This one's for Vincent

My friend Vincent is a great poet. I particularly think he is a great performer of his poetry. You can check his blog under where it says "links."

In all the years we've been friends, he always has said that he wants to see the stuff that I write (or have written). It's never happened. There are a few other things we always talked about doing but never got around to (we're both music lovers to the fanatical degree, and we always planned to get together for a listening party), but that I never shared my writing when I have been so enriched by his has bothered me the most.

So Vincent, i'll start with baby steps: not a performance but with the stodgiest of stanzas, the sonnet.

This one I wrote for the woman I loved the most (that is not my mom). I wrote it years ago, but I like it still.

Dear ,

Refrain from searching for your name above,
Your eyes attend me even now; alone
We each may bodily be, yet enough
Do I within these lines inhale and moan
Bereft of breath, a somber bust of stone,
That this may intimate love or some thing
And you, unless mistaken, might see sown
In sea striations tears that leap yet cling
To cheeks that sleep, froz’n slate unthawed by spring.
If nothing breaks the rigid lines apart,
Your eyes decide that ink cast lips can’t sing,
The title beckons, forget this vain art.
Reject these lines for failing to be me
And I have failed in letting you see me.