Black Noise

Today the water
of my eyes will run
asymmetrically -
I inhale long, shivering,
and exhale quick and curt -
each drop will fall
into the casing
of my understanding pillow.
Tomorrow I will smile -
the moonshine of last night
will radiate from the tips of
my laugh lines
and we will laugh
and laugh
until the sound of my laugh
wanes of its worth to you
and in times to come
I will write you more -
with the streaming ink of my pen
filling blanks,
no edits, no gold lining,
in the simplest typeface -
epitaphs of how I feel truly
the love of you
dear sister
and the love of me
to you
and again I will hope
that such a difficult admission for me
will by you not be
skimmed merely as
superfluous.

I Guess I'll Just Listen While You Make Everything About You

I’m sitting here smiling sweetly

at you.

My eyes are fastened to yours

even though your line of sight

never bothers to collide

or make a vertex

with mine.

My lashes flicker anytime

your head tilts a bit

or you put some em-pha-sis

on certain words –

yup, I’m still content

Right?

I mean,

maybe the small curvature around my lips

that makes my smile

a smirk

(a very, wow-this-is-ridiculous

or a very, can’t-hear-a-thing-you-say

type of expression)

isn’t evident to you

because what you’re saying is really important –

I mean, even if

your larynx

ran out of sounds to play

your mouth would still keep running

and I’d bother to read

your lips

but my rods and my cones

are in different zones

and I’m a bit too busy smirking

at you.

Your hands make motions

as though you want me to understand

but lord knows

you just want to continue

conducting your orchestra of beautiful rhetoric

and repeating your flawless rendition

of hackneyed phrases

like “I, I, My, My”

or pretty scales of do-re-mi me me me

oh yes, sing on please -

I’m still smirking so blatantly

at you.

And it’s lovely how you don’t notice –

no, no, don’t stop your ramble

don’t take a breath

god forbid

you’d forget what you were saying

or your train of thought

derailed

for even a second

because that’d leave my ears

with an eerie silence

and it would be a sudden shame

to be deprived of my supply

of gorgeous background noise

that I use to muse

while I smirk shamelessly

at you.