Belated metaphors

Smells like butterflies
Smells like wine
Smells like love
Human yet divine

Sounds like laughter
Sounds like sin
Sounds like secrets
That are best kept within

Talks like thunder
Talks like rain
Talks Like the wind
Self assured and vain

Laughs like gunshots
Laughs like a child
Laughs like a cat
Pretentious yet wild

Cries like death
Cries like crime
Cries without reason
But does it all the time

Sings like a kettle
Sings always out of key
Sings like an angel
Cause its always proud and free

Dances like the sunset
Dances like a song
Dances in the dark
But lets me dance along

Wants like the devil
Wants what is due
Wants all she was promised
Or she'll take it all from you

Touches like silk
Touches soft like snow
Touches like it's accidental
But always lets you know

Teases like thirst
Teases like winters months
Teases like a mirage
But then gives in all at once

Kisses like holy verse
Kisses like the waxing moon
Kisses like a queen
But breaks away all too soon

Loves like the ocean
Loves with no need to pretend
Loves like a need
That can never have an end

Smiles like sadness
Smiles like the sunlit mist
Smiles like she can see
A cruel joke that all have missed

Prays like a habit
Prays like a command
Prays like God
Owes her all she can demand

Sleeps like knowledge
Sleeps like mighty kings
Sleeps like she knows
What gifts tomorrrow brings

Hurts like an end
Hurts like a flame
Hurts like a warrior
Without guilt or shame

Left like innocence lost
Left like she never meant to stay
Left like time would heal
But I still hate her every day

Springs word

The other day spring said its first word. It spoke in a birds voice and grew a flowers outside my house. I was the only one around to hear it .The others had places to go and people to meet, I like to wait for flowers to grow. . . . .



When they came back they knew spring had spoken. They asked me what the word meant. They called me to play their games with them, they called me to drink their drinks and dance their dances. I stayed quite and searched for windows from where I could see the gardens from. . . . .




I do not know love, I finally told them. I know just the word, the idea, I know what it should be and I know what it never can. I know that for you any meaning I can give will never make sense because to you the world makes sense, and they both never can, not together. . . . .




I went back home. Summer woke up, spring didn't even leave a goodbye note. It's flower had gone. I sat by my window to see my garden. Summer too wanted to know the secret and sent gifts to bribe me. A garden in bloom and this one flower next to my window that was so beautiful it hurt my soul just to look at it. . . . .



I stared at the flower, I did not understand it. I was afraid, afraid of it's beauty, of it's thorns, of it's promise and of all the feelings it made me feel. . . . . .



I bought paints and a large canvas and closed my window. A man of spring, I prefer my painted lies to perfect flowers not meant for me. But I could never find the right colors, the closed window begs to be opened and summers flower awaits behind it. . . . . .



If only it would say the word that spring did, the seasons wouldn't matter

Almost love

A vision, . . . .it must be, . . . what else?

An imagining, a poet’s desire, sculpted by the sound of the waves, the breeze and the setting sunlight. I pause, . . . do I dare move forward, surely something this beautiful has darkness within, handing it out as fate to anything that dares to try and capture it. Darkness, the darkness of the blind, the darkness that punishes those who believe they could stare straight into the light.

Spare me, I make no such claim. I am too wise to love something as hollow as beauty, I must love the wise, the loving, the pure. I must be better. Haunt the hollow creatures foolish enough to try and feed off you, all I am is a man who could not look away.

The bond though has already been made, the moth will flap its wings, it is how it must be. I resign myself to my fate and sit beside, wanting to reach out and confirm that she is real, that I am real. She looks away, with eyes that defy you to find anything in them except beauty. I try because I must, because I can. I try and I find hurt, I find pain, I find that the flame is flickering under the beating wings.

There is a word I must say here, I know it. A word that will heal it all, a word that will enable me too see past the beauty, a word that will let me see though I am blind, a word that waves sculpted ages ago, a word the Gods made as powerful as they were themselves, a word I learnt the first time I saw here, a word I knew a minute ago. I panic, I forget, its too late.

“Almost,” she says. She smiles as she says it . . . . . then she says no more. It was almost love and it was almost lived. Heaven and hell, an inch between two lips, it’s a big word. It has exhausted her, she can take no more. She gets up to walk away, to find someone who doesn’t burn her back. She leans closer for the final touch and I remember my word.

“Love,” I whisper. . .

I don’t smile. . . .

She holds me closer, lets me smell her hair for one last time. There is a tear but I don’t know who it belongs to. If only I had remembered it a minute before the word would have been powerful enough to hold her forever. I know she wants to look back, I know she will not.

The flame has won and the moth in his defeat must now try and live. The real world honks its horns and begs and prods. I think again of the word and I realize what it is, . . . .

Just a vision. An imagining, a poet’s desire, too pure to really exist.

The sun sets, there will be no visions in the darkness.

"Love", I whisper it again, I smile this time.

"Almost" says the wind.