FREE VERSE

monologue

i enjoy the soliloquies of my daily life

though the genres shift quickly

this excites me

to begin at a drama

and move rapidly through tragedy

and realism and ballet

and burlesque and folk

with a beautiful understanding

underpinning them all:

my play, at its core, is a farce

exactly as it should be

the river

there's a fluidity here

within me, it allows endless movement

from any one place

to another

thank god

for my good fortune

to feel anything and everything

all at once

October 24

today, i am trapped

in the new conversations

that we will never have

and in the words that i keep shouting

to an unaffected sky

a poem that you will never read

written for you anyway

so i share my greatest treasure:

to have had you for a mother

to have had my heart untied

happy birthday

for you

poetry swims in my mind

even while I sleep

I am writing stanzas for you

to reach into my soul is to be closer to yours

and somewhere in the world

a little girl, just like I once was,

she dreams that she will know someone like you

and the little girl is happy

one life with you could never be enough

and so I promise to find you in the next

so that what you have said will always be true:

even the stars are jealous of our love

The Poe(t)

the birds that dance

in moonlight &

over the hill where they rest

flaps & flies & flittering wings

the feathers that float high

they carry a message

to my ears yonder for

that I trust to hear

of love & loss & troublesome things

the things, I think, most difficult to bear

but - if i could have just one more wish

in this harsh life of mine

it would be to join the birds above

& sing of love and wine

O Dionysus, Aphrodite,

I will come to join you

& they rest on Mount Olympus

H.V.V.

you love sunflowers

and the Guayacán tree

is it because they, like you,

reflect a golden beauty

that is bestowed by the sun

a beauty gifted by the heavens

cherished by all

only intimately known by a few

how lucky for me

to have been one of them