I chewed on a pencil for tea
an unpleasant splinter of graphite 2B,
my head machine purrs, but cogs do not whir
nothing stirs,  
no word flowers grow,
I need some more seeds,
are they herbs are they verbs or irritating weeds  
I don't know,
how this could be so,
I will make me a garden for rhymes to bloom,
poems only flower if you give them some room

Full time poets
don't exist.
In this world
at least.

There is plenty of them
on the other side.
It’s only for us
it seems that they have died.

a poet's heart
is a thing of ink

pigmented with equal parts
hubris and anxiety
rage and hope
passion
and tears

narcissists filled with self loathing

composed of shouts inarticulate
and whispers of intricate craft

our thoughts and words rushing
through us
barely legible

defining our days
with explosions of fathomless obscurity
or flashes of visceral clarity

our nights consumed
in communion with paradise
while teasing secrets from the abyss

couplets and quatrains
providing us the space
to live
or to die

running breathless in free verse
we grasp at perpetuity
yet find ourselves doomed
to ephemeron

like the sky
we are rewritten each day

yet as the sky remains the sky
so do we remain
what we are

pages
in a book we can barely read

remaking and trimming

editing ourselves

to fit within the margins
of our paper souls

She’s so beautiful
She’s a distinct petal out of a thousand roses
So bright and radiant, but feels out of touch
She feels dark, so out of love
One says she changed, but a million are blinded

She’s a philosopher
An artist with her words
One says sadness
While she writes a silent ocean
Her brush steals hearts

Summer will find us shortly
In the bristling but once-filled heaps of grass
through the wind, the howling of sorrow
May the sun find our chests and warm their holes
For the lovers in the past have torn us through

I hold their hand for them to stay
But they drift further away
Must be killed three times to hold
These poets' eyes are not foretold
Despite the words that pour from the soul
A field of roses will rot
If the gardener does not trim the grot

Poems are not toothpaste,
you cannot squeeze another from the tube at will,
bend the ends of words for one last drop,
inspiration comes in waves
and when it wants to do so, it will stop,
you cannot pick a constant crop,
there are times when the field lies fallow
hiding seeds which may or may not grow
if and when they flower
that is not for us to know,
poets feed on what they find
the harvest of a fertile mind

Blank as snow,
my mind has resigned—
Not from frail nerves,
but from the loss of momentum.

My fingers wrestle with the pen,
my hand clings to the laptop.
Open the tap—
Let even a drop fall.

Inspire me,
that I might inspire others.

Little by little,
a mighty ocean will stir,
erupting—
Breaking every bound.

Tap the keys, O hand.
Sketch the thoughts, dear fingers.
Just let the mind ignite—
Rome will be built, for sure.

Not unaliving,
but ensuering,
a cure will be found.