Hurting you would take years to get over
Id drown from guilt and tears
Darling if I were to hurt you
Trust me I'd never write again
because the words
I would jot down
On that napkin I picked up from Starbucks
Would never be as sweet
As you had been to me.

The absence of you seems stiff and crinkled,
Like a crumpled piece of paper.

Ink blots and words crossed,
Just discarded verses and rhythms sprawled endlessly.

Incomplete maybe in a way,
Because I no longer keep your name on my lips.
Only hidden in sheets of paper.

Can you feel the silence?
Like a discarded notebook.
To full to continue,
Lines fill the margin so it's set aside.

Even words escape me now in this,
Paused in my last verse...

Sometimes, rarely often,
I lie awake, awake at night.
I wonder, wander, ponder,
The theme of you and I.

Though my soul blooms sick,
With ever lasting, lasting doubt,
I try to find, fend, comprehend,
Just how I'll go without.

You and I, such doomed hope,
This play of such, such cruelty.
Fate molded, melded, welded,
I to you and you to me.

Through scenes of flawed perfection,
We dance, dance and sigh.
Still flitting, flaunting, wanting,
Our freedom and the sky.

My days have been numbered
By my fingers and toes.
If I had a hundred days
Would I have enough time
To memorize the features of your face?
So when I close my eyes
Your image develops on them
A dark room to remember
Where memories sit waiting in reels
Hoping that once more
light will pass through them.

As the Mohawks straddle the goal line
We hold our breaths.
We need a win under our belts,
And this is the most important game of all.
I feel the tension in my stomach,
Now in my hand,
As you take it into yours.
Normally I would be thinking of you
But we are so focused on this touchdown
"Hike!" Shouts number 7, and there it goes.
Caught by 22.
Almost intercepted,
But not quite.
We go wild.
Hearts pounding
Mohawk fans cheering
We won.
You grab me in a huge embrace and
I can't breathe
But its not because you're holding me too tightly.
Together.
Without thought:
Thought of consequence
Thought of the future
Thought of pain
Thought of who is watching,
You kiss me right there and then
And even though your eyes are closed
I still see the blue in my mind from moments before,
Letting me know that it is okay to dive in.
As the cheering roar dies out
I see that blue again
Confused and happy
Or is that me?
On this homecoming night
We won
And I'm not talking about the team.

When mom was dying,
she felt like everything
she'd worked for
was gone.

She showed me Life
as Its steward
and Death
as Life's reward.

How to lean into
the unknowable
whether I want to
or not.

That our deeds,
carved meticulously into
the bedrock of Forever,
are immortal.

It becomes clearer
that our work
is not for us,
but for It.

This life
is service;
only what we give
is truly ours.

In my eyes, an eye for another
Is fuel to the funeral pyre.
Yet my hands long to
Rip heart from chest;
The soul from the flesh,
And toss the rest on the fire.

Innocence, the least deserving
Victim. Cut, shot, burned alive.
Where is the real Heaven?
It sure as Hell hasn't pulled a
Trigger, or a blade
Across their lifelines, the
Little carriers of
The only actual holiness there is.

I have 132 child shaped
Holes in my heart.
How can I fill them with other than
Anger? Disbelief?

I don't care where you are from.
Your religion, philosophies.
There are no greater sins  
Than those against children.
No God, only demons and devils
Behind your hideous actions.
I want. To ****. You.
Does that make me 'no better'?

If so... I don't care.

The smallest coffins are
The heaviest.

May our shoulders hurt
For aeons.