Coco

They all ask me “why can’t you just be happy?” 

Because I don’t know what happiness is — 

I don’t know how to hold it like a newborn babe 

without the fear of all the ways I will disappoint as a parent

I don’t know how to taste it like fresh fruit in summer 

without knowing when it’s gone, it’s just gone no other fruit will taste the same

I don’t know how to wrap myself in it like a new lover’s embrace

without thinking about how many others have felt this warmth – I’m no one special

I don’t know how to breathe it into me like the scent of fresh cut flowers 

without realizing that each petal will wither and die, to be tossed in the trash 

I don’t know how to look at it as butterfly wings flittering by 

without contemplating how fleeting a life is lived and morphs into death

I don’t know how to drink it in like a glass of Screaming Eagle Cabernet  

without tasting tannins of sediment that tell me who I am

I don’t know how to speak a language I never learned…

Summer Love of 1996 Summer sunsets have faded like blue jeans along with the love that we shared Sunbeams floating on the ocean swallowing this day revealing the mirage of our love My closed eyelids glow a grapefruit hue as memories flaunt summer bodies entwined Eyes wide open blink more water into this sea that stands between us Fairytales are rarely true but these lucid dreams of true love felt so real I should have heeded the warning and waning whales of mermaid’s captive as they sang out to me I sit on the rocks that kiss the shore, watch as they ebb and flow my tide of longing Swept away, pulled under, left to drown my heart sinks into the abyss of unseen fathoms

Poolside Pariah

Your beautiful weather ignorance, Rockefeller arrogance – is a luxury car I cannot afford I am glad that you do not have to live a life in fear staring out into invisible terror Still I wish that you could take a moment to see life through Van Gogh’s eyes If you could sit beneath a tree to understand how precious, how fragile life is Life is butterfly wings that disintegrate by your touch Each one a Constellation Fabergé egg (unfinished) dropped to the floor by your careless pleasures