The L Word

Love you to death
Love you too
Love you til it hurts
Love you madly
Love will conquer all
Love will come to you
Love walks in
Love to be loved
Love thing
Love theme
Love that conquers
Love that burns
Love stinks
Love song for my mom
Love song
Love sneakin' up on you
Love sick
Love shoulda brought you home
Love should
Love shines
Love shack
Love sets you free
Love runs deeper
Love ridden
Love rescue me
Love removal machine
Love reign o'er me
Love potion # 9
Love pledge and the arena
Love out me
Love on your side
Love on the rocks
Love on the air
Love of my life
Love needs a heart
Love nation sugarhead
Love my way
Love me two times
Love me tender
Love me like music, I'll be your song
Love me like a man
Love me just leave me alone
Love me do
Love me
Love machine, part one
Love lovely love
Love like we do
Love like rockets
Love like a bomb
Love letters
Love it or leave it alone
Love is the seventh wave
Love is the drug
Love is stronger than justice
Love is strange
Love is not enough
Love is like a river
Love is here to stay
Love is dangerous
Love is blindness
Love is a rose
Love is a deserter
Love is a blind ambition
Love is a battlefield
Love is
Love in vein
Love in store
Love in an elevator
Love in a vacuum
Love, I don't need it anymore
Love hurts
Love her madly
Love her
Love has no pride
Love hangover
Love gets me every time
Love from here, love from there
Love for sale
Love dump
Love comes tumbling
Love child
Love changes
Love buzz
Love bug
Love bites
Love and sharks
Love and peace ... or else
Love and happiness
Love and anger
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love
Love

What's the Endgame?

I've been doing this a long time. Feeling the feels and then explaining them with all the words in the lexicon at my command. The problem is, words can't explain feels. You can't apply logic to the beauty of a sunrise. Talking about love is like dancing about architecture yet I can build an empire and defend all the lands in my dominion with the very same words.

Acting like I'm in control, watching it all meander through my wispy consciousness. It rises from my head like the steam from the first cup of coffee in the morning. Bitter and sweet and keeping me alert at all times. Take it in, tasting all of its acidic truth; the seduction of its arresting intensity an elegant testament to the subtle art of bullshit.

I set out upon the road less traveled; a trip to ease the pain. Driving so fast and far away I forgot what I'm running from, blasting music and lyrics so loud I can't hear the voices in my head anymore. A trip to ease the pain, I can laugh at the sad clown in the corner and I can cry for the Harlequin waiting in the room for the happy ending that will never come.

Reaching in my chest I pull out a patchwork heart; every stitch tells a story. A tale for the heartbroken and a happy ending for the heartbreaker. Its cracked and scarred surface recounting endless nights alone wondering which turn was the wrong one. Every handicapped beat pumping the last drops of hope into the chasm of loneliness that can never be filled.

Yeah, I've been doing this a long time. I've stepped on fuzzy landmines, I've laughed through bottomless pits and pratfalls that make it all look like well choreographed slapstick. Never forgetting to make them laugh and keep them guessing, because the truth is boring and just a little bit wrapped up in itself. This clown demands applause at his show.

So I lay here, bleeding, battered and bruised; and all I can think is what an awesome alliteration that really is. I can't move but dammit I'm poetic! I experiment with the words, shape them into my armor and wear them to hide it all away. Meanwhile, I bleed out all the aspirations of yesterday, drowning in my own sin, sinking to the Great Below.

The truth is, my shoulders hurt from carrying the weight of the world and every wrong laid at my feet; building a cage around my heart. There's this post-traumatic thing, letting all the coldness of honesty seep through the cracks of the foundation; but I've always said the truth is best when spoken brutally. Look at the teeth that want to bite the hand that feeds; they're in a pool of blood on the floor.

Timing is everything and this time was all wrong. A clock-faced mirror showing a raw, open wound draining blackened puss onto my head for no reason other than, "I don't know." The reflection clouded by the power of a breaking heart, hidden by all the bad intentions I'm guilty of. A defining humiliation that knocks at the door demanding attention.

I dare not ask why all I see are barbs and wire inside of me. Surrounded by monsters of my own design, shedding tears of joy at the beauty of their torment. Here in this room built with my own two minds; walls both old and wise in a hiding place where I can never hide. Still I'll walk against the wind resisting the temptation to give up changing all that resists giving into change.

Arriving at last, the devil's face in front of this sad man; are the tears a sad goodbye or a happy arrival to the inevitable hell being built all these years? I couldn't reveal the point if I'd written it myself. This is not a way to ease the pain; a sad man with hands in a bloody sink. The flip side of sanity is to play this game to its end. Declare the winner. I've been doing this a long time.

Snowflake

In my mind's eye I can see you
Not today
But the way you used to be
The way we used to be
With the sun in your hair
With the stars in your eyes
And I'm weary from the weight it takesTo carry this image in my head
Choking me with the fire of the lie

Bits and pieces show the past
Illuminating the shadows of what you are
And what we were
Leaving me to wonder

What will I do without you?

How will I live without your lies and
What is left of me after your abuse
How will I live in a world of happiness and joy
When all the while I'm expecting pain and suffering
How can I say goodbye
When your pain has been a companion for as long as I can remember

What will I say?
To the blank page that begs me to spill the agony
On it's waiting, depthless countenance
Where will I put the baggage?
Once forced to carry
Now empty, light and useless
What will come of my time?
Now filled with laughter and love
In the wake of such censure and condemnation
How will I feel
When the beautiful snowflake
Melts, only to fall and be wiped away
As an ordinary tear

In my mind's eye I can see you.
Not today.
Not anymore

Poles Apart

All I see is beauty
Within me and without
In your warm embrace and
Passionate kiss
In your hardness so unyielding and
Softness so inviting
In your taking of what is given and
Giving freely of yourself

All I am is love
Laid out for you, my lover
Please come inside
On display for you, my lover
Please take what is yours
Joining with you, my lover
Inside or out
Becoming more than existed before

Joy is beauty; Beauty is love
Balanced on the biggest wave
We make ourselves
Loving in our own image
Taking it in and
Breathing it out
One cannot exist without the other, and
I am so filled with joy that I should have both

Pictures

He sent me his picture today
All virile and beautiful
Sultry, sensual sexuality
A familiar tightening below the belt
Tells me I want him.
Laid before me,
Him.
Breath in short gasps
As I memorize every line, every muscle
And as I have in my dreams 1,000 times
I unwrap him like a present
And beneath the surface
Before I take him inside
There is something
Under the skin
There is a light
In his eyes there is desire
Coexisting with a scar that will never heal
As my fingertips trace his lips
I can feel the memory of a life left behind
All for this moment in time
Here.
With me.
I massage his strong legs
Feeling the tension of climbing and re-climbing a ladder
Growing beyond pain and fear
Looking in his eyes
I am ashamed and afraid
Awed and oh so in love
And I'm trembling
While my hands continue to map his masculinity with purpose
Changed through self-awareness
Can we make love?
He sent me his picture today
All his love, made with a camera lens
Mine with a pen

I Wonder if You Know

There's an ache in my arms
And it only goes away when you touch me, and
There's a moment where I catch my breath and I hold it
Until you kiss me
Because I've never flet as special as I do in those moments when your lips press against mine.
And I wonder if you know
I've sat before the page
Spinning tales and penning soliloquy after soliloquy
Carefully ensuring that a love I didn't understand would always win out
Because I never knew love as a true and viable reality until
I heard the words in your voice
Feeding me what once was sin
Touching the edge of my soul
And I wonder if you know
I've laid awake at night
Wondering how to return the sentiment
Contemplating the feeling, like a dream
I don't want to wake up from for fear of forgetting what it meant
Love ... seems a paltry word applied to the gift you've given
Shall I instead create a planet
With ten suns shining brightly in the sky for you to understand your own brightness?
Shall I label you "Dark God" so you may see the sway you hold on my heart?
Maybe, to call you My Sun and Stars in order to offer dominion over the Universe as I understand it?
I wonder if you know
You are all of them ad more
That no pedestal could lift you so high
Because you fit best
Here
By my side.
Prince, Dark God
My sun and stars
I wonder if you know
How long I wandered
Only to finally have found home
In your eyes.

The Same

Your hands play me
Like a musician plays a song
Drawing out each note;
The sweet shake that is
My shattered breathing
Stolen by your kiss
Your eyes mesmerize me
Like a hypnotist at a vaudeville show
Your wish is my command
On display for an applauding audience
A magician never reveals his secrets
Break me
Get under the skin
Hollow me out
Take away the necrotic past
Bringing forth pieces
Long buried; beautiful in your light
Pin me down and shove my face in the pillow.
Bite me, claw me, scratch me,
Mark me like I'm your territory.
Make yourself fit inside me
until we're the same.
You bring order
To chaos
The end to a beginning
Born so long ago
Until we're the same.

The Dance of Men

your arms
Is the place I want to be
your smile
Is the place that reflects happiness
your kiss
Is the place that love grows

My eyes
Have seen this before
Never like this,
Beauty and love
With a soft strength
And a knowing truth in your embrace

My heart
Has felt this before
Swelling with hope at each beat
Breaking in pain at each pump of blood
For beginnings and endings
Crest and crash in time with the rise and fall of your chest

My lips
Have tasted this before
The ripened fruit of desire
Waiting to be pulled from your tongue
A unique sweetness
Full of passion and promise

My body
Has ached for this before
Out of breath as a fire on my skin
Ignites under your fingertips
Sharing the most private parts of myself
Beneath your skin

In your arms
My eyes see
In your smile
My heart beats
In your kiss
My body aches

Such is the dance of men.