a song. To be sung

We sat behind enemy lines
the night your lips aligned
with mine.
Oh if I had known
that it would be the only time.

I kissed you like a baby bird,
simple and trying to assure
you it was better not to migrate
but to stay
and I would be your warmth
on all those winter days.

I should have kissed you like a missile
with all the force of a land-mine.
But I kept my ammunition stockpiled.
I guess I assumed
there would be another time.

I kissed you like a gentle lover
and you ran off with another.
If I had kissed you like a Casanova
I would've had you over my shoulder.

Would I try to be
the man the movies sell to me,
and you the woman I sweep,
desperate, off her feet,
given the chance to repeat?

No I don't I'd change a thing
if I could do it all another time.
But if I'm being perfectly honest,
it hurts pretty bad that you're not mine.

Yeah it hurt something awful
that night.

Late Again

You and I
we stay up late
trying to think of new words
for companionship
and isolation.

Outside the bombs go off
in the hands of children.
They march through the street
with colorful words
and ribbons in their hair.

We've given them the go-ahead.
Not you and I, per se,
but the people,
the collective parentage.

If you and I had children,
they'd be dressed smartly
and with style, asked to answer
questions about the heart
and to smile
through increment weather.

I think we both like kissing
but neither of us know how
to lock lips without sinking
hopes, so we just stay the
course.

This has been a summer of diligence
and promises.

This will be a fall of realization
and recompense.

I hope only to survive the winter
for it knows how to find the holes
in my soul.

Summer if you leave...

I'll never love again.
I'll stay inside on lovely days,
listening only to music in
minor chords.
I'll kiss with my mouth closed
and my hands in my pockets.
Summer if you love me,
you won't leave me.

Don't say you're coming back.
I can't stand the games you play.
The way you sneak away every
autumnal equinox, just when
I've found perfect balance.

For some reason it's always colder
without you. Grayer. Darker.
I don't think I can make it through
this winter without you. I'm
NOT being melodramatic.

Winter is a terrible lover.
His hugs are suffocating
and his kisses bitter
and biting.
I'll be here, wrapping myself in layers
just to look unappealing to him,
while you sleep on beaches in some
other hemisphere.

Summer I won't let you leave.
I've left out bottles and jars to trap
your toes.
I have the greenest leaf in the world
thumb-tacked to my wall.
You wouldn't leave
without it, would you?

I know I'm not your only lover
but no one knows you like I do.
Remember building sand forts
to barricade the ocean from our shores?
Remember naming the rocks deep
in the woods of my backyard, collecting
moss from trees as carpeting?
Remember jugged wine, BB guns,
and the best friends I'll ever have?

I know you can't stay.
I'd probably get sick of you anyway.
Just promise you'll visit sometimes.
Poke your heart through the clouds,
melt the snow when you can.

I'll look for you in flower shops
and travel agency billboards.
I'll smell you in designer perfumes
and mexican beer.
I'll feel you any morning I wake
up without an alarm,
just the warm caress of light
on the side of my face.