summer notes on the breeze (poem)

sunlight crashes down onto the plaster balcony
raspberry leaves stretch out from a crowded planter
that had roses in it once, I hear
a honeysuckle vine crawls its way up to the roof
and down into the neighbour's empty balcony

she sits out there on a wooden chair
coffee steaming from her old cracked mug
as she does a crossword cut from the paper
with a thick tape over all of the answers

I see her through the sliding glass door
bathed in sunlight, bordered by flowering raspberry,
this quiet moment, quiet morning,
these summer notes on the breeze.

-Zero

no happy ending will ever find me (poem)

The sickening smell of this room is imprinted on me
the walls oozing and cracked – no light slips through
I sit and I wait, I hope and I pray
to be okay, to be rescued from this prison
cement walls etched with desperation
my bloody fingernails still lodged in them
though I sit in the corner and clutch my knees

The last light I saw led me here
had me on my knees in worship
offering it my whole being however it wanted,
so it took the door away, and then the windows
until I was alone with nothing but darkness
and the stink of rot and coagulated blood
in this room I call my home.

No happy ending will ever find me here,
it will not erupt out of the cold hard floor
nor ooze through the cracks in the halls.
No, here in this place where hopes go to die,
I will write an ending for myself
written over and over in my own blood
until it corrodes the walls themselves
and gives me the freedom I'd die for.

 -Zero

A Reason for Silence (poem)

I am here to declare that I am not dead,
though the ink seems to have dried into a stain
and my paper bones crumble like fallen leaves,
my heart yet beats beneath it all.
Life stretches ever onward, pulling me with it,
even when I cannot find words to say
to describe the mountains and valleys I'm dragged through,
the passing stars of the night and voracity of the day.  

There is more beauty than words can trap
and far more than ever should be caught in a phrase.
So know that in my silence I remain,
journeying in search of ink worthy to be spoken.

I have not abandoned myself (this pen)
and fled the busy city, leaving my voice behind
this place carries so many worthwhile voices,
sometimes it is enough to simply listen.

-Zero

A New Love Poem (poem)

How many love poems have I written by now?
Years of fleeting affections committed to paper
countless scattered about, painted
by the fractured memories of lost days

Does a new love renew my right to write about love?
Does it invalidate all that came before?
Or is it the same tired story in a new font?
I want to believe in the magic of it –
to see the words as anything but generic.

But is love itself generic?
Millennium spent with it painting our breath,
time and time and time again,
in every language we've ever made.
Could I construct a phrase that is only ours?
And even if I could... should I?
Maybe love is a shared experience,
interlacing hearts through time and space –
and that is to be celebrated and embraced,
given breath with every heartfelt syllable,
not fled from with malformed ideas of uniqueness.

 -Zero