Ode to "La Prodigiosa Tarde de Baltazar"

I saw my best friend walk a fence.
She hurtled up onto the first post,
Stumbling but laughing with each baby-step.
She grew more steady,
But the fence
Rotted a little more everyday.

Yesterday, I saw her fall.
She fell off that wood fence
By a push that came.
I don’t know from where.
No outer bruises on her skin,
But I may have felt a broken rib
Somewhere just below the heart.

I felt my rib to see the difference,
Only to find that
My rib was broken too,
But I never realized I was climbing
That rickety old fence,
Staggering along, too.



CLR

Potion

Back here again
to this place with no voice
and yet my heart makes the same choice
where I see you
You see me
we are running in different light
and so it's hard to see
that love for you is growing inside of me.
I'll write this here
because to you it means nothing
to me it means everything.
To different lights two different speeds,
but I want you to know, I could be anything you need.
And the day you see it, I hope it's not too late.
Because I'll go back to that place again,
with another clean slate.

SITB

Miss You

She's been lost lately,
she cannot find her ground.
Each tear falls,
without her whimpering a sound.
She thought it was one thing,
but finding it didn't fix it at all.
I miss you.
For the little girl who's feet used
to beat on your soft haven,
to where her blood spilled
when she no longer needed training wheels.
To the place that taught her everything.
I miss you.
A hole so large, yearning for the whole.
Where everything comes full circle.
She pants trying to remember what two years has taken from her.
Her heart,
I miss you.
And though not too far, far enough you are,
to the point where she feels silly.
For she no longer has a home there, but you will always be her home.
I miss you.

SITB

When-

When you’re breath mists in the rain
I know you think of romantic abroads.
When you smell the hot, splashed pavement
I know you dream of foreign cobblestone.

When snow dribbles in you headlights,
I know your thoughts gravitate on me.
When the Jersey wind barks its loudest,
I know my embrace consumes your attention.

But when the daffodils temp the dogs,
And the fields smell of new sod and mulch,
I know I’ve lost your focus to the breeze.

You can never be grounded, and that’s the allure,
So, this May, when you’re dreams wander to alleys afar,
I’ll, too, let my love soar on the crest of the Phoebe.



CLR

As My Paint Peels

By and by, I drift and sink with heavy bilge,
As I gulp, spitting waves that carry me,
But too many sweep me drunk.

As I drift, my wood rots like yours,
My grain gains character, soul,
And leaks through the same seams.

Our hulls made from the same
Wild, ancient, twisted tree,
Nourish the same pests within.

So, though I know you crashed and drowned
Upon the glistening rocks of my shore,
I too, compass that journey,
Scoping and loving and losing myself
In the skies and song that led to your end.


CLR

Croakus

Do flowers worry when they bloom or die?
Do they yearn and wish for brighter petals?
With children plucked, do grown blooms wail and cry?
With time to think, what ideas do they meddle?

Can roses be romantic like you or I?
Is their color like a finger’s mood ring?
Can they yearn for seasons not yet gone by?
Do they find ecstasy in the cool wind?

It’s people, who hurt and love and believe,
And it’s people who change and learn to fly
And it’s flowers that people love to pluck.

Like dirt and wind, it’s emotion we need,
To feed our queries of how, where, when, why,
And longing ours to bear alone, such luck…



CLR