Perhaps it’s some kind of madness.
A vortex of swirling mania, perched solidly on the edge of despair.
New love always has a kind of breathless fear attached to it—a sleeplessness
derived solely from the courage it takes to stand naked
before another soul with your heart in your hand
and offer up what you cannot hold back a minute longer.

I am searching for the poem
that tells of my love for you
The turn of phrase that translates all this
heavy, lumpy want into a perfectly sculpted mound of clay between your fingertips
Where are the words that elucidate my meaning
and offer it to you on pages of sepia patience
as the scent of moonlight daffodils waft by

There is an element to your love
Some kind of flint
Striking against the hard
perception of the world
It lights me up
Dares me
Standing naked and ancient before you
to remember what I came for

I awoke with your name
yearning between
my once-restless legs
A surge, pulsing,
shuddering
Wanting me to want
you Tasting your distance
Calling for you
These lips suffused with desire

drawing in blood
I trace outlines of a future
(imagine)
how these whispers
heat a cold november morning
this sky ribbed and
endless
(freedom)
how my heart navigates undulating
shadows and light
(faith)
how these wings unfurl within
this divine embrace

The sheets are cold
The pillows mock me
with their softness
The bed is vast and vacuous
Without you

An entire life dedicated
to a makeshift heart
to holding the idea of this love still.
And hold, it did, through storms of fallen debris
from the mighty gods of wind and wrath above,
through long, cold winters of barren fields
and cynics, through the incorrigible heat
of summers run wild; lustful and lost.
When, one day, the image of Hope Remembered arrives
on a city block corner at seven p.m.
and the all of everything becomes manifest,
Red threads that tie you to me
in just one look.
It was a Wednesday.

fuse with my heart in a gesture of forsaken pasts
my body urging to forget pain,
afire with the hope I dug out of fallow fields

morning frost on vintage windows
hide my seeking
keep from me the epitaph
of this love
just this once
or just for now

How your heart tugs
at a sorrowed past
I have clung, white-knuckled to
in defiance of my better judgment

Loves lost beneath sheets
of mystery enshrined
Tied to iron girders
and set upon the wind

As the leaves, frozen
on their perch learn to fall
I spread my legs
to receive you