Until you, my world was without reflection,

Sentient, but with no exchange,

I sought no discourse to reprove my prose,

I held no thirst for first impressions,

And evenly, no second for my thesis.

I commanded the armada of my emotions,

Into a dumbing sea of cork,

Numbly into the fray of silent collisions,

On the rocks of opposing shores,

A fleet to carry my jack to empty epilogue,

With silence in return,

My give, taken sans colloquy,

Most clever rhetoric from dust to urn.

I was accorded no alluring argument,

No demurral feigned fearless from within my train,

All deceitfully dull conformists,

With but clemency to gain.

You are the voice,

That calls sweetly out,

To my soul at rise of day,

And dark of night,

Silently, as if faint clouds colliding,

Forever embracing,

Becoming one.

You are the melody,

Of two hearts yearning,

Between beats that break,

Like waves upon,

Begging shores of wanting,

As whispers teasing ears,

That yearn for assuring sounds.

And the earth shakes,

Pressures from above press down,

Squeezing my soul,

Between heaven,

And the sphere that holds me,

As stars explode overhead like,

Burst capillaries,

Making spider veins of the,

Milky ways in my head,

Through peered eyes,

I recognize the writing,

Like sensual calligraphy,

Curling, stretching, calling,

To abut untouched ends,

Entering this walk with you,

I once reserved myself,

Assuming my strength,

Lay in myself,

In the autonomy,

Of my steps,

In the lie of singularity,

Forged by stubborn will,

That no man needs a thing.

When I availed my soul,

To your touch,

My heart to your need,

I surrendered to you,

My staunch promise,

To stand and solely be,

With, together, united,

But in any moment, free.

It was tongue-in-cheek,

Almost a mean-spirited joke,

That I butt ended with myself,

Daring to even dream,

Imagining that an angel,

Would set her sights,

On any man,

Let-alone,

This mere mortal,

In all respects unworthy,

Diligent in my fantasizing,

About, blessings

That never happen,

To an ordinary man,

Like me.

At my center there burns a flame,

About my core an infernal blaze,

Upon my brow there rests,

A quandary revealed,

In the resplendent reflection,

Of my gaze.

I am but a man,

Wondering, though ever deeply,

With a might and fierce resolve,

Likened to ferocity,

Resolve that rivals all,

If this fire blazing in my soul,

Is of me or divinely placed,

By heavenly hands,

Most holy,

According to,

Ethereal plans.

On my pillow my head clears

And gives way to tabula rasa,

Gives in to moving pictures,

In which you rein,

Stories told to my heart,

Love running through me,

Like blood coursing my veins.

And in these stories that move me,

You are the star that commands,

My deepest, unflinching attention,

Immersed in trance-like sanctity,

You, as my heart’s heroin.

Over millennia man has attempted

Foolishly, if not blindly,

To describe this kismet kindness,

Received and bestowed richly,

Upon mere mortals,

The most undeserving,

Yet we stand a lifetime wondering,

If our fondness bears a beauty,

A something worthy of being,

The one love to cornerstone,

All things,

Tranquil, pervasive, inviting,

Deeply brown,

Passage to an inner world,

A universe forbidden, but to one,

Availing offerings unfurled,

With discriminatory preference,

To my sole and only favor.

Your eyes, my dream,

Reveal to me the wonders,

Of heaven.

My pearls, powers, body, mind,

Belongings unshared with any in my ever,

Cached, cultivated, curated over time,

Grown and jealously protected,

To be bestowed uniquely,

Upon the one with keys to my evermore,

To the predestined and bound, love of my life,

Ethereally contemplated,

Chosen and decided mine,

Resolutely fated,

Traded in kind,

For your forever.

Stand, my love, beneath these same stars,

That sparkle to steal my eyes,

Even a continent away,

Dance for me under a moon that pulls,

Restless tides,

Of brooding ponds,

That distance,

But will never separate.

Two lovers made one,

Heavenly decreed,

Eternal mates.

Count the echos between thrumms,

And hum lyrics hushed between beats,

Your heart sends to me like messages,

Floating loyally in a crystal ship,

Bobbing with the ebb and flow,

Of the ocean,

Mimicking, my anticipation,

Mocking my raised chin,

As it turns urgently in the direction,

Of any sound that bears your name.

What is it that makes a man?

Is it adversity,

Violence,

Conquest or gain?

What is it that constructs a man?

Be it virility,

Toughness, or strength?

Is he defined by what leads him,

The mountains that move him,

Or times past within his past?

Harp strings firmly fraught,

Reverberating notes drifting,

Along seas of similar chords,

Beside opposed notes,

Curtseying one to the other,

In complete accord,

Composed, impromptu calls,

Transforming my aural heart,

As they fall,

One note ending seamlessly into the next,

Rolling adrift seas of foregoing phrases,

Lingering in the air until caressed to rest,

By another,

Audibly transformed midflight,

Like the dust of colliding stars,

Spun like pirouetting partners,

In this lover’s ball,

You call it a simple smile,

Un-arresting, vague, even shy,

A plain and modest sight.

I often watch you hide it,

From the eyes of passersby,

And find myself amused,

When laughter wins the fight.

Because when I am blessed,

By being present,

When that smile no longer hides,

I see the rising sun,

A crush of doves,

Under a rainbow’s arch,

Gently moved to flight.

In my mind I hold you close to me

Whispering my love for you one thousand times.

One thousand times I hold your hand,

And kiss your lips one thousand more.

In my heart I caress your cares away,

Like one thousand waves relieve the shore.

One thousand times in my mind,

I read you sound to sleep,

Ushering you to slumber one thousand times,

Praying God, your soul to keep.

One thousand times my fingers wend a hex,

Through the quiet of your hair.

In my mind I cast about your many dreams,

And stack them up like stairs.

One thousand times, I climb one thousand,

One by one,

I met a man today, a stranger, yet somehow known to me.

I couldn’t shake the familiarity—a leaf joined to a distant tree.

He spoke as though he knew me, took liberty with candid speech,

Brought a batch of growing pains to me but delivered each one patiently.

I conversed with him as we walked. His rest placed my stir to sleep.

I sensed his need to impart to me, a secret hard to keep.

He spoke of life as if once wholly blind. He marveled at the tiny things.

He seemed to have a certain, slower soul,

And walked an uncharted, audacious path.

He exposed to me the exquisite gift that God entrusted to me.

And when he was finished speaking from his heart,

He vanished peacefully,

The only thing remaining of the encounter was,

What he revealed to me.

Today, I crossed a bridge to,

What was once a forbidden place,

A place less a destiny,

Than ethereal embrace,

And as I stepped warily,

My first tread toward this,

This thing, this feeling,

This breathlessness,

I felt this light,

Like the sun,

Its warmth, its, caress,

Its assuring touch,

And realized where this,

Non-place exists,

In her eyes, shone the light of days dreamed of,

In her smile, the remnant blessed streaks of tropical mist,

That bathed us as we found our home in each other’s arms.

In all its prism-kissed promise,

The scent of her skin like salted papaya,

Honey in her glistening,

Sweet cannabis in her wake.

And I fell into the fertile universe of her,

The possibilities, the dreams,

The fantasy of a life drenched in the bliss of her,

I am gray because,

The heavens seem so vague,

So far away,

As if they have closed and turned away,

As if they are disappointed in my ways,

And I feel abandoned in the wilderness,

Lost in a sea that swallows up my best,

Laughs at my frantic pace,

Forsaking me to face,

what may become of me,

In this empty place.

What on the other side of those heavy drapes,

Is occurring so much more vitally,

Than my dredging,

More pressing than my dreams,

Weightier, for their measure,

Than what just happened to me,

Careless for my loss,

How could they stop,

Their watching over me,

Caring for me,