Slowly, making their way to the front of the room
My family wavers and fishtails like a kite in the wind
Reeled in on a translucent line with narrowing passes
One by one, they land on the kneeler to pay their respects

A flower, to the altar floor, falls. Without grace
Or sound, or purpose, or understanding of why it must
Painted pigments fail when hiding soullessness
Just as our tears and sighs won’t raise it up

My father turned his head away from desperate eyes
So I looked straight and tried to make sense of it alone
And held her hand in church because it was something i could
Hold. Realizing it, and everything, must slip away

April breezes waft through the window, lifting my head from the screen and turning it towards their scent.

Somewhere, a mile away, she sleeps peacefully. Caressed by the tails of the wind that riffles my hair.

There’s the exotic tinge of bergamot and waterlotus and the natural pheromones that intoxicate me.

She fills my mind as her scent tantilizes my nose, lifted from her sheets and hair, moments before.

And I’m floating with her. Her dreams entangle my thoughts as we share a Spring night’s reverie.

April breezes waft through the window, connecting me to my love.

In my desk, third row, second seat from the back.
I silently cried when I learned of Simon’s still body in the sand.
Puzzled who could murder Myrtle and how Gene could jounce the limb.
A static-filled voice whispered “Alas” while I crept without courage
in the grass. Wandered aimlessly through the streets of New York.
Mired in two plagued families, I saw the television news and felt
prepped and desensitized.

Oklahoma City might as well been Camp Repose. Columbine was the domain of the Beastie. Even Ground Zero resembles Golding’s great scar.

Could they have known that my life would echo my homework?
Preparing me to close the books and walk out that door.

In my desk, third row, second seat from the back, I wonder. Does
history dictate great prose. Or vice versa.

I combed my childhood backyard for hours on end
determined to find the ruins of a monastery, shards
of ancient pottery, or the remains of a prehistoric
creature that soon would bear the name of my choosing.

On hands and knees, darting frantic grasshoppers in
the strawberry patch, nostrils held amongst the mulch,
Surveying vantage atop the oak on the hill,

The years of my youth wasted in search of the past
without a relic to show, a lesson to forget yesterday.

She came into my life so quickly,
In the beginning, a student strictly,
But I soon began to look at her with
what seemed to be different eyes.
She was of beauty so compelling,
And of intellect so rebelling
That I found our friendship quickly swelling
Before I, myself, did realize
Before it occurred to me that it occurred to be
without any unnecessary tries
The new acquaintance soon slipped to stronger ties.
Reflecting now I stifle a smile,

And though, it seems, that all the while
We never really forced this powerful
and beautiful friendship to take place.
But let it ride it’s natural course
Through ambitious scene, and tale of horse
Radiating pity, love, and occasional remorse
Beyond a script’s own soulful embrace.
Learning, inspiring, and demanding desire
wrapped neatly behind her willful face
Allowing our spirits to soar and heartbeats to race.

Puzzling now, I sometimes ponder
Of our many pure by moonlight saunter
And how she seemed to read so clear even
the most hidden thoughts I held inside
She has a way of elevating
And easily, craftfully too, creating
Emotions, so reverberating
Only her, for this, can I sweetly chide.
But why, I question, can she take my stagnant
passion and williwaw it to a restless tide?
Conceiving this, from her, I know I can never hide.

Into her eyes, I peer slightly closer
To see what few can ever know, sir
What she really is beneath the skin
from which all that passion does exist
To make her dreams, oneday, all too real
To make her talents peak in appeal
To make her life the better deal
Crossing off each legacy on the list.
Experiencing nights, sights and earthly delights
where nothing she enjoys she missed
As if being loved to her was just being kissed.

And that, I guess, is what I truly admire
Her drive, inside, her radiant fire
The fuel that makes her continue to strive
to give and get what she can from life
Now who can disagree that they
Have declined a joy or slept a day
And forgoed a color for an imperfect gray
I confess I have, sadly, in times of rife.
But she, neither slept, declined, nor forgoed
to make herself intimate adventure’s wife
Leaving fear forever, for a walk along a knife.

You see she tends to dullen the point of words
And sends them down in groups, in herds
What once was great, with her is merely a step
above the bottom of a winding stair case
What is strong in life for her is no longer
The moment long must reach on stronger
She devours life with an infinite hunger
And begs for more at this stealthy pace.
She’s the only one I know that can destroy
weariness, and boredom she can surely erase
Pushing the ceiling beneath for a better standing place.

That must be why I require her near
She brings me high, and keeps me here
Allowing me too to feel that addiction for this new
elevated view of everything out there
I see much farther over heads of others
Lead my life by my own druthers
And pray my passion to get above hers
Just to keep it up with her own dare.
She works a banal cloth of day effortlessly into
an immaculate garb of night to share
And manages, before sunrise, the new day’s wear.

Heightening the former goals of mine
Repeaking all my senses with time
She urges the morph that sends me soaring
so proud of myself and what I’ve become
And all I give in retribution
Is my own liquified fire solution
A simple man’s sole contribution
That allows him freely inside to run
Allows him to take her outreached hand
across oceans, mountains, and worlds
In search of that forever-setting sun.

You were right, Tom,
The days are getting shorter.
And as the snow flakes glaze, I find more and more Interpretations.

Before my six, Tuesday, I saw the campus ablaze with itself and planned to be in it by dismissal. It’s a promise I make to myself to get me through

Even if I consistently miss the flurries of these best years.

Trust. Responsibility. Maturity.

In a letter, I wrote to my dear mother, I begged for a broken curfew. How far have I gone since then? I haven’t seen the bed inMy dorm in weeks, the bed at my home?

Months.

He painted over my vines? Painted a baby blue!

Mom says it’s fine. I can doodle in the basement whenever I want. Dad glares over the NY Times puzzle.

“Eleven letter word for shaken and disoriented?”

He held my hand in prayer and I smelled the cigarette smoke.

Matt and John do-si-do around my head, but the wisdom
Is Ani’s and Sheryl’s:The road winds long and the stampede blows the back of my scalp,
Face planted firmly in the snow. I’m used to it, though,
And it’s much more comforting than watching the campus thrive.

I’m worried the cigarette will burn down before I’ll feel anything. The ice begins to form and the days float past as the flakes in the light.

I.D., keys, and books. It’s time to brave the stampede again.Trying to make a name for myself? I’m trying to find my classes. What? What was that? She says a poem can’t rhyme. He says he’s sure there is no god. Why does it have to be so subjective? Why can’t there be a clear cut answer?

A-d-d

Rebuttal to interpretation seven:Tom, my boy, I don’t welcome the ice because even though I know
The whole thing about absence and the heart, I don’t want the pain of waiting. And if I wait too long,
The stampede will be gone. The fire long since smoldered.

A-d-d-l-e-p

Why can’t the road be straight? Why won’t someone help me join Their dash? Help me pull my face from the snow and burn in the blaze of this snowy night. I look to my hands as the flakes trek past them.They’re his in smell, in scar, in pain. Dammit, I love my father! The baby blue. The crossword puzzles. The smell in church. Propelled my hands to my nose those Sundays, before God, To catch the scent a little longer. One day, the smell will be gone. And that’s another thing: I know there is a god And I’m sure his poems rhyme! And if there was still a curfew,
I’d never see a snowflake!

A-d-d-l-e-p-a-t-i

Screw the road less traveled! I don’t want to journey alone. Mom looks up over the dishes disapprovingly. After a letter, a year, and eight grand, I’m still not mature. But it’s not these classes that make me grow, it’s the dying fire of the campus flight.

The ice will melt, the days will lengthen, but there will always be those best years in between.

A-d-d-l-e-p-a-t-i-o-n

There’s another for the list, Tom.