FLIGHT or WHEN DID EVERYONE ELSE STOP DREAMING? 

to write a poem

thirty thousand feet
in the air
is to write a poem

as a poet

ON ARTISTS

with all the noise the clap and scream
the pomp and circumstance of each day
the exhibition of naked dream
on pedestals built from thin mâché

with all the cheer and accolade
the crown and gown and hail as chief
just know that all the beauty made
was done with shaky disbelief

SLEEPY
(Almost missed this one! Ahahaha! It’s been a day.)

i just want to sleep
i just want to slip
away from awake for
a while for
a hole to be filled
full of what was left
behind since this morning
sense this moment coming
on like a heaven
on a timer
sense this moment coming on
like heaven on time

FOR MY SIBLINGS
(two of the three, though I love the baby too!)

my older sister is home from college
shows up at the door
as the tickle monster
her fingers wiggling clawing at my tender belly
typing laughter through my armpits
like a brilliant thesis
until i can’t breathe
while my older brother plugs his ears
and cuts the legs
off a new pair of guess jeans
bleaches them the day after our mother
breaks a check
so that he can avoid
fists in his gut
sucker punches and bully songs

our mother yells
sings them anyway in a broken tone
her best rendition of love
the best she could do at the time
to hold on hold on
wrap her fingers around his throat
tears trickle and tickle the
back of mine

and i wish my sister was there
and i take up for him
and he takes it out on me
and it may not come out of me
or it may later on
and later on i realize

we are a poem

a poem for real with the things
that poems need to be poems
and people need to be family

one that is strange and lovely
one that is ugly and interesting
my older sister and brother
the line and break
the rhythm and scheme
the wonders that somehow
made me letter

A SIMPLE THOUGHT ON WHY

while i hope my life endures
the test of time and many tours
it only counts if it amounts
to much less mine and much more yours

ABOUT LOVE POEMS
(the good ones, of course. lol)

how they pass on and passion and
dance and dip and press and sweat and
shoulder and knee and back and back of knee
and lobe and taste and touch and trust
and fluster and free and naked and free
and sing aloud loudly and sing aloud and sing
and sing entangled enraptured and break
open and up and out but never in and say
something and say it again and ask and
say it again and yes is love and no is love
when met with love and
how dirty ain’t the same as dirt
or a dirty word

CHARACTERS
(a haiku for haiku…and, ahem…twitter)

i wish more of us
spoke in haiku, considered
the weight of each word