Then, Now, and What's Between

I have forgotten how to write.
Once I could not stop but now I can hardly make myself believe that once I knew how to start to explain how it felt to be unable to stop writing about things I could not start.
And once I started I forgot how it felt to be unable to explain but now I'm back to where I started again. Once I felt pain. And once I forgot how to breathe. It rattled stuck in my chest, choked on fluttered feathers and I forgot how to swallow. I forgot. I remembered my hands. I cannot stop but remember my hands and think of my breath. I can only remember my breath. I have forgotten how to catch words before they slipped through the gaps in folded fingers. How to sing them through tiny thoughts you could not speak because you did not know how to start what you could not stop (events, life, thinking). Write because you cannot speak (then), speak because your words are careless and so careful you dare not write them down (now). I cannot remember how to write and catch words I cannot speak through the singing gaps in my teeth. I can only remember to breathe I can only remember my breath I can only think of my breath I can only think of my hands. Caught and rattling, breath battling flutter through and--

I'm okay. I'll always be okay.

How

When our two skies are not one?
If as my sun may rise, yours sinks into the belly of a valley?
And we breathe different air,
a reason enough not to care!
And words I too carefully hold within the cavern of my mouth, lest the same have never to entered the fortress of your brain.

My Attempt at a Villanelle: Sleepy Pirate

I am a pirate of this sleepy shore.

Plundering dreams of lucid, silver, and gold,

From the nest of the crow, a sudden wakeful moor.

Twisted in aqua waves, wrestled, wage war,

Tossing in the sea of sheets, dreaming so bold,

I am a pirate of this sleepy shore.

Wind through sails, take this hull into a snore,

Scowling at scallywags, dreams of old,

From the nest of the crow, a sudden wakeful moor.

I will fight this day that tears down my door!

It threats to pillage where I wake, take hold!

I am the pirate of this sleepy shore.

Eyes creak open like the salty floorboards,

As the sun rises, light creeps into the stronghold,

From the nest of the crow, a sudden wakeful moor!

I wake to greet this day with the might of Thor,

All ravaging of the day, soon to unfold,

I am a pirate of this sleepy shore,

From the nest of the crow, a sudden wakeful moor!

Sonnet 1

Sweet, sweet persimmon of slimy, syrup gold
Kept ripe, away from flies.
But of your delights, some secret, I've only been told
'Cause you're still green, as each leaf dries

Slipped so casually into a flutter,
Truly, truly nothing fills me with such unease.
I'd no rather whisper sweet, and shudder,
than try to translate the breeze.

Sweet, sweet persimmon, so unripe, too soon to bye,
I've lost all I time had to flip,
Every corner. Space too full to sigh,
With all your sleepy, silent-- Drip.

For fear to miss the taste,
I abandon all words, so time, I did not waste.

Bad Idea

Eyes like the electric reflections on the bottom of a pool.

Like the blue electric through my veins for those 5 seconds,

Or when his lips sometimes meet mine.

But…

What?

Don’t give doll out the same crap,

You cant give your heart away, ‘cept to that lonesome scrap

Such a lovely scr--No.

I tried to give him all that should have been yours.

And his absent, high mind he hid, that’s what I got.

Still feel like pinned butterfly, still alive,
a dandelion with all but one seed standing.

A broken flying leaf, a clipped wing bird.
A sad silly lonely sock.

How can he have my heart when we both denied all presence of its beating, pulse…?

How can he have my heart, if we sat drunk, sad, staring at stars, the smoky sandy silhouettes?

How, when we were both fools, and he mistook arrogance for wisdom

How do you not own it?

Singing words he only wished to speak,

In sounds that of my beating, pulse…

The timing is always off.

How do you not have it?

Too Close (work in progress)

We search among rubble and debris,
or piece together leaves and seeds.
Look further away to pricks of light,
or escape and eclipse our lonely bites.

I Retrograde,
look towards the source,
but I am blind.
Too close to ourselves,
we are as far, as lost,
as the sun.

It's Funny

These wispy things that take me back to you:
a sip of ice water,
cracked mud,
desperation on the coast,
a song that our souls disagreed,
strange tubes.

Your eyes aren't on my pages,
and I took that same old route which pangs me.
Our little men are gone.
Breathing and walking in two,
nervous, taciturn fingers,
when we're really alone, I'll tell you everything I couldn't feel