In the aftermath,
I’m only a fraction,
You’re half of what I am,
I wish I had your…
undivided attention.

The wake of a sleepy sea,
Underneath night’s cool black sheet,
I can hear windswept secrets,
That the sea crests could not keep.

A swallow of sorrowful joy,
Flits its wings in pity,
Flies helpless into the void,
Sunset shot of whiskey,
Killing two birds with one stone,
She couldn’t die without me.

The leaves scattered like papers,
And crumple underneath his feet,
There’s nothing he can say to her,
The words written on those sheets,

He walks around an open grave,
In the cemetery where she sleeps,
Hoping death isn’t a stranger,
So he won’t ever again be lonely.

Listen to your chest,
Do you hear it?
I’m the dead beatnik,
Slamming poetry,
Against your breast.

He could taste the saltiness of a cold seaborne rain.
He was more a capsized vessel, than its captain.
He could hear the sirens wail of a great refrain.
With the wind on the quarter, he sailed toward death.
He looked to his compass, but there was no other way.
When he left port, it was never to return again.
He saw shore just before crashing on the rocks like waves.
All he treasured inside his chest had sank with him.

This loneliness is crippling,
And alcohol is like a crutch,
For a poet wounded by love,
Whose verse is mostly scribbling.

I hear the poetry in your voice,
And then I have, but no other choice,
To get drunk on your words like they’re poison,
And your lips, well, they are the antidote.

I can feel the unraveling,
Of this ball of yarn called Earth,
To your love alone I am tethered,
But as of late, it’s only threads.

In the songs of a nightingale,
And through shadowy forest,
Where the voice of darkness does rasp,
There is a light, however frail,

In the evening dress that you wear,
Of looming shadows the moon weaved,
And the nightgown in which you sleep,
There is a light, however bare.