Hey,you
I’m pouring out my soul
A simple glass wouldn't do

I will intoxicate
Your emotions
Until my tears
Fall from your eyes

I will recite my fears
Until your palms
Feel like they're drowning

Don’t you ignore me
No, you will learn
What’s its like
To wish silence could speak

You will fall to your knees
As if every prayer
Is a missed call
On God’s phone

I’m present
but absent
here
but gone away
body visible
spirit invisible
people talking
not listening
lost
private battle
need
to heal
hibernate

your verbal foreplay and
sweet voice
was too hard to
resist
I was "that wee bit special"
quite often you'd
insist

but not enough to win
your heart
not in the way that
mattered
I have to still your
sweetened words
before my heart
is
battered

you showed your love
for all to
see
and your heartfelt plea
brought tears
but as your words
sunk slowly in
they realised my
inner
fears

Webster's new Twentieth Century Dictionary describes a geste as a long tale of romance and adventure told chiefly in verse. This is the first canto in what for me has been eight years of composition and edit. The version here presented incorporates all of the suggestions offered me by my peers at Algonquin’s Table, The Poet’s Refuge and NeoPoet. A summary (in epic poetry tradition) precedes each canto. In them not only is the canto summarized, but new story is introduced. They serve together in the task of telling my tale.

I want to peel off
my skin.
Dig deep until
bone scrapes against
my weapon of choice.

Pull back the flesh.
Yank apart elbows.
Knees.
Collarbones glued to shoulders.

Stringy muscles and
fat.

Leave the skeleton
hanging on the laundry
line
until my marrow
is dry.

god found me
what was God doing
when I was being conceived

I came out as
a man
or woman deceived

I don't know

what made God games play

to let me in this world

in this funny way

what am I

I do not know

how do you think

God would remember so

they say heaven does know

causes to causes
we rushed
drowned in the heartless
growth gathered about
the ruins

VENA AMORIS

your soul rode
thin robed

plasmapheresis

winter eyes full and
still
a crawling winter night
widths

Love like increments
fingers on a hip
lust sick

Huck Finn’s Nightmare

In realms of early morning sleep
I float on streams of time
down canyons of dark memory
beyond the reach of rhyme

ghosts of those I should have loved
and those not meant to hold
clutch at me with tendril arms
and make my soul burn cold

I'll take your hate
every last bit of it
and hold it close
until it turns to love.

I'll hold it close
until it turns to rain
until it turns to smoke
that black fire rainbow
until it turns to mist
and I watch It melt away.

I'll watch it fly away
as it grows soft wings
up up and away.

I'll watch it fly away
as it grows strong wings
up up and away.

I invite you to open the treasure chest of our mind
The more you look
The more you find
Savor the golden ambrosia from our mental cookbook.

In the space of the Universe, infinity abound
The mind the micro-mirror of the macro
Thoughts, feelings, ideas, creativity profound
Abundant harvest from little seeds can grow.

The problems of the world weigh heavy
Rotten thoughts produce inferior fruit
Change the flow and open the levy
New results can begin to take root.