To sing sonnets about the sun
I can’t.
My sentences have been chopped
Into stanzas into phrases into statements
Until there only is.
I think there can be
Beauty in bluntness
Imagination in reality
If my lived experience
Is scholarship
Then I create dissertations
With every
Enjambed
Line.
I feel your presence beside me
On the frigid, unforgiving Earth
On the lonely wooden park bench
On the gentle bed we shared
I hear your voice
In the corridor you passed
In the kitchen you cherished
In the doorway to our home
I smell you in all that is beautiful
A hint of lavender in someone’s hair
A box of oranges sold at the market
A loaf of bread I find at the bakery
I surmise that I’ve see you
Maybe?
Maybe not.
Perhaps it is madness
It’s hard to discern
The wishes and whims
The truth and sacred lies
Perhaps, I witness what I was too blind to see yesterday
No matter
Alas,
We are apart
But soon
We will feel each other’s warmth
In a plane unlike this one
My joy
My love
My apparition forevermore
What if I were?
Would my peers avoid me
Would my parents dismiss me
Would my God disown me
Would my universe mock me
What if I were?
Would I deny it
Would I despise myself
Would my mind denounce my thoughts
Would I curb my yearnings
Would my eyes avert their judging gaze
From the sight of her
Her dimples
Her smile
Her laugh
Her special beauty to behold
What if I were?
Would I love myself in time
Acceptance drives acceptance
If you were to love yourself wholly and completely
If you were to take on your internal quarrels valiantly
If you were to embrace those different from yourself
If you were to take them in with open arms
Maybe that love would double
Triple
Quadruple
Until it fills the very room
Crowding out the scrutiny
Expunging the former negativity
Love you
Love others
Maybe those around you will learn
To love themselves
What if you were you?
Amidst the spongy grass and gray pebbles dotted with flecks of quartz
Along paved trails that sluice through the leaf-frosted earth
Beside the brick structures segmented by imposing windows
Stands the last band geek on earth.
She stretches a bruised arm up into the sky
Bats at the wisps of cotton-like fog
Her hand fades into the silver and becomes the clouds
But her feet never leave the ground.
Tucked away behind the band hall and the slabs of pavement erupting from the dirt
Strewn across the coarse, fractured pavement and triangles of glass
Her wrecked
Resolve skitters along the slate aggregate and collides with dislodged rock.
And who is she,
Stretched betwixt the heavens and purgatory, lost in her own dust and her swirls of mist,
The engraving of her failure pressed into her flesh with nature’s stylus,
To dissolve in the muffled fall dawn and let her hair assail the wind?
Who is she,
Alone on the cement steps of the band hall with her uniform of sweatpants,
A phantom that is and yet never was
Destined for nebulae and neutron stars?
Who was she to believe
That when the band ascended into the constellations for their weekend away from Earth,
She’d journey with them?
As I take a seat by this fountain
And listen to you speak tonight,
everyone around us fades away.
It’s not that you have so much to say,
But your few words are arranged into a lovely bouquet.
My October boy,
are you a blueprint or abstract art?
You carry a California breeze in your back pocket,
But keep Chicago winds in your heart.
Your expression reads casual,
yet somehow still curated,
Like a timeless design,
you will never be outdated.
Your voice is soft, yet your charisma stays aloft,
October boy, you are now on top.
More adventurous than August, and sweeter than September,
Your eyes-closed smile is one that I’ll remember.
An old man walks by to say what he perceives,
Before asking our names, he tells us that he believes,
In us. What a magically frightful phrase to hear.
I think I’m falling for you like crisp golden leaves.
Presences are unannounced in the dark.
Even more so in the fog
A blur of beings rushes by
Without ever crossing my eye
Each step is a careful one
Each breath, hesitant
For I am subject to the misty blindfold
Cloaked
I embark.
In a transition
A surge of events passes me by
What I could do
I can’t.
What I wanted
I can’t have.
I don’t see them
I didn’t see them
If only by my volition.
They move in my view for a moment
So fleeting
They depart
Without thought
Without recognition
Without realizing
Helpless I am in the fog
For I am a proponent.
There is a strange relief
I am concealed
Shrouded in mysterious droplets
They cast a hold on me
Around my every curve
I am hidden from the world
Away from the mind’s conception and belief.
Who I am
Whom I cherish
What I am capable of
What ineptitudes I lock away
The experiences I carry
The soul embedded within
A perfect bubble
A precious dam.
A thinning
A receding
A panic
A terror
A grief
A mourning
A spinning.
Fog withdraws
Visions clear
Fear resides
In the cavity once hidden
Now in full display
Pleading for a pause.
The whole world stares anew
