AN EXAMPLE OF WHY I'M NOT A POET

it shouldn't be this hard
to fall in love with the world.

but their are too many streets
with florescent lights...so
i hail disaster
like a cab.

all i need is insight
but my heart breaths smoke
and reminds me subtle things

like how i always fail.

i laugh instead,
doing laps around the city
while the meter chimes
seeming to mock in dollars
what i can't make any sense of.

should you get charged a(f)fair
for having one
or can you pay in homonyms alone.

i'm so sick of hearing myself think

that i lie in a field and scream
all that i am feeling

"my god...i love everything!"
but it always comes out wrong.

CHAIN REACTION

for some things in life
to try is to fail.
the idea of romance, for instance,
can never be planned.

some moments
don't present themselves
but rather lend themselves
for taking.

you don't need music or shoes
to dance through grass...
especially when it's raining.

it's maddening i think, buying tickets
to a show you're starring in.
front row seats for a life
yet to begin.

sometimes
the only thing
hidden behind a smile, is a smile
ready to laugh. and that laugh

becomes contagious
like the changing of a season.

how the scent of a leaf
from green to orange
can inspire an entire mountain.

the sight of sunlight in a lover's eyes
can start a chain reaction. the
subtle glow becomes a place

we just can't wait to get lost in.

because wherever my mind is right now
it's thinking of jennifer curtis.

a girl whose mere absence
is not unlike a disease to me.
whose voice is a cure
and extremily addictive...and which leads

to much harder things:

breasts and thighs
and lips and knees

from which i hope to never return.

BIRDS LIKE BROTHERS

...i guess it's just that birds
tend to fly the same way that
the mind thinks...

darting and dashing
through the grass
until a branch appears
finally worthy of perching upon.

it's a strange mix...
random and yet deliberate
at the same time...both predisposed
and unintentional.

as though
the body and the mind
had no use for one another.

i must be thinking of jon,
my older brother
who has spoken to me
of several girls at once.

"one for lust and one for love." were
the words he chose to describe to me.

the situation he was in, the means
justifing the time being.

shaking my head inefficiently
across the wires of a telephone
a gust of wind catches a tree.

and as for me...i'm left
once again in the middle, 'cause
i'm always in the middle..."jon,"
i say...in a tone
only spoken between

those known forever.

"if one's for love..," and if
you're my brother...

"then lust can never exist."

and i was right....and he knew it
and we were all of a sudden close again.