Author: Nick

A lonely morning wakes the same

A lonely morning wakes the same:
My bed I share with none,
And back to bed I fall asleep
Alone when day is done.

And you, my love, so far away,
I love like you were here.
I write you letters everyday;
We talk as though you're near.

The horror house I'd save you from,
Were I your gallant knight,
Of moldering confinement, lost
Potential, souring spite.

Entrapped in circumstances that
Necessitate the wait,
And forced by plague to stay in place
Or risk your mother's fate.

Oh I am hale and fear not death;
My nerves, though slightly swayed,
Yet turn towards our meeting but
For cancer, I am stayed.

I cannot hold you while she wails,
Not even glean your pain;
I cannot find a way around
The risk to her, it's plain.

I still remember–that cliché

I still remember–that cliché,
But all the same–the heat of
The sun clinging to the black tar
And bouncing before vision,
Beside our strides upon our walk.

We weren't more than friends, although
I fondly wished to have him.
But my nature is to yearn; no:
To pine to seduce Never;
To fall in loves that don't exist.

But not that day. We turned along
The sidewalk's gray meander.
Our long legs we put to use, stepped
In sight of the green walls of
The gardens curling near the street.

He led me to an entrance in
The fence which wasn't into
The real garden; rather we came
Upon a remote wooded
Seclusion, there to house our day.

The auburn promenade had been
Well-trodden down the path through
The grove's bosom, deep in her heart,
Outstretching the sought clearing;
It stood within a thicket green.

The thing was large and made of wood,
And when I asked him what it
Was used for, he didn't quite know
But guessed it was for hanging
Up scores for sports of yesteryear.

We clambered up the wobbling thing,
Without a care for his part,
For my part with fear but spurred on;
Together we sat on the
Forgotten scaffold for a while.

We looked out on the vacant field,
The boughs between obscuring
Our seat. From my pocket I pulled
The lighter and blunt, lit it.
We shared a smoke, a spark in time.

I dreamt on what it means to love,
I wondered of its power, 
My friend played a joke on me by
Pretending he'd leap down from
The tower; I was so afraid.

I marveled at delusion, and
I saw how high I held him;
The high precipice my fond heart 
Had carried him to, lofty,
Above me always pedestaled.

But what could all my fondness do
If chance should blow adversely,
Or black-winged descend upon him?
If peril should strike, will there
Be wings of love protecting him?

He joked and I was flustered, I
Was nervous, but we laughed and
We smoked, gazing at the clouds where
Our smoke will disperse, joining
The orange bed among the skies.

The Moon

Night approaches you: your ancient father's shadow,
Primordial tradition washing over your
Luminescence in the darkness of another
Dimension. Keep delighting in your delicate
Glowing skirts and prettiness so pale suspended
Beyond in the obscurity of outer space.
All the smoothness and the scars alike displayed in
The atavistic night opaque: now waxing, now 
Waning, often hidden, always fixed so far off.
Your beauty isn't so despised while wandering
In this universe that thrives on different light; let
Your soft, reflected smile relay its lonely ray
In the solitude of twilight dear boy, gazing
Across the vastness of creation's gulf on fire,
Lit by flames that fuel dimensions drowning out your
Wan gleam, and seeing light like yours so far away.
Scream aloud in night so lonesome, shriek and howl in
The gloam of solitary hours, the longing cell,
While the distance that sequesters you compounds to
Become a measurement of time. But stay awake;
Wait. Believe a light will find you underneath light,
Akin to yours, a light unlike your father's plane.
Softer light once thought unthinkable, the light of
A smile refracted in prismatic eyes with yours.
Distance is but time, and patience is the hand of
The clock that's bridging, sweeping on impossible
Wings to touch one that's so far away; out gliding 
Beyond the sprawling skies and suturing the veins
Of the rivers. Minimizing country miles and
Connecting all the ends between your wits and gas
Mileage. Patience is the steadfastness permitting
All passion's kindling; patience is the lesson which
Puts the heart through its enriching pain, and patience
Becomes the season where an honest love may bloom.

Distance

I'll spare the cliché of cursing myself 
And wishing to have those hours returned:
The times we ignore each other without
Intent or perhaps on purpose; the plane
Of minutes so empty, let down, bereft,
When longing and conversation so yearned,
Igniting as hope so briefly piffs out
The fuel of an interaction in vain,
Expended; and longing only remains.

But wanes and then you return once again,
So soothingly, never mad as I fear
You might be for all the times that I fall
Asleep when you want to talk.

I can’t tell you why Florida has this temperament

I can't tell you why Florida has this temperament,
The sky won't belie its designs quite so easily
To me. Air once hot, humid all through the firmament
Then shifts, reappears crisp and cold, as if teasing me

And says: try as you might, my tropic desires hold sway;
Not old stars nor dates seasons change can tell me the clime.
So dress light til cold fronts appear on a random day.
And though Winter sang Summer well for some days, in time

The night ushered in frigid mornings more often. Chill
And frost hung around floors at dawn, and the light was clear
With pale, slightly pearlesque allure, and was softer still
In cost here than up north; invited a thought my dear

Of you and of me–lonely beds in a frozen place,
But soon there will be only warmth in our shared embrace.

There am I in a crypt of cosmic secrets

There am I in a crypt of cosmic secrets,
Barred from any retreat; beyond the pathways
Always turning, and always choosing; finding
Wondrous feeling, but still I wander through the
Avenues with the mist of time obscuring
Every way. Indeterminate horizon
Leaving me with the here and now, enough to
See, enough to decide among the tasks at
Hand: enshrouded by possibilities and
Circumstances that sometimes I'm obliged to
Bow my head to the floor for. Sometimes storming,
Raging, echoes of mania distort the
Senses; bleak fog descends upon the mind's eye.
Biding time as though convalescent, I've been
Trapped before in the suffering and blindness
That depressive anxiety demands with
Winds of changeless insanity to whip the
Spirit into dejection, fear to crush the
Agency of each day. Compulsion of a
Phobia, a corruption of the Will from
Action to an Avoidance Need; imposing
Terror fixed in the deepest mind, beyond the
Reach of consciousness menacing, controls the
Mind and body by instinct. Time unfurls in
Inconceivable ways. All flight and yet the
Day's escape is reversed; the threat remains to
Steal tomorrow by painting days as months and
So elongating panic that the days will
Smear together as one conglomerated
Misery. And the mass of worry will feel
Just like lying entrapped in mental bondage.
Outward seeps the miasma, blanketing all
Vistas, giving deceptively impressions
That it's permanent; but the spirit can be
Called inviolate–providence reserves the
Wherewithal to reverse misfortune, even
Seeming permanence dissipates upon a
Windfall meeting. A gust can blow away the
Fog, and fate that was brutal soften by a
Chance encounter with love, a smile from one who
Never could have before so earnestly be
Looked for: aided, unknowingly at first, by
Soil unnoticed in richness, soul unnoticed
In the depth of its kindness; friendship growing
Into intimate bond, and care the motive
Dedication empowering a soul to
Live with luster, take hold of fortitude to
Walk a bit more assured with strengthened spirits.
I was walking throughout intoxicating
Clouds of blinding directionlessness, stumbling
Really, crawling and crouched when light suffused the
Cavern's blanket and for a moment brilliance
Struck me; dazzling! A beacon overwhelming
Me, refracting the wisps' illumination
Into blindness unknown before: a vista
Gleaming only a second, gone, but still the
Landscape glows for a while, the load feels lighter,
I can see a bit further out ahead, what's 
More I want to. Epiphany is what it
Felt like, only the clarity was partial,
Gradual, and at some times tidal, ebbing
Back away from my sight; but ever since, a
Spark has lit the enshrouding gloom from time to
Time. I walk alongside you–likewise fearful,
Just like me a confused itinerant here
Walking deep in the promenade, in dreamlike 
Sight confounded in hazy nightmare logic:
Journeying through a timeline painted bleary–
Worlds encircled malaise and mist thick-curled on
Paths that could be forgiven for their beauty
Could the terror of fatalist projection
Be dispelled, then one sees a field a garden.
Man is merely a man though known as danger
Or as boon; to the seer power's given:
Cherish or to avoid accordingly, and
For a lover a new cosmology–a
Haven and a responsibility to
Hope. To live as though heedless what the world may
Be or what it is not; to know the path while
Blind by heartfelt conviction; holding fast for 
My companion holds fast for me. And Love the
Armor, compass, and star above gives guidance:
Shining higher–impossibly beyond the
Night's dimensions of doubt. It blazes there, though
Seeming not for the world to touch, yet we are
Touched by it. When I see your face I know that
We are not in the moor among the vapors;
This entrapment of senses, notions, thoughts that
Seek to grind into dust the spirit, choking
Fog laid thick upon life–it's so pervasive.
Look! With you by my side my head's unbowed, your
Hand in mine is the strength of breath unlabored!
Here: unmoved and yet this is not the labyrinth
Life has wrought–how the same conundrums fly from
Us that once so imposing made us cower.
Upper light, same as light within, makes plain the
Path, the need to survive; the world I'm facing
Clears and brightens with you and I embracing.

Often I stress about writing too little

Often I stress about writing too little,
Thinking that quicksand slides downward below me;
Pouting, despairing, I'm all too inured to
Wasting the daylight, once spent or relinquished
Plunges me into deep sorrow at day’s end.
Time's but a resource. This lesson I struggle
Daily to hold in clear thought; as the river
Flows with no driver through beds with no need to
Pilot its course, content, carving out channels
Merely because it is, likewise must I be.
Waters, like time, refill after they empty;
Swells in a cycle; now full and then trickling.
Dusk, though it settles, lifts into a sunrise
After each night; and time seeping forever,
On and on, newer days come to replenish
It. So I try to not stress when it comes to
Ebbing hours, here then gone, writing by moonlight
Suits me as well, for time is and is not for
Me to be master of: time's all around us,
Always in flow without end. If the river
Thought, it would not think, 'I dry out tomorrow,
Better get pouring now.' Better to be like
Water which rushes by nature without a
Care for its final day–vigor it has so
Vigor it uses. Ends never concern it.
Rivers will run until emptying out: now
Coursing, now slowing–no need to take heed of
Whether its waters fall, if it cascades or
Sleepily waters slide. Even if frozen
Over the river just waits; it will thaw and,
Just as if never stopped, wend once again its
Way throughout earth. So let me be like water,
Take some time out to not do and to feel that
Life and my work flow on inside the moments;
Pick it back up like no pause had been taken;
Realize making, like being, is tidal:
Life suffused with an art, paints of the mind can
Flow upon all. In each moment creative
Flexion's allowed its game; poetry lives in
Life. To be sure of one's entity, feeling
Surely without a need based in assurance;
Flowing in time with small heed of it, flowing
Lively because my work runs through my life; and
Learning to pour from self, much like cascading
Falls from themselves, and hone skill as though nature
Fuses to climate: at once as serene as
Brooks at another chance, torrents; in spite of
Intermittent desire latently making,
Crafting--not trying, just being this poet;
This is called wei wu wei; this is the lesson
Held within water. This teaching I try to
Keep as reminder–life flows, and so likewise
Flow my creation. I write, for the writing's
Mine, it is me, and made one with this living.

The pastel orange sky in bloom

The pastel orange sky in bloom
Briefly bears its fruits of sunset,
Peaches into plum-hued cloudjets
As lonely creatures spy the moon:
Quarantined, cloistered by the threat of disease,
Silently longing to the point of fatigue.

Now hear cry the unvoiced need denied;
For lack of means and safety dubious
Lovers languish, celled by cellular threats,
Longing longer, as the hours alone stretch.
Then waning shrink all time too, fooling us;
Whispering coldly, loneliness it descries,
Limitless isolation—two lives' divide.

I like that you’re a bit on edge about it all

I like that you're a bit on edge about it all–
The gloom without the loss of pure emotional
Connection, doubting fortune yet maintaining hope.
The torture in your mind and body speaks to mine.

The fear of bleakened chance descends as if designs
To weaken us are formed beyond mere fortune's scope;
The fear extends from each of us, a bonding mope
We're both despondently entrapped in, like a wall

Prevents our mapped out meeting and so deigns our fall.
But ever rapt by how alike we strive, I cope,
And drive on gleefully alive; our love entwined
Has tapped a strength that never wanes if you just call.