
lost it at the second
intersection, when the light
turned green, as the
shifty words folded
collapsed upon themselves
and quietly,
from my consciousness,
took their leave
when you are searching for the next good read
lost
for not having a world
to be lost in
Jaws
words spoken through
rows of serrated teeth:
if the threat of a lethal
bite will not stop you
then you must be a
tasteless dark without
a proper heart; in fact,
now that I am straining
my ears, opening myself
up to airy sounds traveling
through waves of the ocean
I am certain that I hear nothing-
nothing? oh, perhaps,
you aren’t even there and
after all these years, you,
you have been a ghost
after all
a fable: a knight (who isn’t a knight)
once, he fought against those fingers
slender, insect-like; more strength
in those misleading knuckles
than they appeared
it had been too late
when he felt the murderous
threads, cold legs of obsidian
closing about his neck;
there concluded his knighthood
for a knight was no longer a knight
the moment his princess was
alone and asleep, caught
in the web of lies
waiting for dawn
waiting for the first
glimpse of light
and though he knew
for the sheer love he had for her
he would die and return again
the hurt he felt each time
-thorned promises of
chivalry denied-
still made his tearless
body contort
and bend
but this
this he defied
defied for the promise of her
embrace, the thunderous
heartbeat that was music
to his ears
and this
this pain he defied
with sheer strength of soul
for the awakening of his
much beloved, who
stared him in the face
with eight of her eyes
Somewhere Nowhere in My Kingdom 