A Phone Call Love Poem

I’m getting married in forty-eight days, so I think it’s about time for a love poem…

I’m currently in another bout of “minimalizing”
Feeling hopeful and encouraged, desiring to fill out the parts of life that are lacking
and empty the parts that are overbearing
And then you call, I answer the phone to hear your voice
Inexplicably wonderful, the tone of your stringed syllables create comfort
You’re telling me about this new coffeeshop you have just discovered
In a place where we often speak of the voids, you’ve found something good
And you tell me how much I would like it
talk about the high ceilings, the marble countertops and the natural light
and you tell me that you want to take me there
and I say I want to be taken,
You can hardly catch your breath as you stumble through all of the details
that you want me to know before having to go
You’re miles from me and I miss you
and seeing you tomorrow is never soon enough
You’ve arrived and have to get off of the phone now
You tell me you love me and it’s believable
You are honest and I know you
and when the silence of my room begins to take over
and the faint music lingers to the left of me
and my room is a mess,
all I can do is thank God,
this God of the universe who has allowed me to know you
to adore you and to be admired by you

The world will tell me that I need more, that I don’t have enough
but you are my world and with you, I have everything
Let this gratitude of your presence be an everlasting decision
not a fleeting feeling,
you are more valuable, more tangible, more incredible
than my words could describe, or all of the world’s offerings,
you are more enticing than
any place I’ll travel
more precious than any amount of days I have ahead,
I’ll keep on answering your calls, my dear
and I’ll love you for all of my days, my dear

Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset

something beautiful, something good

It’s moments before my twenty first birthday,
the humid august air runs through the open body of my
black 2002 cabrio convertible and I listen to the
CD player spinning sounds of heartbreaking hymns

I recently came into possession of recorded audio of
my pop-pop playing trumpet, converted from cassette,
once upon a time they nicknamed him harry james
because he played magically, igniting raw emotions
with every trembling note

tonight, the absence of his body on this earth
has taken the form of visions in my mind,
I can see him playing, using the same hands that
I used to hold in mine, the same hands that I would
lay thick layers of lotion on when they became old and cracked,
gold bond would gather around his wedding band

I can see his glasses wiggling on his nose
as he inhales, I can see his thick eyebrows
rising with the melody, sinking through the bridge

“Something beautiful, something good
All my confusion He understood
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife
But he made something beautiful of my life

If there ever were dreams
That were lofty and noble
They were my dreams at the start
And the hopes for life’s best were the hopes
That I harbor down deep in my heart
But my dreams turned to ashes
And my castles all crumbled, my fortune turned to loss
So I wrapped it all in the rags of my life
And laid it at the cross”

I can speak of restoration in an all together honest way,
and how grateful I am for this ability.
I can promise you that the bitter sorrow I have known
has made this deep joy all the more wonderful

I have a multitude of words within me that I am desperate
to write down, I have a thousand thoughts of thankfulness
for the way that these years have revealed the tangibility
of a loving, sovereign creator

How strange my collection of days have proven to be,
but how beautiful it is to be made new over and over and over again
I have found myself in awe of the goodness that has overcome
the view of how I naturally perceive this life

It is something beautiful, something good
to admire the present and a nostalgic past
something beautiful, something good
to extinguish loneliness with the truth
something beautiful, something good
to settle upon surreal peace in the evening
and to awake hopeful in the morning

a content poem for all the discontent that came before,
a content poem for all the trials that might await
a grateful soul, for always

Middleburg

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/50799935″>middleburg</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user12739646″>lissy tropea</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

a quick stop-motion film I made. Layered one of my poems “Confinement” onto it, along with Karen O & The Kid’s “The Food is Still Hot”.

more and more and more

I knew the days would become long,
when I desired them to be short and the nights
would become a canvas for anxieties and to-do lists

I knew the time would run too quickly,
even when i begged, “slow down, slow”

Now I’m waiting for my time,
for desires to turn into decisions and
dreams to reality
and potential to finale
Now I’m holding on to sanity,
like a child clutching a sad stringed balloon
but I am not meant for weakness
when I realize the truth
only in my morality am I alone
only in my world am I abandoned

and you who said there are better things to live for,

you’re wrong
and you who said,
that I didn’t know what I was striving for,
you might be right

unending words,
tied together by fish hooks
take the hand of a devil

red skin and emptiness,
take the hand of a savior
soul mysterious, with round eyes

Even with my knowledge of the upcoming change,
I couldn’t have anticipated the sinking sorrow
I couldn’t have guessed the nearness of
tomorrow
and the next

books and citrus,
curling papers and crinkling toes
vinyl records and burnt passions
this life is made up of perception and music
spoken in conversation,

drained by temptation
to live “normally”

more and more and more,
it’s not enough for me, no