Every Song

Without you,
There would be no light
On the days the Dark
Comes calling my name.
Without you,
I would have little poetry,
A stranger to that healing music
You hold so lightly in your chest.
Without you,
The stars might not converse,
The Sun would grow cold and aloof,
The Moon would always be too tired
To join me for a smoke upon my roof.
There would be no traffic for me
No reason to rush through these streets.
I would stand at the edges of this city,
A mirror to all the loneliness I see.
Without you,
I would be lost in this madding crowd.
All living on an unclean shore,
All looking over a lifeless sea.


You are every song to me,
Every line that's ever been written.
You are the reason for ever tear,
You're every heart that's ever been smitten.
I dream the happiest dreams
When you're not here under my sheets.
For then I dream of you.
When you're wrapped rightly around me
I dream of nothing at all.
Because I don't need to.

Wanting You

I don't want to want you.
I want to go to sleep.
I want to finish a movie
Without checking my phone
For a message I know
Isn't coming.
I want to write a poem
About anything other
Than you.
I don't want to want
You to want me either.
Leave me alone.
You've enslaved the
Insides of my eyelids.
I can close them against
The harsh summer sun
Or this still, humid night,
But I cannot close them
Against you.
I'm supposed to be free,
Lone Wolf howling at the Moon.
Now the Moon longs for you,
I'm left with nothing to howl to.
You've taken all the songs,
You own Neruda, and Yeats,
Rumi forsook Shams and whirls
Raising clouds of words for you
To walk through.
You linger in my daylight,
You dance in my darkness.
I drive through filthy streets,
With your eyes in my rearview.
I'm waiting for you tonight,
While my tomorrows waste away.
I don't want to want you.
But I never understood wanting,
Until I wanted you.

Feels Like High School Again

Tonight let this be
The kiss I couldn't give you.
The midnight drive across the sea.
And your hair whipping free,
The banner of the Happy Few.
Tonight I burn hotter
Than the oldest fires.
Because I burn without you.
I'm a runaway slave
Heading to your Africa.
Over the limits of my flesh,
The boundaries of my fear,
Over the edge of your desire.

Tonight let this be.
The stripping away
Of another of my defenses.
The thousand poems kissed silent
And left happily incomplete.
I was a stone rolling,
That you startled to a stop.
You are my lonely river,
You are my mountain top.
You are my book of Psalms and
The broken voice I use,
As I raise my tired arms and
Send my spirit gusting higher.
You turned into shelter
The insides of my every cage.
A thought of you is enough
To fill my every empty page.

I've lived a countless times,
I'm sure, and only now
Do I begin to glimpse the truth.
I was this comet of possibilities,
Collapsing upon this very moment,
Of me missing you.

Roomfull of Regret

I got lost again,
With no one looking
To find me.
I yelled and turned away
Still hoping you'd remain
Behind me.
This night was made for
Loneliness and cigarettes
Slowly rolled.
Coffee strong enough
To remind me
I'm not good enough.
Not even close.
The wind went away
Without speaking to me.
The night sits outside,
A stalker who won't leave.
I've got a roomfull of regret,
And an ashtray full of dreams.
Every word I manage to write
Hurts me more than it seems.
Why am I never more
Than the angry things
I say to you?
The words I never said,
The things I couldn't do, I
Rolled into those cigarettes
And set on fire.
Puff puff puffed away the
Unbearable mystery
Of being me.
Tonight I am a friend
To no one.
Not even myself.
All this trying
Has made me tired.
Now I don't even want
To write.
I try to understand
Why I leap,
Just to remind myself
I don't know how to fly.