Poetry is beautiful, poetry is even better read in a beautiful setting.

Sunset…

The girl he left

me for is brilliant

She even has a black

belt in karate

I couldnt kick her ass even if I wanted to

She met me for coffee once

Aired out

dirty laundry in the customary hushed

voices of corporate suburbia

Compared versions of his truths

like two Siamese cats playing

the dollar bill game

After a round of bluffing

she had more 9s

more lives

I must admit

I did waste

a star light star bright, first star I see tonight

wish on her getting cancer

I’m not vengeful just

tend to hedge my bets

In all honesty

I want them to last

I want these two lovers to sing

duets at open mic nights

I want them to frame pictures

of themselves on island cruises

I want them to fuck

like 19-year old undergrads

whose roommate went home for the weekend

I want them to bicker

about whose turn it is

to pick a restaurant

Finish each other’s sentences

Fold sheets together

corner to corner kissing

after each crease

I want them to learn the list of each

other’s idiosyncratic tastes

He prefers his milk in paper cartoons,

The chocolate that soothes

her deepest frustrations

I want them to have awkward family dinners

that become running jokes

I want them to make love work

Prove to me that love can work

Make my heartbreak not in vain

Make it count

Make my heartbreak the fucking Grand Canyon

Fill it with a river

of love so strong that this break erodes

into colorful geological striations

Build a goddamned boat and sail

it into the sunset

the brilliant as the girl he left

me for sunset

I respect all poets from John Donne to Denise Duhamel to Rives. I think about line breaks. I think about voice inflections. I believe words can paint pictures. Some poets write for folks who love to thumb through bound volumes. They carefully craft words onto pages, composing stories partly for your eyes. Others favor a more auditory tradition. The latter is how I write; for ears and rickety stages with bad sound systems. So tell me, which do you prefer… the page or the stage?

Video directed by David Johnson.