The White Picket Fence (poem)

she suggested we muse on a romantic dream
of a house and kids – white picket fence and all,
my soft heart has long yearned for that ideal love
but I hate white picket fences and dull lawns.
I am a skid mark on the street in that dream
a shadow in the night they're too afraid to face.
that fantasy never truly belonged to me,
implanted into my mind by careless fictions,
sweet lies that sought to sell us a lifestyle:
a box to live in for marketed bliss.

I could not bring myself to answer her
let those who yet sleep continue to dream. 

-Zero

A Wall of Questions (poem)

my heart awakened after years of hollow stasis,
it pulls me towards a solid brick wall
across its surface a thousand questions are scrawled
and I don't know if I have an answer to any of them
or a way to scale the wall and see what lies beyond
a fabled wonderland of tenderness and understanding

after all those years of a practical “love”
does my heart now yearn for the impractical?
A love which offers itself up as a puzzle -
one you find yourself desperate to solve
to change and compromise and commit
and find the pieces that always seemed to fit.

Because my heart desires to swell again
to remember the way loves makes you
the way it fills and ignites you
and makes every wall a stepping stone
to one of the beauties that make life radiant
despite all the questions left unanswered.

 -Zero

a question I have to ask (poem)

I stare at her photo,
desperate for a reason to reject possibility.
Enticed by her simple beauty,
my mind swirls with a thousand fantasies.
But there is a familiarity to it – to her –
an echo of someone I once knew and loved,
a face I had never wanted to forget.
I contemplate my response, my desire:
do I truly want fulfillment,
or do I simply want something familiar?

-Zero