girls divided by girls

girls divided by girls i fell in love with girls adorned with freckles that crossed the bridge of their noses like the dabbled spots  you see on a newborn fawn frozen in fear and lying so very still in the woods girls with the same camouflage draped across their cheeks and even some  with a gentle splash of pepper running across  and down  their soft tummies but those girls if i remember correctly did not lay still i fell in love with girls who wore bleached blond hair piled high  and held in place with scented hairspray like a crown on their heads girls with baby-blue  eyeshadow smeared slightly from the flutter of their lashes with skin draped in peach fuzz and with the whitest smiles that beckoned for attention and mistook every passing desire for love i fell in love  with girls in denim dresses who smoked rolled cigarettes and on occasion let a swear word slip through their chapped lips girls who hated  rules and expectations and who traveled across the country with nothing more than a small backpack and a thin sleeping bag who ran from day's end and only rested late at night in the crook  of my arms i fell in love with girls who wrote pretty words in beaten black journals and with a turn of a phrase and a mixed metaphor condemned the world that they were sure had spit them out girls with a conscience but who could never decide right from wrong and instead searched  for the ambiguity of some dreamy universal love even though they did not know or allow themselves to feel the passion of love at all i fell in love with girls who gave me joy and girls who left me heartbroken girls who offered careful promises and girls who offered only recklessness girls with stars in their eyes and girls who hid behind an endless pain girls disguised in the colourful costumes of a childlike fantasy and girls who stepped from empty shadows to embrace enlightenment  younger girls and older girls quiet girls and loud girls dull girls and bright girls girls breathless with longing and girls moaning with pleasure and through it all i never found the love never ever caught the heart  of you the mystery of my life the one and only girl  who slipped like the wind past the hopeful reach of my dreams and vanished  with the best of her spirit gone forever from the best of mine Copyright © Kennedy James, 2015. All rights reserved.

once certain, twice removed

once certain, twice removed ... i miss my youth the prairie roads carving poetry in fields of dappled gold a summer's harvest reaching heavenward to the toppling clouds of a never-ending sky where every imagined beast or beauty was caught in the reflection of the big rivers that poured like holy wine into a young boy's veins a sacrament of sorts you'd think but more and more a tattered collection of memories not quite lost but lost all the same ... i miss the danger of falling in love with a perfect stranger unexpectedly slipping into my life of imperfection ... i miss the jarred butterfly pandemonium and the nervous excitement of hands wandering across the skin of unknown bodies the silly giggles of encouragement and even the whispers of hesitant rebuke ... i miss the softest cheek  against my cheek when lips wander to lips to share the breath of love and breathe the pulse of life from heart to heart blending the two into one ... i miss the slow waking from solitude into arms that wrap across my shoulders and coax my body from the cold and carry me into the warmth of knowing that dreamers live lives asleep ... i miss the missing the times apart the you there and the me somewhere unknown so high above the world in vacant night skies the time or distance or both that divides improbable lovers from one another the words and promises that reach across crackling telephone conversations of wounded longing ... i miss the purpose the obvious reason for being who i am that i see in a knowing look from bright expectant eyes or that i feel in the soft fingers that brush my hair back and away from my brow but mostly i miss every day when i might have said something hopeful and was silent Copyright © Kennedy James, 2015. All rights reserved.

circles of time

circles of time ... the girl waiting to become a woman smiled as she watched me from across the room her clear and hopeful eyes stuttering in anticipation like the hands on an ancient hallway clock counting down the seconds the minutes the hours the days the months and the years that she had endured to arrive at this single axis in the unending circles of time ... and as she peeled the bed covers aside i said a silent prayer that i might not falter through the rise of night and the urgency of desire to be the one for her but i hesitated a second a minute an hour a day a month and a year too long and what might have been slipped by in an instant sending her drifting into shadows with only a final whispered thought that every moment embraces every other moment before it and defines all the moments yet to come Copyright © Kennedy James, 2015. All rights reserved.