He hasn’t messaged you,
don’t look at your phone, don’t dream about him
so loudly that you can taste where your ghosted lips
met his, don’t expect a text at four in the morning
even though you know he was wide awake, don’t
wait
he doesn’t think about you as often
as you think about him.
His heart beat and yours
are no longer
in sync. 
This living hand,
now warm and capable of earnest grasping,
would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience
calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.
–by John Keats
I’m sorry I cannot say I love you when you say
you love me. The words, like moist fingers,
appear before me full of promise but then run away
to a narrow black room that is always dark,
where they are silent, elegant, like antique gold,
devouring the thing I feel. I want the force
of attraction to crush the force of repulsion
and my inner and outer worlds to pierce
one another, like a horse whipped by a man.
I don’t want words to sever me from reality.
I don’t want to need them. I want nothing
to reveal feeling but feeling—as in freedom,
or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,
or the sound of water poured in a bowl.
–by Henri Cole
This morning someone spoke my name.
Sometimes I have trouble waking
I fall back to sleep
deep into dreaming
the weight of the voice shook me up, teeming
with a power
I have never known
I opened my eyes to realize that
I
was alone
and so it goes
whenever I’m lost in a vortex that is the bed
a voice speaks inside my head
if I’m too heavy
it rolls me into the covers tightly
pushes the pillows over ever so slightly
& shoves the alarm right under my ear
just near enough to deafen
On occasion I’ll come face to face with a face
precariously perched on the wooden chair
from my dresser
eyes intent and steady
watching me breath, I guess
until I am startled into wakefulness
& scan the room
looking for the missing soul
that rippled my sleep
only to see once again
that I am alone
the sole person
in this home.
With my head on his spotted back and his head on the grass—a little bored with the quiet motion of life and a cluster of mosquitoes making hot black dunes in the air—we slept with the smell of his fur engulfing us. It was as if my dominant functions were gazing and dreaming in a field of semiwild deer. It was as if I could dream what I wanted, and what I wanted was to long for nothing— no facts, no reasons—never to say again, “I want to be like him,” and to lie instead in the hollow deep grass—without esteem or riches— gazing into the big, lacquer black eyes of a deer.
— by Henri Cole [Nara Deer Park]
Sometimes inspiration for a poem can come from the strangest places.
When I was three
the sun never shone on me
I only knew darkened nights
the sun’s gold wasted
Maybe it isn’t happy, just like me
Maybe I’m my own sun born of man and woman
I will shine and rise
glare heavily
so that they may see
they have not taken my joy.
The ghetto is a silly thing to fear
people scabbed into corners of buildings
trying to go on living
skeeved
you turn to run
suffocating on the scent of trash and weed
Loud music
we use it &
niggardly we
dance to the beat in the streets
shots ring hourly
like the clang of the Bell Of Liberty
ugly mugs hide
scarred childhoods
liberate yourself, leave if that’s all
you need to feel security
but believe you me
don’t think niggers
only reside
on the south side
of some city.
Trust me
like Pharaohs calling to rain clouds in a drought
Boundless grains of salt parch the Earth
I watch the skies open mouth
Trust me
as sure as death is to sing swiftly to cold bodies
Let’s make ours warmer
fill the space in the universe that propels us closer
The truth without trust
are only falsities lying in remission
repeating omissions
waiting for lies to come to fruition
Trust be nimble
& I’ll be Jack jumping back to the candle stack
that first lit these rhymes for you
Just trust
the way infants knowingly cling to their mothers
small fists of utter dependence
We sway with an unparalleled rhythm
and the pyramid kings have all gone home
I now call you to stand at your throne
I trust you to answer with that
regal swagger I know you have
This is me at my best
throwing down dented armor and all other guises
I trust you to tell me the truth
or do you not know what your disguise is?
Tucked in, patiently pacifying your disgust
I peer into your eyes sometimes
and only see what could’ve been
The Poetry Corner 