burnin' love

I found no peace
In the lies that I've told,
I'm only hurt by the blows that get withheld
The sharper I get cut
The harder I get held
More that I believe
That you will come to me

Without you I've been burnin' love
You're the one that I've been calling for
Without you I've been burnin' love
You're the one that I've been calling for

--

love hurts,
she said.
it hurts like
the wind choking
back your throat,
like the fingerprints
on your jaw
where he held
too tight
in anger,
like a good,
good,
sad song.
but we are more
than canyons
of grief,
paintings of
lost love,
or unrequited lust.
we are enough
to waste the years
the earth has left
and to earn
living in
galactic eternity.
these dual diaries
are arranged
like photos
on a bed stand,
and that is love.

--

when I smoke too much, my heart hurts like
waiting for the wind to change directions, like the
words I forgot to say to you, like a love
letter I never threw away and sometimes pretend
it's from you.

--

I smoked
your cigarette,
tasted all
the towns
you lived in,
the times you
weren't yourself
but a carbon paper doll--
something existential
or removed from
identity
like witness
protection.
I saw you
twirling in
the sunlight
of a cold day
and sinking into
the happiness
you long for
when you're inside
the darkness
you nest in.
I saved the final
production
for when you were
far away from me
as Pluto to
the Sun.

--

I think about Pluto deciding not to be a planet and you
deciding not be who you thought you were, I dream you into
my life, I think about buying Marlboro Reds, take my Camels
out of the freezer, the pack that I didn't buy because the money
went to the book that will taste like an expensive cigarette, a poem
that I tried to write without words.

--
There is not
a word,
a name,
a number
for you
in language.
There is only
the color of
rain,
the smell of
hallucinations
or the way
thoughts transmit
into others' brains
without speaking.
I see you
in every day
or every life
I live.
My favourite places
are where your
bell-tolling-voice
tells me I am
loved
and I know
all my inconsequential
selves have
already been lived,
where I dream
so warmly
I can feel
your kiss to
my temple
tasting my sweat
and swear words.

--

I tell my mother "every act of creation is first
an act of destruction" and she says that is
impossible. I listen to the wind speaking through the maple leaves,
I listen to your voice as if you might have been a
prophet if you wanted to save the world, instead
of a person.

--

There is only risk
in certainty.
Destruction comes
from nature--
it is the storyteller
of every crack
man has forced himself
into in the land,
in the hearts
of women who
confuse themselves
with poetry
and dead men lovers.
Prophets are
liars--
just like poems.

--

Your poems tell me
the truth, the world through your eyes, which
is a dream, a lie, the only truth I know.