Composed 6/13/16
Descriptions: For the Victims of Orlando.
How can there be a sunset
When there is such a pit in my heart?
You nailed it into me
And it festers and grows
Fifty ghost bullets
Fifty real holes in me
They leak endless tears
And I have a brackish taste
Of how God feels when we hurt one another
So the sun goes away
And God sends us fifty thousand stars
And aurora to mourn
Composed 6/7/16
Description: It’s a bitch.
Sometimes I pride on a heart made of ice
But there’s no such thing
Tragedy pierces and
Anger melts it
Sadness seizes and squeezes until tears leak
Out between clenched fingers
Happiness radiates and thaws
Hearts throb but it must freeze again
Because ice crystals keep the scoundrels at bay
But it inevitably melts away
And it always burns
Composed 4/11/16
Description: For Day 10 of NaPoWriMo. Based on a conversation I had today.
She was worried she’d die
Face down on the treadmill
Doctors would lick and stick electrodes to her
Watch the beeping of her heart and
She’d begin
Step after step breathing heavy
Up and up and across that digital mile
Sweat beading in her brow
They’d watch her spike
And go flat
What she didn’t remember was
Her heart had experienced more than that mile
She’d known stress of great intensity
Chronic worry and work to the point of fatigue
She cared immensely about every need
Her heart beat along with the
Buzzing in her head and the
Heartbeats of everyone around her
She’d lived a hundred stressful lives
Heart thumping with the emotion of a hundred miles
What she didn’t know was that she’d already passed the test
This was just a formality
Composed 4/25/14
Description: n/a
I live through the ears
My eyes dart
I can pretend
I can plead
If I don’t see their faces
But my heart l o n g s
For true connection
Heat, anger, love, affection
Desires of risk
And my eyes are rapid
Sensors of emotion
My heart a muscle of pure empathy
It hurts to see
Do I live with the pain?
Or die empty?
An outsider
Just
Listening
Scraps of Paper 