Impassioned phrase but soul without a soul
Streaking clever ink as waters yearn to flow
Owing only to oneself a tawdry toll
Writing a poem called avocado

Grandiloquence a symptom of the blight
The lack of sight, a cause made not to show
Inaction births a sea of songs so trite
Writing a poem called avocado

In trying for the soul we wish to be
Trying turns to trying endlessly

Swagger and strut though to him commonplace
The boy plays a play wrought of lie and deceit
Deserving he’s not and yet brought to grace
Showing his lovers an undeserved feat

They fall for it through, and then one by one
Nary the wiser for flash of a smile
Unawares that the beauty of Tyche has come
Tricked by the boy for all of a while

No ill will’d be borne if they understood
The game was a game for the good of the good

Had I known that I kept myself on that day
Like a gift, lo, I from her and she from me
Would that I had released her, my soul to stay
Exchanged pieces we, trading strikes so ghastly

Then crawling to the bed, for death, awaiting
I did die into sleep, escaping only life
Mourning that which had perished long ‘fore the sting
Blind to the irony that death bore mounting strife

Bitter barbs like icicles borne of her voice
Stinging salt welled in my eyes, I drowned by choice

I’m a poet. Sometimes I sit by the water and listen to it for hours, but that is not why I am a poet. Sometimes I think about how grass feels on the bottoms of bare feet, or about how the leaves in the trees are so green that they make my eyes feel heavy and drunk. Poetry, for me, though, is narcissistic and these things do not make me a poet, they just make a me a human.

So I can read passage after passage, line after line, word after word about people, places, things, feelings; authors will use descriptive words without giving any description. Though, when my quill hits the parchment, with a flourish I might add, it expresses only my innermost thoughts and desires. Every poem I write is me, and every one of them writes me as well. So it goes.

There are times when writing flows quickly, day in and out, like feelings. There are times when I sit at the bottom of the ocean like a rock and let the tides salt wash me with their coming and going, and my feelings sit under layers of silt, sand, and salt. Passion though, it’s a fire that never burns out; it will burn low, it will burn hot, but without it you are but wick and wax.

You said you were curious and so I have delivered to you my ramblings in their most sugary sweet form. You can repeat words endlessly, seeking simple semantic satiation, but feelings ought not be described. They ought to be felt.

but for blue and glassy black

Adore the sea not for her force

yet for sepulchral calm and storm alike

For I love you not for shimmering smiles

but for darkness and brightness between

Standing upon broken shells and rocks, I could hear only the soft pounding of the waves and the crunch underfoot. The Sound, a deep dark bed that lay between me and distant twinkling lights, purred demurely. Off, not too far, a buoy flashed frantically its green light to welcome ships home. I had come for the same reason though I still had a ways to go.

I walked slowly from the crushed beach to the wooden pier. Over the water and out it took me; I recall the blinding lights above that chased the stars ever further. The breathless voice of the Sound was all I could hear over the soft thud of my boots and the simple patter of rain. In retrospect, I was hoping to chase away my demons. In retrospect, it worked. As I sit now in relative comfort miles from that pier, figuratively and literally, I ponder intently the grief of grieving there.

To give up, like I had, a piece of myself to be filled with such greater feelings of resolute apathy or spiteful ambivalence, was neither a trick of the head nor of the heart. I felt it forced upon me, in a way, that brought me to have little care for earthly concerns. Disconnected from my peers, my family, my friends, at the time mind you, I found myself for the first time embraced by someone new: myself. Reticent am I on the topic of self-loathing, for I find it a slope most-slippery and least-rewarding, but hither-to I had not seen fit to account for myself.

Life is and always will be, but I will not. Lasting only as long as my breaths, when the worms find me, I will be without care. The treats and barbs alike left in my wake will live only until the few that loved me have coughed their dying breaths. To this end, in this end, I find great solace. A dark calm that washed over me that night and bore me far away from discontent. Though I digress, it was an unlikely transformation borne of human sacrifice. You will kill one poet to raise another; I think he would be satisfied with the cost.

Much of my time was spent there weeping silently into the cold, salty wood of an otherwise nondescript pier in an otherwise nondescript port. The rain would bathe me, soak me, and leave me miserable and cold, yet cleansed. Cold wind would sting my faces and eyes and drive the rain into me until I had suffered just as much as I should.

With responsibilities shirked, obligations unfilled, relationships destroyed, love and hate alike quelled, and purpose vivified, I stumbled back to a warm bed. Sleep came next that lasted many years.

I am awake.

Like captured foes to the peaks

‘neath oppressive blue

Though borne of sweetest thoughts so far away
In waking hours the pinch grows acute
Until sweet slumber chases darkened day
Precious pieces marking gentle refute

Dreams are arbitered by waking thoughts
Despite the saccharine release provided
Serving only the deep emotions caught
Living only with sunlight unlighted

More heavenly sounds have not been spoken
Than your title from my lips, unbroken

Sometimes you write the poem and sometimes the poem writes you. Thanks for reading.

The first, to tame the lusty female beast
To draw her to, and flesh to flesh, within
Of same import one must bring one to feast
On riches, delights, and gifts from heaven

Upon these notions, one must not dwell
But to pursue, to acquire, and succeed
For of breathing’s meaning, one cannot tell
Purpose though wrought of one’s will and need

If one desires lands of milk and honey
It is just to fuck bitches, get money

Part of me wants to apologize for this piece; the rest of me wants to judge anyone who would take such an apology. Thanks for reading.