What Changed?

You know what isn't fair? (Within a potpourri of many things)
For one day someone gives me a scrap of attention, one day, and it seems to upset you. There you are daring to act hurt and different and here I am daring to believe it's about me.
But how can it be?
I'm just me.
I listen. I watch. I wait.
You,
you just neglect me and expect I'll come picking up the pieces when it's over and I'm left broken and you upset.
Upset.
Do you think I like any of them when I have you in the room?
I know I'm shy around you, but I'm honestly working so hard on that it's ridiculous.
Sometimes I stop myself in my trying and I think I do not need to, if you really wanted me you would try. Right? That's what people do when they realize they want something. But not me.
I wait.
I watch to make sure you're the one I want.
I listen to your heartbeat and decide if it is going to hurt me or hold me.
Perhaps that is why you're so confused.
I'm crazy.
I know that.
But what I don't know is why you acted different when you usually act like you don't care. What changed? How are you somehow different now? Tell me I'm not crazy!
I'm so crazy about you I can't even drink orange juice the same.
I can't sleep well.
The music sounds different.
What changed?
When did this subtle shift take place within my heart?
I've changed j.d., and I know you're the reason why.
When did my heart decide this? Where was I when it voted without me?
Does anyone have a say in their heart?
What changed?
Where do turn to figure this out?
Why do I even try? Why do I care so much?
Why?
Why?
-k.p.b.

skinny love {part one}

I hate you.

I love you.

I hate that I love you.

The thought of you never really leaves me, but they're always soft thoughts. Old book pages sticking to my shoes. I guess that makes it easier to think about you that way.
There are flutters within me that tell me that I love you.
They make me blush and whisper in my ear all the dreams I'm frightened to tell myself will come true, because something tells me they won't.
They never have. Why now?
They rest on my pillow increasing the dreams that plague my heart as incessantly as sand on wet skin.
They exist infinitely everywhere.
There is no way to be rid of them.
Please,
I beg them.
Leave me be.
I don't wanna be your girl anymore--I just want to see the same look I feel in my eyes when I look at him, James Dean. I want to feel as loved as I love.
Where is this love I exude every moment? I can't see it. I can't touch it. I don't know if it is real or just a mimick of my aching dreaming.
Life goes slow loving sober, they say.
So I try to forget.
You.
Breathing.
Sleeping.
Thinking.
All about you.

Sometimes a dark corner of myself convinces me that I am not in love with you, but then I think, if a heart like mine can write words like this, like the words I've unceasingly written the past month and a half, pouring from my soul--there is no possible way I am not in love even in a small, small way.
Love begins small, I say.
It starts with a flutter because a flame would devour a heart that is too defenseless, too fragile to protect itself. But I'll tell you, if this is the embryonic stage of love for me, I'm almost wet with wanting to see how powerful and penetrating the real love will be for me.
Think about it.
I am in love with a boy that doesn't give a damn about me and I still feel this way.
I laid awake last night staring at my bookshelf, weeping in the dark, and the thought that this moment was like all the songs they sang, all the books they wrote and I was living it without thinking about it. It wasn't a forced precept. It was no idea of romantic heartbreak--it was real.
He hasn't even broken my heart yet, but I know it is coming just as softly and unsurprisingly as a sunrise in the morning. Perhaps it is less cathartic than the sweet curls of light trickling through my transparent curtain, but still. The hammer will be there soon to pound the pounding in my heart with piercing nails and soaked paper cuts, silencing the ticking that was one so prominently inside me.
It's going to happen because no matter how much I try not to care, no matter how much I beat myself up for being awkward and scared and myself, I can't help it.
I wanna dance with you every day.
But then I want to pull away and make you chase me. I say 'make you' because it doesn't seem you'll ever want to chase me. No one ever does. What human really chases anymore? They expect and they accept. I'm done accepting a world that doesn't care. I care. That's enough for me.
If there is one thing I would want and one alone, it would be to be chased and running with excitement in my heart and pleasure in the steps I take knowing you're behind me because you feel the same way.
I hate that I want you.
I want you more than I want warm socks on a rainy day.
Why don't you want me?
My head already has a typed list for me, ready with answers to stamp across my chest. The ink will spill down my white shirt and absorb into my pores, pressing against my heart trying to find room inside there.
But what would you say if I were brave enough to ask you?
Would you break my heart the way it's already breaking?
The seams are cracking with something peaking out between the spaces of thread keeping it temporarily together.
What will you say?
Will you ever love me back?
Is there such thing as a love that gives back to me?
I'm done loving sober when the only love I need, the only one that will make me realize what love really is, is the one two people get being drunk off the idea that love and life and their heart beating together will last forever.
I'm done.
I'm done with skinny love and stark soberness.

-k.p.b

"ground control..."

My small hands rested on the cool concrete like teacups on lace. The coolness pushing on my palms comforts me in way I can't exlain. The day was warm and cold as early Spring and I admit it was deliriously beautiful. It satisfied my senses greatly, the oyster of a sun brushing against my fair skin while the brisk breeze rushes through my hair like a song. It was beautiful and helpless. There I sat perfectly alone, the giant earth around me swallowing up my tiny bones, and there I helplessly sat with big blue eyes trailing the invisible beelines of moving people, talking people, laughing people, people, people, people. They're every-which-way it seems. I don't mind feeling small. In fact, I love it. The moment when the earth is telling you there is more to you than yourself, that is the moment of feeling small and knowing it. 

Then something happens.

It begins softly in your right ear drum. 

Then your left.

Two different noises transforming the world around you. 

A voice emerges, and it's different. 

It isn't singing to you, it's singing inside of you. 

Is it your own voice or the sky's? 

You cannot tell. 

It counts down. 

Slowly.

Calmly.

Then all at once--your're gone. 

The stars you cannot see are touching you, telling you something, dancing within you. The world around you changes into sparks of color, shooting light, dancing darkness all around your tiny body. 

It's marvelous. 

My head begins to tip back as it knows this is a beautiful moment I may never feel again in my small lifetime. My long hair trickles down my back, across my neck, two braids intertwining with my spine. I close my eyes. It's what I always do to see the magic. The sky is bluer than I've seen in such a long Winter time, it's astonishing. Riveting. Stupefying. This life really is lovely you know and I think the earth can feel me loving it. Suddenly I look away and there's someone watching me from a high window. 

It's a boy I do not know, staring at me intently. Who does that besides me?

What does he see I wonder. 

I wonder so hard I'm staring at him too and he doesn't look away for sometime. It's so incredibly strange it makes my heart leap for joy. A soft smile tugs at the corners of my lips, like it did when I first closed my eyes at the sky today. Finally, a brave human being after all. If I remember right, I look away first and then our eyes never meet again. 

How much did he notice? 

People hardly notice anything at all, these days. It's tragic really. 

I don't pride myself in saying I see anything at all, but I do stop and allow myself to feel small every once and a while and that is enough to know this life is more than what most people see it as. Of that I am certain. The ground around me pulled over my head like a blanket as I touched the blue sky with my soft pink lips and tickling eyelashes. I know this life is more than my pounding heartbeat. I know the words that drip down my rib-cage are not my own. Nothing belongs to me without belonging to the earth first. Everything we are connects to the roots we cannot even see most of the time. The roots that writhe and wriggle without ceasing constantly living below and within and above us. 

How marvelous is this life anyway?

One moment you can touch the sky and kiss the clouds inside your tangling hair and the next you can fall so deep inside the dirt below, you won't even recognize yourself all small and damp and new. If I could feel like the nothing of the earth every moment, I would. If I could turn myself into a small seashell beating against the wild ocean becoming something different, something exquisitely strange with every wave that beats against me, I would. 

If I could sing as nostalgic and childish and a wind chyme, I would every moment.

I would kiss every person I ever fell in love with even for an instant if I could. I would make them feel the love I've never received but I know someday I will. Kiss them sweetly, they could taste the passion I hardly exude to anyone but myself. 

I'm kind of selfish that way I think to myself.

I try to forget about my own existence as Kiersten for a moment, losing myself in the dirt I came from, the stars that are buried within a higher place I cannot name. I feel God in every moment of my forgetfulness. He is there in every dig, every tug of my spirit, every excursion into the soul He claimed as my own. Why does He love me so endearingly? Why doesn't He forget about me as easily as I do about Him? Where can I turn from the selfishness that has become me?

Please. 

Tell me I am worthless. 

Turn to me and remind me that I am nothing compared to the vast, prepossessing world above me. 

Whisper to me all the horrors I whisper to myself in the night I know are true. 

But you won't. 

You could if You wanted to, but You never will do that.

You will never make me feel smaller than necessary.

You, for a reason I may never name while I am inseparably apart of this earth, love me beyond anything You have created. Anything. Everything. Why? 

Father. 

I whisper pathetically quiet. 

Why do You love me? 

Don't you know what I am?

It's deathly quiet for a while and I can't confess it scares me because it sickly calms me in way that drives most humans mad. 

When you learn to listen you find answers you were never even looking for. 

It's quiet for a while before a crack in the clouds breaks again and I can hear something softly. 

It's like a small song bird chirping a tiny melody, 

only making one sound. 

My name. 

How exquisite. 

It's my Rescue Song. 

Just so.

-kiersten pauline benson

"Space Oddity" by: David Bowie

II/XXVI/MMXVI

Suburbs

Sometimes I catch myself walking through the avenues 

of my heart and surprise myself to find you are on every single sign.

Every street name is a part of you, a song, a memory, 

a something.

I think for a moment.
My teeth chew lightly on my lip 
as they always have.

I never knew so many nothings

could be so many somethings to me. 

Then I remember.

You set me on fire.

Peeling back the layers,

undressing the logic within me, 

I willingly let you waltz into my heart and steal it entirely.

I guess I never knew loving you-- 

wishing all these nothings could go on forever--

could mean so much to me. 

But I'm losing it!
Why do you mean so much to me?

I can't explain a thing about it. 

But I know someday I will. 

One day when the moon is brighter

and the nights are warmer

and perhaps you are there

I will tell you everything.

Every word of it. 

Every kiss. 

Every touch. 

Every sleepless night dreaming about you, 

it will all be revealed.

I love you. 

I don't want to, and I hate that I can't stand loving you, but I think it's because I know we're not good for each other. 

We're trapped in a daydream we can't escape from. 
The avenues;
the subways;
the bridges;
the wakeless suburbs of each other wind like
rivers and labyrinths within my silly heart,
going on forever. 

-k.p.b.
2/17/16

I Had a Dream About You

Never losing myself in the world with which I have created, you found me in a place I knew you'd someday appear. Like waltzing through an almost empty gallery I knew it would be only a matter of time before you found me and stopped to look a little closer. I had a dream about you, love. There we were in an unspecified painting surrounded by melting colours and all I remember is seeing you, your blues eyes on me, and a scrap of white paper resting in your hands gently. We were sitting close together, our knees probably touching and we were talking.  I loved how easily we found each other in our sentences. How happily we talked as if we'd never started and never ceased. We paused for a moment as you began to draw my face. The lighting was calm and grey like the charcoal in your soft hands and it felt warm like a sad spring day. 
It is strangely comforting to see your eyes rarely leave mine as you tell me how tirelessly you are trying to perfectly encapsulate their almond shape and blueish electricity. 
You are very passionate about this. 
My eyes follow the lines you are dragging across the pure paper, perhaps making the most beautiful and senseless drawing I have ever before seen.
It is no execution of technique or talent, but it is somehow compelling beyond reason.
I feel slightly undone but never for a moment notice you wishing to stop, as if this was all you ever wanted to do since the moment you laid eyes on me, and so neither do I. It seems I could watch you draw me forever. How egotistical that may sound--I only mean I am in love with the feeling of you wanting to watch me with those blue blue eyes, doing nothing more or less than swallowing the sweetness of my company.
I begin to think, to wonder. "How could anyone want to watch me without ceasing? Why would anyone find my company riveting, intoxicating, addicting? I am the one who possesses those feelings inexhaustibly. I am the one who loves the company of another human being with electric eyes and fiery passion." 
He keeps looking at me as if I am the entire world. 
As if I am the puzzle he can't quite figure out but would spend a lifetime trying to solve. 
His hands move intimately across the paper like decoding an equation purposefully. 
I have never before felt I deserved such a gentle look from an ocean of wild blue eyes, or any eyes for that matter. It truly is riveting. 
There was little time in matters of relativity but it existed shortly and we were happy. It was a simple snippet of a dream but it was marvelous. 
I would trade any seashell to feel that way once more. 
Any at all. 
-k.p.b
From a dream of mine only hours ago, February 23, 2016 Tuesday
"Without You" by: Oh Wonder (These two understand)

Strange Thoughts: A Poem about Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

BY BILLY COLLINS

I ask them to take a poem   

and hold it up to the light   

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem   

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room   

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski   

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope   

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose   

to find out what it really means.

headphones

A place that I hide when I no longer want to run from you.
There's a nook between loving you and hurting so badly I feel like a part of me has died,
and it's a familiar place I go to and I'm not too proud of.
Beneath the soft cushions
I lose myself.
Maybe it's because it doesn't hurt so bad.
Or maybe it's because it makes my heart race and pound so loudly I can almost hear it over the music.
I don't care.
I'm numb.
I just want to push everything out but the sweet music I can hear like an ongoing symphony echoing off the walls of my soul.
I just want to be lost.
What's wrong with that?

-k.p.b. 

small

Be happy! 
The world unlocks itself to you
when you unlock yourself to it.
Become quieter. 
Listen.
Look behind closed doors and press your fingers against the soft glass that is your window.
Stay curious. 
Make the vast darkness that surrounds you wonder why you're still smiling. 
Be brave. 
Feel small and become familiar with the earth with which you are constantly touching. 
See the enchantment, the magic--real life. 
Know that this life is the one, only wild and precious life with which you are given. 
Do you cherish it?

-k.p.b.

seashell

I push my ear against your heart
like I'm pushing it against a seashell,
trying to hear the ocean and the wind and the storm all
at once;
wrapped up in one heartbeat.
One moment in time.
One blissful memory trapped with you.

Say you love me.
Lie to me and whisper all the things I never knew a heart should feel.
Make me yours or
toss me to the ocean that I may be devoured by its hunger for me.
That I may be loved by my Maker and sculpted into something more vast and wonderful and desperately lovely than ever before.

Say you love me or
lie to me and make up the sounds of the ocean.
Hold me like a seashell.
Kiss me and taste the salt I was made from,
the bones of the ocean I have scraped against and miraculously emerged.
Say you need me or
toss me to the sea.
Forget about the sweet songs that leave nothing but the sad breath normal people blow
upon your lips.
Never knowing mine. 

Never feeling the vibration of the ocean floor inside the cage of your heart while I kiss you, 

holding you delicately like a seashell. 

Toss me

now.

Lie to me or

release me.

Tell me the darkest parts of your stormy mind.

Remind me what the pang of mist and mystery are against my soft cheeks, awakening my morning senses.

The breeze that blows us all away.

These eyes only remember sad tears of the ocean.

Can you tell?

If there is one thing I am certain of it is

the ocean floor has many secrets,

beautiful treasures, 

untold stories and maps.

But the greatest one to be is the one about you and me. 

Toss me. 

Now.

-k.p.b.


"The Breeze" by: Dr. Dog

Time

A seashell pressed sweetly to her chest.
A firm promise of this instant.
The childhood she once knew has returned and has come in the form of a sunset.
She smiles.
For she understands what this array of soft clouds tangled up in rays of sunlight means.
Everything has a meaning.
Every person touches you in some way.
Words are kind for they always teach.
She is always looking for her meaning and she is rarely disappointed.
Fingers trail softly on the lip of her gentle yellow mug, her nails curling around the white illuminated curtains like a gown for an evening.
Her lips press softly to the sky.
"I know you." She whispers.
And she never whispers quietly.
Tears warm and kind have slipped down the pillow of her thinning cheeks and hold her together like the heart that is swiftly breaking.
Words penetrate more than the waft of rain-scent on an august evening, pattering against the roof, against the wide glass window, and against the walls of her heart.
She believes inexhaustibly in the magic she knows is real. She can feel it. Why can't they?
Magic.
A word too often used and too little remembered. Rarely does a human above a child know what that word truly feels like.
"I believe you." She speaks softly to the clouds, her chest a blaze like the blue sky.
She sits.
She listens.
Her gentle hands rest softly over her chest as they always do when she feels the magic. When she is alive.
"I always believe in you, Peter Pan. Always."
This is her farewell of sorts.
This is her reckoning of childhood.
And there she is--no longer a woman, but a child. A girl.
So delicate.
So free.
So alive again.
Then the wind touches her stained cheeks and whispers to her gently.
She cries once more.
Crying is not a bad thing, it is a beautiful capability, I've always believed.
"This is the music I hear." She listens to the sky.
"This is the promise I will make." Her chest rises and falls gently, every lift and fall releasing the woman she knows she cannot be.
"I have to let you go." That is her promise for every one.
For the sky.
The moon.
The soft clouds.
For him.
For herself.
This is her promise, above all, for the sun setting slowly reminding her there is always time to love.
After all, time is chasing all of us
and we can never run too fast.

-k.p.b.

the road

Look around you.
Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew.
That ever is no time at all.
-c.m. (28)

Song of My Heart

And if you find me

I will be singing. 

Always and 

always 

I will sing the song of my heart.

Never will this world stop the endless verses

the fierce and at times 

soft songs inside me. 

Never, I say, never will this world make 

me forget to sing.

If you find me,

I will be singing. 

Always and 

always

the lullabies will come.

-k.p.b.

Weds. Feb. 17. 5:43pm. 2016

broken as butterfly wings

I smeared the thought of you
from my red lips

and felt saturated with that unforgiving
and hell forsaken look

 I felt saturated

wet with wanting

cold as bones

all alone with you

suffocating in my pretend happiness

and crushed
by one
hell forsaken look in your
dark
stormy
 eyes

-k.p.b.

10:58AM 1/26/16 Tuesday 

"Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known"

I've decided something.

For the past weeks I've felt such an immensity of sadness it has been choking me from the rib-cage up and seemingly suffocating every other short lived feeling opposite of it. Tears have ceased to flow heavily almost drowning me in toxic emotions and habits of mind. I've allowed myself to fall into a pit of passionate sorrow and though there is always a small window for that to occur and have it be appropriate, that window has not occurred and  I've learned from my addictive sadness there is always something more inspiring than sadness (even if sadness has immense inspiration as well, which I know to also be true) and it is it's opposite.
Happiness is what's worth fighting for. Joy, elation, euphoria, jonquils, jocunds, ecstasy, serendipity, jollity, contentment, peace, joviality, delight, glee, "evangelical zeal", felicity, merriment, optimism, enchantment.
As I've said before and I shall say thousands of times before my spirit leaves this earth to some better and happier place than the happy place I already inhabit now, "I refuse to live this life with nothing but love" and so I've decided something:
I am going to be happy. I am making the choice that will change my pattern of thinking, change my habit of heart, and change this enchanting world around me thrilled with the magical presence of life and love coexisting together.
I hope you don't mind that I've decided that happiness, no matter what people think, is more beautiful than any kind or form of sadness. Sorrow has beauty that is undeniable, but happiness, joy, those have a beauty that is inexhaustible, kind and gentle--feelings that cannot do anything but lift you, caress and heal you. Happiness is never poisonous or selfish or uncaring or destructive. Happiness motivates good thoughts, turns you toward higher feelings and actions of heart and spirit. Happiness is what people commonly confuse with lust or passion or desire. Happiness isn't really any of those things (except maybe passion in its innocent form) it is selfless and pure and infinitely heavenly. I know that I have made deep mistakes by allowing my passion to corrupt the idea of emotions that are good for me, but I am telling you as vociferously as I am telling myself now that I am turning my eyes back to my Heavenly Father because He and He alone is my Father in Heaven and He knows what happiness will transform my heart into gold and what shadows of happiness will transverberate it into sorrow and depression of emotion and loneliness.
I have always told myself that "I know what it is to be lonely, therefore I know what it is to be loved." Though I thoroughly believe those words have truth to them, as a lonely heart may be more receptive to love once it has found it, but if you let those feelings of loneliness consume you they will carefully erode feelings of gratitude and warp ideas of love with desire and lust and attraction. I am telling you now, who ever you are dreamer of this enchanting world's dreams, if you are searching for love as devotedly and unyielding as I am than do yourself one favor--remember how important it is to be happy now as you are searching and finding all kinds of love here.
You are very much alive now.
Remember that, as Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore said it best, "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
You control the light in your life; you hold in your hands now the flame of infinite love that you can either pass to others its warmth and inspiration and kindness, or you can blow out and let the melted wick wither and die like the feelings of depression and deep rooted sorrow.
Which will you allow to fill this wondrous and ravishing world you are inseparably apart of?
I have decided. I know which way my body and soul falls.
But the question is as imperative to me as it is to you because it isn't me asking it--it is God. It is life. It is love. It is whatever calls your name as beautiful as you hear it. Have you decided?

"sometimes I steal them to have a secret to keep."

I wear my watch 

to see my demons disappear.

It ticks incessantly 

reminding

me that this whirring within my 

chest 

right at the center of me

is real.

This life is real, too. 

Like stolen glances at 

withering sunsets and

long strolls beneath banking moonlight, 

we live for 

the moments

we often forget because they happen in an 

instant. 

I don't want to leave

this life with nothing 

but a broken watch 

screaming 

at me

yelling through my hair into my ear

that this life

is almost nothing, 

almost over, 

almost forgotten, 

almost fraudulent, 

almost anything 

but real. 

There is something more terrifying than dancing devils

in abandoned places 

and it begins with the word, 

'almost'. 

He almost chased her. 

She almost kept him. 

He almost found a way.

She almost loved him.

They almost made it. 

As I'm often told 

in the warm darkness of night from no one 

but myself,

"We live for love

or we do not live a life worth living 

at all."

And I think 

that is what my watch has been saying all along, 

that being lonely is almost as inspiring as being loved

and that is what the ticking is for--

reminding. 

Remembering. 

Finally, understanding. 

-k.p.b.

(To my "heart")

2/14/16

Sunday Afternoon

4:28PM

Dancing in the Moonlight

When you danced with me
I think I fell in love then.
I just didn't know it yet.

There I stood my hair
a drizzle in sparkling rain drops
clinging to my black pea coat

and there you were watching me
with those gripping blue eyes
that know exactly how to ensnare me
(like a rabbit in a snap trap).

It was so happy!
I can remember you pulling my hands
grasping them tightly and
ignoring every plea I made about
my horrible dancing.

"I can't dance!" I'd shout.
I'd beg you not to do it,
but you never listened.
I'm strangely thankful you didn't.

Music rings within me, even now,
happy and resplendent like a light fall of rain
on a small array of dancing young people, upon my heart, too.

A tangle of lights and
an intoxicating desire to fall fully next your
moving body and
pretend mine could move as happy
and young
and beautiful as yours.

You whispered we'd get married.
You teased me into submission.

Now all I can think of when I hear happy music
is dancing in the moonlight with you,
wishing more than ever I had grabbed your hand right back
and never let it go.

I still dream of dancing with you.
I see that night like a dream on replay, watching it from
high above through the jungle of smiling lights and
careless young people.

It goes like this:
I'm on the balcony absent of a coat feeling the cold air beckon me. The stars are watching me.
I quietly watch the happy people moving. Talking.
Existing so effortlessly.

Some are holding hands, others are sitting on wet metal chairs chatting. They look at each other and their eyes are brimming with unanswerable questions. What are they looking for? I ask no one in particular.
My eyes always seem to want to find yours.
My rigid fingers push upon the ledge and lean my body over slightly, perhaps wanting to fall, perhaps daring to fly.
I move away.

Slowly the people seem to mix with each other like a painting of jocund confusion.
Red lips. Brown hair. Blue jeans. Black umbrellas. Pale hands. Pink cheeks. Black shoes. Tan shoes. Black sky. Warm colors dominating the cold air.
It's beautiful.
I feel beautiful watching it.
A weary smile tugs at my cheeks.
(An old friend I've missed).

Then you're behind me asking for a picture.
Slowly I make my way down the staircase, you trailing excitedly behind me and we all squish together in a photograph that will forever convey the happiness of too many young people slowly losing contact with each other with each breath the night exhales.

We're so happy.
I'm so happy.
I almost don't recognize myself.

I recall climbing the wooden steps into your house and remembering this is
the first time I remember recognizing your house.
It's a well-lived home.
Chirps and birds and birdcages confuse me for a split moment, but then I'm smiling again.
It's such a beautiful home.

You're there somehow, sneaking behind my senses, and so is my sister.
Oddly it's only the three of us for a small moment.
We talk about roman candles and our last days together and then my smile fades.
Surprising tears threaten to flood from within me, but I won't let them.
I cannot cry in front of you.
I can't reveal the love I do not even recognize myself.

The memory floods from me for a second and suddenly you're there,
blocking my way through the door. As if I even wish to go through it when I have you inside it instead.

Flares are inside your eyes.
You look dangerously attractive.
It excites me into nervousness.
I can almost taste my heartbeat.
We talk quietly about a kiss or marriage or rather something I can't recall, but
you undid me.
You tugged at the knots of my heart with one penetrating look into my
diamond mind.

And all through the night I thought of you.
I thought of dancing and smiling so much my cheeks were stained with infinite happiness and then
I realize,
as I awake from this blissful dream,
I'm falling in love--
I'm falling wholeheartedly,
body dancing,
soul freeing,
in love with you.

How do you do that?

-k.p.b.
{Written for a nameless, happy night in October I shall never forget as long as I live.}
written february ninth, 11:31AM

moon river

Am I crazy because I watch old movies by myself and cry until my eyes sting?
I hold the pillow close to my chest and unconsciously whisper a prayer for every broken heart, every racing heartbeat and happy ending, a quiet plea escaping my lips pretending it is my own heart breaking, my heart racing and my happy ending.
Like ribbons of ink and bones the film is like a canvas of my soul.
I don't understand how music and books and films can move me so. It's like they tuck my hair gently behind my ear and know it's exactly what it takes to get me going, to turn me on, and to make my heart do a summer-salt.
When they sing songs of dream makers and summer palaces and unchained melodies of the raw heart I just don't know what to do with myself. I want to cry, but then I want to sing with them and slow dance with a person that isn't even there.
I watch too many movies on my own.
I think that's part of my problem.
My heart is so big it doesn't know what to do when something wants to share it--it just comes undone and then sits there next to my folded knees on the couch as I pop another old movie in and drown myself in the beauty of a moving screen and touching music and stories I can vaguely dream of having, but somehow feel like they are my own story of my life. Somehow...
Somehow I want to slow dance every day, but seem to find the closest partner my empty room or the empty couch, or a movie as lonely and understanding as myself.
All old movies are the same.
I love that so much.
-k.p.b. 

I Can Hear Music

"I Can Hear Music"
(The Beach Boys)

Ahhhhhh oooooo

This is the way

I always dreamed it would be

The way that it is, oh oh

When you are holding me

I never had a love of my own

Maybe that's why when we're all alone

I can hear music

I can hear music

The sound of the city baby seems to disappear

I can hear music

Sweet sweet music

Whenever you touch me baby

Whenever you're near

Lovin' you

It keeps me satisfied

And I can't explain, oh no

The way I'm feeling inside

You look at me we kiss and then

I close my eyes and here it comes again

I can hear music

I can hear music

The sound of the city baby seems to disappear

I can hear music

Sweet sweet music

Whenever you touch me baby

Whenever you're near

I hear the music all the time, yeah

I hear the music, hold me tight now baby

I hear the music all the time

I hear the music

I hear the music (baby)

Ahhhhh

I can hear music

I can hear music

The sound of the city baby seems to disappear

I can hear music

Sweet sweet music

Whenever you touch me baby

Whenever you're near

I cannot express in words alone how much this song means to me. 
Never before has a song made me feel this way and I confess I am at a loss of wondrous words to describe how perfectly whole this music makes me feel. 
It is like magic. 

I cannot stop smiling right now, as I allow it to enter my pleasantly confused soul. 
I'll confess even more that I have listened to it at least seven times today...
And I'm still in love. 
Very much so. 

I Can Hear Music...
The Sound of the City Baby Seems to Disappear...
and I don't mind at all that it has stolen me completely. 
I don't think of anyone, I just feel complete with myself listening to sweet music that jives so perfectly within me. 
I hear music that touches me so deeply
I write it gently on the pages of my favorite book, 
the very book I sleep and breath life with. 
I can hear music and I know I am exquisitely alive. 
I remember why I live. 
How this feeling changes me so.
-k.p.b.

(ribs)

my bones are chilly
and my eyes won't shut

the world is cold between my ribs
like icy knots from my jumbled soul
and all I want 

is the only friend I need
the one I ache to fall asleep next to
like a little kid again
never feeling like it's enough

which, of course, is you.

-k.p.b.

february 11, 2016 
thursday
12:25pm 

you've got mail: {prelude}

I am a mailbox waiting for your letter
gently keeping every note you've slipped inside me
every small brush against my skin
every happy flower
inside the corners, spilling from my mouth
never eaten
never touched too much
just loved
and cherished
every second of the day.

The Moon shines on your letter I know is coming to me.
Patiently it travels through the fires of the night to find me,
to tell me every unabashed secret--which we know is nothing more than a truth hidden within a pillow--
to warm the lonely night I am trapped in.

It begins,
"Oh pretty baby,"
and the rest is a blur of tears sliding
down the wooden post puddling
below me
never more happy
never more trusting
just existing in an rosy cloud.

(Loving you entirely).

-k.p.b.

t.h.d

si tu pouvais lire dans mon coeur, 

tu verrais la place où je t'ai mise
-g.f.

sunday night

Arms wrap around me tight and warm.
Reaching across my back and wrapping themselves around my shoulders snugly.
I've never felt more protected in my entire life for such a glimpse of a moment.
Sitting criss-cross on the dining room table so obviously miserable,
then encircled in a puzzling and startling embrace that
lasted seconds
but left me breathless.

It was so small.
Not one person has ever done that to me before.

How did you do it?
Why did you know it would leave me senselessly hopeful
and loved?

So undone.
Still helplessly confused about you.

Yet,
stepping around the perplexity,
ice skating across my heart,
I relish every moment of it.

-k.p.b.

{written on tuesday feb. 9}

in a week

"Downfall"

Everything about you
beats against me.
My mind beats against
you--against your lips
(I wish more than ever to push
against) against your eyes
(those acursed ocean bulbs)
and above all against your
heart (you never should've
let me hear
it.)
-k.p.b.

untitled (III)

I'm right here.
Those are my warms hands
ripping through the darkness
to find you,
to warm your hands out of
their confused loneliness.
Do not fear.
I am not afraid of loving someone
as special and ordinary, as yourself.
I'm right here,
mein klein
vogel.
Right here.
-k.p.b.

"Half a World Away"

Humming in my heart
a thrumming deepness
releasing from your chest--
my ear resolutely against it.
Call me beautiful one last time,
attractive and devastatingly lonely.
Whatever it is you see, tell me
everything.
To break my fragile bones
inside the chaos of your world.
Your rumbling voice, your careless
hands and ocean eyes--that is all I
wish for.
That,
and a kiss
from half a
world away,
the stars
pushing softly
against it--
our lips scintillating
through the
power between
us, between
the ocean,
between
anything that
makes me think
of you.
(which,
of course,
is almost
everything.)
-k.p.b.

untitled (II)

Have you seen that look
before? You shake your head.
It's the look no human soul can
conjure falsely; it is the look of a
thousand dying poets; the look of
quiet falling stars and red; blood
red; crimson red; strawberry red,
too. It is the look of many things, things
we vociferous birds cannot understand fully.
It is quiet, we are not. And the only way to hear
it is to stop and listen, which is something I
fear very few are willing to do. He nods. But he
doesn't understand, still. I sigh lightly. You see it there?
Hidden in the left-hand corner of her lips? There it is!
Clear as day, bright as night--a radiant recluse.
The only beautiful thing that makes sense to me.
Yet, sadly, the only thing most people miss inside
their diamond minds. Careful creatures forget to speak
and foolish ones neglect to listen. Stop, I tell him.
Close those ocean eyes for one moment and listen.
Can you hear it, I ask him. Can you hear the
dreams of a thousand quiet birds? Asking for nothing
yet, giving us everything? Don't be afraid, I whisper.
His eyes crunch up for a moment and then one single
tear drips from his eye like glistening honey.
You are finally listening.
-k.p.b.

untitled

"What are you waiting for?"

Am I asking myself this question

over and over

and over, 

or am I incessantly

hoping it might be you

that is doing just the same?

Either way--

we're stuck in banks of quiet snow

a thousand thoughts between each other.

Uselessly wanting

the unwantable. 

Why?

-k.p.b.

"A Kiss"

I always believed

a kiss would feel deep 

and slow, like two

hearts slipping their hands

together comfortably.

It never seemed

accurate to depict a kiss, 

a moment of finding a 

soul behind closed lids, 

as fireworks or an explosion. 

It never seemed right. 

(I guess I'll never know, for now.)

-k.p.b.