2018 Published Submissions
double rainbow
WINNING SUBMISSION:
I cannot fathom
The fathoms
of sand and sea
and the distance of you to me
if love wasn't the cover or the coveted
All I wanted was to build a lovers bridge
from me to you
through all the hysteria
and hustle
and strife
because my love for you
isn't just love
it's my life
Breath be stifled
Poetry be still
I love you
Because you love me more
Than I
Ever will.
PUBLISHED SUBMISSIONS:
_______
Around this time last year, mom was deep cleaning her home. I’d come by after work and find her dusting the ceiling or vacuuming every crevice in the couch. She was months into her chemo treatment, and the side effects hadn't really appeared yet. I think she knew that there’d be a time when she couldn't do these things, especially those days when fatigue hit hardest. Cleaning was her way of coping. When she found out my dad wasn't going to wake from his coma, she cleaned out the entire contents of her refrigerator.
I still want to pick up the phone and see if she needs anything from the store before I come over. Even though I am sitting in her house, sorting through her things, I'll kind of convince myself she's just in the kitchen or running an errand. I'm finding myself doing the same, coping and cleaning. I miss her most in these moments. I wasn't supposed to be doing this without her. I stare at her funeral program sometimes to remind myself. I know it gets better with time. It did after dad was gone. But grief is weird, and the denial is palpable lately.
_______
I haven't thanked her enough for
Liking my shit for so long. I can't
Imagine the number of times she's
Graced my picture—attempts to
Connect—with her eyes, stolen
From obligations, revisions, things
Her life and world demand of her.
Thank you for watching over me.
Your Likes are a sign that you don't
Feel the need to protest or correct.
Encouragement always does more
Than correction. This you know and
Live because I know and live it too.
And you are me but aren't me. I don't
Think I know how love works or life
Works or what we do when we listen
To the next thought in our head. Who
Would we be if we saw each other again.
God, I'm turning on the music. I need it
To survive because I'm about to topple
Over.
"We are due a visit," you said. The visit
Never happened. "Can you imagine us
In person, what we would say, what we
Would do. So much." Now I need another
Song. It's an angry song, from my teenage
Years. It says in an unromantic, screaming
Tone: "If we only knew the plans they had
For us."
_______
I love you each so much. I find my love is more easily defined by the light as it shines on your faces, the soft breeze of a hot summer day, the radiant color of flowers, the sensation of warmth I feel every time I think of you or when I see you. The sounds that fill my head are the sounds of your unique laughter, the crazy bursts of noise you make, the way you talk with me.
When I first laid eyes on each you and held you in my arms, I knew that I had accomplished everything I needed. I knew. I knew so deeply inside that it seemed like there really wasn’t, couldn’t be any doubt. As the years go by, my love for the three of you continues to grow and deepen. It really is ‘this much’.
_______
He said: Hi. I like your place.
She said: Hi. I like your blue eyes.
He said: I’m not very good at this.
She said: Me neither.
He said: You wanna take a spin in my hotrod car?
She said: Sure, sounds like fun
It was….and, it was also really loud.
_______
I still root for your team, that's a given
It's still you in my dreams
My Love Songs for the Living
Please don't forget to pay your Netflix bill.
_______
I am not sure anymore
_______
The surface rarely reveals the pain, yet such lonesome in the eyes must have spoken to the hunger in mine.
There's something perfect in the joining of imperfections, just as negatives yield positive.
Faults melt into craved comforts, the lithification of sand to stone.
Once easily divisible,
hidden,
misunderstood.
What is this love of understanding?
This understanding ----- love.
_______
our love evades containing
growing wildly abundant, overtaking
The swagger swayed
they say it will blot out the sun
then we will love in the shade
_______
Bone-deep osmosis
Just a pin prick to rival the speckle of your eyes
No really.
You hold the cosmos in your irises
No really.
I’m not being poetic
You bring me fossils
that won’t last as long as your smile
burning sun spots into my skin
I age like rocks for you
Hollow myself out to be a cave where the crystals grow
You know the ones
The deep glittering blue greens spiked with purple pinks.
You know the ones
They grow every time your laughter reverberates off the walls
Echolocate the vastness with which I behold you
I just want to hold you
Bone-deep
_______
Cause that’s the thing about poets,
we feel things so deeply
that we have to write ridiculous words about every experience,
like eyes meeting across a room,
that feels like the drip in the cavern
in my chest
where the crystals grow,
words like immersion and euphoria
Like damn, your lips though
Your body against mine though
Pressed
Like leafs in a book
Bound in the way you lose yourself to laughter
Shattering the the air like melodic glass
Like if I was your boyfriend
Like your fingers shape the chords that shape my wistful sighs
in abundance
I want an abundance of you.
But will settle for collecting the scattered leafs
Brewing a tea of you
Immersion, euphoria
_______
We are an endless conversation.
a synchronized breath of anticipation
_______
Maybe we’re the remains of some constellation,
or a kind of cosmic collaboration.
We certainly defy Mother Culture’s expectations -
smiling while shirking our own reputations
I, am a fit of inspiration.
my touch, a tease. alive with sensation.
You, are a force against stagnation -
You, my love, are a walking exclamation.
I wonder, if We are an indication
that Mother Universe has found cause for celebration
_______
How much I love you, I struggle to reduce with words.
Our friendship, where our journey began. Your soft, warM ways of being a flame in the night, I was drawn to you like a moth.
Our lust for each other. Unbound, comfortable, filters unnecessary.
We’ve shaped one another. Two glaciers colliding. Friction melting pieces of us togEther, streaming and pouring and gushing over anything near.
Both teachers and students. We realize what can be learned in this life is infinite.
I love that your positivity knows no end, that your spirit is forever kind and giving.
Some might be upset with mother universe for placing us apart. I choose to smile, because our love is undoubtedly abounding throughout her. She must see value in and desire the perpetuation of what we’ve discovered together.
We serve each other Goodness and experiences that would make most blush and scurry.
If forced to Answer how much I love you more simply:
I find myself sharing the goodness you have showN me, and scouring this world for the things you are.
_______
Will these songs ever stop reminding me of you?
_______
Dark Times
She says "our window." This is the offer I always wanted to make her. A mattress on the floor is all it is right now. She says "I love the view of the butte from our window."
I saw the inside of her uterus in the emergency room the other night. After the ultrasound, she laid on the mattress for three days and shared her Vicodin with me. She is used to her body's treachery.
We eat hummus and avocado at midnight. We are ghosts in baby bodies. Everything is how it is, not how it should be or how it will be forever.
In our new kitchen made of old cabinets she uses brown water to rinse glittery lingerie. She says "I am god and I'm washing my panties in your kitchen sink."
And I read, wine drunk, she stoned:
In the dark times will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
_______
I like no one, except you.
Except the times I don't.
Which can be as much as half the time.
I will never tell you.
I love you too much.
_______
I've forgotten meals. I've forgotten promises. I hope you never find out
_______
I find myself leaning against it. I take it for granted because what did I ever do without it?
_______
It takes me by surprise. It's lightning in the night.
_______
I love you so much, you take my breath away. And when you do, I think: have it, it's yours now.
_______
Love is easy with you,
a never-ending resource we create together.
You actively share it with others,
an ability I admire and hope for myself when I’m able.
This warm river need not to be blocked,
whether by other opinions or by one’s own faculties.
_______
We could explore each other so truly.
Kiss each other so sweetly.
Breathe in each other so deeply.
But would our friendship, having blossomed so neatly, survive it?
_______
I can only write love poems
When I don’t have a pen
Like when I’m lying underneath you
With the proof of your love
Still alive in my mouth
When your body relaxes against mine
For a moment of brief, blissful relief
Sometimes, then the words will come
But, of course, I never have a pen.
_______
I love him so much that it gets careful and far-the-fuck-away
I love him, spanning my height and frizz
I love him verbosely, in binomial nomenclature
I love him enough to suss out what's left of the damage
I love him in premonition: the steeple, the cypress trees
I love him big April, June
I love him three hours in, three hours in the city, three to fly over
To let myself cry
To write him
_______
Let me kiss you again
I am a single point in a vacuum
A beginning
Surrounded by empty black
This is not darkness
not full of hidden terrors
Not trying to kill you
keep you
Not cold or dead
Black space with a single white point
Neither warm
Nor star
Just is,
There is no objective
It is the opposite of existence
Possibility unfolding waiting
For a second single point.
Boredom is not elemental
There is only vacuum
Until one day there is a second point where there had always been none
Points had blinked in before
I infinitesimal white lives vacuum had made segment before
Attempt to join points and make white hot across all that exists
Let me kiss you again
A single beautiful line stretching on either side to infinity
But I had only known segments
Vectors
Some point became finite line
We so small stretching only to each other
Little more than points
Often these would blink out of existence as quickly as in
I did not miss them
In this vacuum there is only I
I just am
I had also known vector
Points stretched with one moving toward the other to infinity
Pulling at the other
Point argues for infinity
The other is stubborn there is a beginning that stretches
but we will never be infinity
I have been the stubborn and I have felt line move through me towards infinity seeing my end in their point
These flicker before they too leave my home
This black which is neither feeling or unfeeling
Until you, point emerges
Tentatively we stretch to each other
Let me kiss you again
It feels like again
It feels like forever
We are stretching
move through
Slowly at first and then racing toward infinity
A kiss that lasts an eternity
A line that exists beyond arbitrary constraints of space and lifetimes
Before this vacuum and into the next
This point’s kiss stretching to eternity
_______
Standing in the water
I watch you undress
Through the steamed glass shower door
This room isn't big enough for two people
But
Get clean with me
I kind of want to love you forever
_______
How Much:
Vastness
is a concept
created to stretch boundaries
of perception and allow for
the unknown to present itself.
Love
is a concept created to
shrink a vastness down to a bite
sized morsel, easy to consume
without ever fully understanding its size.
You are internally vast, though your
body contains your reality inside and my
love for you is delicious, bite sized
and made of perceptions of who
we are when our atoms collide
Like the universe, the true size of
this love is unknown and ever expanding,
but I will bring you only pieces you can
fit into your jean pockets and take with you
so that you may not forget how much there is.
Rationing out this feeling so that it may
last a life time is a boundary I am still learning
how to draw each morning when I wake and
attempt to taste your love for me.
We are expanding into the universe
or it is expanding into us but either way
we can fill this vast space with a passion
that knows no bounds,
one bite at a time.
_______
All part of our life
Friends and family
But only one we Love
Lifting our burden
Soften our existence
With a glare and a smile
That never is versatile
_______
To my babies, love mom...
You are my Saturday morning snooze
You are my cold side of the pillow
You are my coffee brewing
You are my cream and sugar
You are my fuzzy wool socks
You are my snowy morning walk
You are my warm fireplace
You are my welcome home
You are my new book on the table
You are my soft pink throw
You are my hot chamomile tea
You are my carefree afternoon
You are my soothing sips
You are my page turner
You are my story’s happy ending
You are my radiant sunset
You are my favorite day
You are my rest well text
You are my goodnight kisses
You are my lavender in the air
You are my twinkling stars
You are my sweet dreams
You’re all the things I love and adore
You’re all those things and so much more
_______
I still, somehow, love you more each day.
_______
You brought home flowers
Because I’d had a bad day
But the cat ate them
And for three days, she puked them everywhere
I found them in the laundry
Under the bed
In both our shoes
I think it’s a testament to our love
That regurgitated flower petals still make me smile
As long as you touched them first
_______
You taught me to be a doormat.
You know, like the welcome mat that every visitor inevitably steps on as they enter your life?
How could I love you?
You taught me to always see the good in people.
Even when they show me time and time again how vicious they really are.
How could I love you?
You taught me that I am not the sum of all my experiences, I am bigger
Than what I’ve been through.
I am where I’m going.
I love you.
_______
I’d wear Jnco’s
So that I could take you too
Wherever I go
_______
First kiss, rush of blood.
Buds blooming, nature's rebirth.
Falling. Cautiously
Leaves float to the earth.
Glaring from summers blind shine,
We call it "in love"
Endless inception.
Shouldn't my mind be all mine?
Love is our cover.
Ritual kisses,
New year not feeling so new.
Bitter aftertaste.
Curse love foolishly
Never realizing lust
Got the best of us.
Recalibrated,
Will I see the lust early,
Or forever blind?
_______
I love that when you love I can feel it through your gaze.
The world stops for you and you stare, and in turn, my world also stops. It's an inconceivable moment that I'd never experienced until I met you.
I cherish your honesty. I adore so much about you. Your one finger wave, the way you get excited about the simple things in life, such as biscuits and gravy.
I adore your sudden and intense kisses, independence, goofiness....and how you softly whisper serious things, such as I love you...
_______
Some days my waters crash and move
with excitement and energy
and some days I am placid and calm.
Will you love me when my waters are still?
Will you be the boat that glides my surface,
creating waves that move me?
_______
My child,
Bikes will crash
and your body will fall
more times than I can prepare you for.
As the years go on,
bikes will turn to hopes and dreams
and wishful things.
And as you fall, in life and out of love,
remember one thing -
pain is temporary.
It lasts as long
as you give it power to last.
Pain ignored can often last for years,
but pain faced head on,
is full of love - and happy things.
Pain carries lessons, and stories,
and like thunder follows lightening;
pain carries healing.
So when you fall,
which my darling you will...
get up.
Don't be afraid to show your hurt,
don't hide your wounds away.
Wear them like badges of honor,
and allow only lessons, love,
and memories to stay.
_______
I'm going to stand here for a while,
and look at the trees
and breathe in this crisp fall air-
please come find me.
I'll be waiting between your hopes and dreams.
Somewhere along the path of longing
and tomorrow.
So I'll stand still, and you'll come find me.
You.
I've spent hours contemplating the words to say to you.
But no combination of twenty-six different letters could ever
accurately capture even a sliver of what this feeling is.
_______
Fear isn’t a mind killer. Fear has nothing on age, on infirmity. When a brain unfastens itself from within, even primal terror doesn’t make sense anymore to you, you, far too tired to keep going.
Love has something on fear. Love is sometimes dark. You’re dark too – we all are, sometimes. We’re dark when love is the only thing left between each other. We’re dark when the light fades from other people, when age and sickness robs us of anything but love, when fear gives way to acceptance and the tears come anyway and it never stops or slows until, sometimes, forever.
Love is dark in you, behind your eyes. Your daughters told me about what those eyes have seen, who and what you don’t remember. The nurse told me eyes won’t close, sometimes. You aren’t afraid anymore, you can’t be. Too tired.
It comes after the fear’s gone. All of us are glad it’s over. ‘It’s a blessing,’ someone said, but our love is dark. I don’t think it’s going to lighten up for a while, but I like that it’s still here, after you’re gone. Love between us, stronger than death. I think of you, sometimes.
_______
Marigolds
Saturated in a sun color
Bloom, bloom
Thrive in a Great Sea of Grey
I found another season
Another season of doom
to hold out my hands for you
Our love for orogeny
has caused this Pangaea to drift
Land-locked ablation
super-deporting
to the Mariana
Subaqueous sojourn
Transcendence is born
Lend us
a piece of
fire-lined interference
We are apart,
What are we a part of?
Apollo
We can't go
Your heart
an organ hollow
Instead we'll follow the daughter,
the daughter of Oceanus
She waits
for nine days
Famished
She waits,
then she waits no more
Marigolds
This inner-fold
of Marigolds atoned
I am the reason you persist
to enlist the mysteries
of Santorini
They filter through me
and I begin to relocate
all your faults
The Pangaea drifts
Our love for orogeny fits
Continents collide
and the mountains uplift
We are a part,
what are we a part of?
You are my buoy
in all that is blue
The ocean floor lulls
The mire settles
_______
If asked to explain
I would simply say
That love
is understanding
the colors
Klimt gave
to women
and the trees
_______
You see. me.
And you love. me.
You love free. ly.
I see. you.
And I love. you.
I love you free. ly.
We scoff at the narrative of love “to.get.her”
It is fig.me(a)nt to incite discontent.me(a)nt to spurn unending wander
We have un.learned that love=reciprocity.
Sweet Love, surely we share dust of an ancient common star, that to us whispers
Love will exist, infinite and permanent, when
We love free. ly.
So, when someone asks
How much do you love them?
We let pass through all-telling grins
I love them free. ly.
_______
Dear Duchess Cream Puff,
I love you Cream. You are the cutest little pudge nut ball in the world. You almost always are at the door when I get home. If not, you are being a little fur ball on top of some magazines, or on your blanket. I love to hold you and give you pets behind your ears and scratches under your chin. I know you love it because you purr so loudly. Even though you wake me up in the morning to give you your chibbles, you’re super cute. You love your kitty tower and your string. Sometimes you give me kitty kisses or you do kitty cuddles. It’s super cute. I love you Cream!
Love,
David
P.S.
You’re super cute.
_______
Te amo como apricity. Es muy similar to our Mexican sun in January, no? You know it's el invierno but there you are, bronzed (burnt) beneath the Caribbean sky. Maybe not. Maybe I remember it wrong. But cuando I close my eyes, verte. I see tu sonrisa and the pockets on your cheeks and your tanning skin. Do you remember when we found the Great White Shark tooth on the beach in February? I love you like the feeling of that triangle. Smooth, sharp, jagged, limpio, blanco. I think I loved you through the broken glass. The cup thrown at the wall, shattering el vidrio, ringing like a thousand tiny bells all chiming at once. I the vindictive thrower, you the deserving ducker. After, you made lemon pepper salmon. Tu cocinabas so well. We apologized over perfectly seasoned fish and falling salt water. Recuerdas? Te amé when you left, but a little more cuando you stayed. Try as we might, the glass was still shattered. Pero I love you como apricity and the tooth del tiburon. I love you that much.
_______
A Haiku for my Love
.
.
.
I wake in the night
Your butt hair tickles my thigh
New love is so sweet
.
.
.
<3
_______
In the ether, our atoms float.
Searching
Incomprehensively
for each other. And when they meet, they’ll cling together so tightly. Home finally recognized.
Our atoms will live in birds, trees, dance in the molecules of dust that float in sunbeams. They’ll drift, sleepily, among the myriad of other lives, lives yet to even be realized. And when they go to use our atoms to make new lives, we’ll be pressed so tightly, they won’t be able to take just one.
They’ll have to take two.
_______
I love you so much
that the weight of it
the bottomless, expanding, endlessness of it
it filled me up
inside and out
until there’s no Me left for You.
_______
i was his war zone
at dark i fled to find you
healed, whole here i am
_______
I love you so much
that the only way I feel close enough
is to imagine us, all our pieces, in the same Star
We fall to the Earth as Stardust
and rearrange in countless ways
until we meet, and recognize in each other
something familiar, something ancient, something innate
and we know
Once, we were One
_______
A Variable Love Equation
(I Love You)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
> the fear of judgement
> the desire to be accepted by culture
> the time my body will allow me the odd privilege of being human
> my imagination
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++(plus)
< the feeling of your love freely given to me
< my need to exist
< my addiction to the quest for constant happiness
< perfect
============================================(equals)
= 0 (zero)
or
= oxo (∞)
or
= This Much
_______
Love conquers all
I’ve lost my sense of humor and urgency about money; it’s other people’s money; I can get some because I’m only more able to be real with people and speak clearly about who I am and what I do. The world is so different to me each new day. What “the world” is is different to me every day. I always have new answers to what I do for a living, i.e. who I work for. I work for readers and receivers of my links, references, commentary, observations, analyses, opinions, encouragement
It all relates to a bigger board, you’re not a kid anymore, you’re an adult who has an agenda that is always hidden behind a smile and politeness
The best you can do is try, to have a voice, to be true to yourself
[Another mess of a page]
Health care, jobs and education
Concerns, concerns
at least we exhale together
_______
her phone is broken
searches for pen and paper
message sealed with kiss
Be loved, however detrimental
Pretty girls everywhere
On bikes
Behind glasses
Under my thumb
is it possible I just haven’t met the right people yet? it's a quaint question
hoping my future's waiting there latent behind some gate I just haven't arrived at yet...
How much further need I go down? I'm so low already, is there more
fossil record to uncover
to be a "thirtysomething"? My God
and laugh at living having written these words? How far can I push the number? What's the scale of this life thing?
_______
Love, a fusion of worldviews
One day years ago, I felt love lying next to a girlfriend in her childhood bed
Scooted together under blankets, repressed tears began flowing. I told her about the
seven, maybe eight bedrooms I grew up in as a kid. She’d had one. I lay there
beneath her star stickers
plotting my way through every house I grew up in - "our" house, I guess I’d call my first; then “my dad's”, a pool house
(cottage?)
with vodka bottles in the recycling we’d wheel into the ivy; there was my mom's apartment, my stepdad's (former neighbor's?) house, my dad's apartment, my dad's house, my mom and stepdad's new house—
With Jesus in the next room tonight, I realized I embodied my parents' lack of marriage
What is family—a model of lines and points on a map? A diagram with arrows? I can’t draw arrows.
Two dots moving across a windswept plain? Buffalo crossing the hills to mate?
A male and female fuse for a moment
and begin then the kaleidoscope days
where nothing stays the same but life is
brightly colored nonetheless
_______
Like the distance from this rocky whiz kit to its sauntering skeleton
Just long enough to think I'm lost
when really
our gait is the only thing thats steadied
Angelic Pendulum
That swings sequence to freedom
Like nails
and the broken hammer that beats 'em
Like a fleeting heart masquerade
And unlimited pitches at the batters cage
-Swingers Up-
Like the baggage that you gave to the last bleeding heart
purple sleeved comrade
but the wounds weren't from combat
or bobcats
Like self inflicted innocence
and barrel bottom eminence
Like criminal evidence
sketched on the sidewalk talking to pleasant peasants in an angels dance
Like a missing bullets second chance ricochet
splitting display cases open to the public yelling
hip hip hooray
Like the novelty of a long book
and finding its missing page.
_______
I love you like onions
You taste delicious and you make me cry.
that's probably why I think I'm allergic
because proximity to you makes me think I'll die
Hi
is usually all I can muster
- not sure if really in love / or if just a lover -
oh brother
I'd say I'm head over heels
but the ponds deep
and the weeds gone
and wet lands are practicing desert sand tactics
I'd dredge till the bars along the coast were pitiful but legible
terminate my prophecy as a master
and end up practically peons in the dark with a matchstick
I can barely seed debris in this endless sea of you and me
as acting priest in the pulpit
culprit
vaguely calling in for rouge fish
since my hopes this school ends up like my heart
nice and swollen
your hands needed in this game of Texas hold em
and as all this is swirling I lay awake taking bits of bread crumb to keep my bones thin enough to slither out from this witches carving cavern before I'm done for...
I love you like the escape of one more.
_______
There's a picture from the past, that will not last.
Happiness and bitterness are soon to begin, yet it's only the beginning of a new end.
Time is lost along the way, but memories are sure to be made.
Another page, another chapter, all will be the same until one day.
What was, is now unseen.
But the hope of forever, will last all of eternity.
_______
More than anticipated, the corners of lips rise
Elated, unprepared, consciousness captivated, engrossed
Death to pride, slices exhaust, ego dry
More than contemplated, than should be allowed, safe words rejected
More than bearable, or sustainable, or digestible
Purges attempted, change enacted
Still, it lingers.
_______
My chest and back expand from their centers.
My head gets lighter.
I want to push our foreheads together while our noses rub.
Hold my head against your stomach.
I’ll wrap my arms around your knees.