How can you
Be gracious to
Words, serve tea
Make them linger, stay put
When house is empty
Lights are off
Do consonants pluck
Strings of
Sound, must they be
Sandwiching vowels
To signify
Even Keats had bouts of
silence, and Villa penned a
blank page, is Kant
detached as he claimed
worship beauty eternally
Unrequited. Masturbating
literary-wise, exhibitionist inviting
lurkers “rape me
I stand naked before you”
Narcissists indulging
In make-believes, fables
with unknowing
accomplice-you who reads
“Poetry does make things happen… it
changes all of us who read it but
it will not change legislation” –Philip Levin
Do letters bleed solely
when engraved on skin
Is absence only truly
Depicted, it hollows deep
If presence existed.
must you harbor something—anything
to have a soul
imprinted.