You Can’t Love Me

You can’t love me
There’s no chance
Built a wall around my heart
Surrounded by a cage
And then a bunch of booby traps
Don’t try to force your way through
I’m no boyfriend, no part-time lover
Not even qualified for a one-night stand
I’m one-hundred-percent husband material
So don’t blow me a kiss
I’ll just blow it away
Mi casa es no su casa
My house is not your house
My house is hers, just hers, always hers.

Once

Once I thought you were a zero
The queen of numbers
Able to morph all things within
Yet leave them changeless

But like the number zero
Unfortunately you have an ability
To make all things around you
Equal your value

And once I thought you were just a pest
But I’ve come to realize
You are much more like a
pestilence

Only you
Can turn
Every thing
Into no thing

Your Day

Your day
Shouldn’t be
Just one
Since the love you deserve
Couldn’t be received
In a night and a day
I would start with a month
And a present for each date
Though in my heart of hearts
I celebrate your birth every time I look your way

Don’t Let Your Mother Read These Feelings (A Poem From My Younger Years)

I want to stretch you to the stars
Unlock all your windows and doors
Take you to a romantic peak you’ve never been to before
Turn up the music on the way
Only pop and rock and roll
Then rest your jet-lagged soul
Since it’s not just these words
I’m fluent in touch too
Once ignited there’s
No tidal wave on Earth
That could put me out
I have full mastery
Over the flames
So hot I could burn endlessly
Even as a fire in Antarctica
Feel my heat just one time
And they’ll hear your screams
From the land of the free and the home of the brave
All the way across the sea to the highest point of the Himalayas
But—please!—don’t let your mother read these feelings
Because I was grounded when my mother read yours

I Don’t Know Very Much

I’m unsure of how to start a fire in the wild
I don’t know how many elements are on the periodic table
I can’t really recall the location of every state or country
Nor parallel park or write my cursive correctly
So maybe I just don’t know very much
But I do know that any time spent with you
Is a chance to have the greatest day of my life

Overambitious Love

By Benjamin Grossman and Cassa Bassa

Her emerald beauty circled his upright being
She stretched her sublime allure to capture the snow 
He felt the weight in totality 
It exceeded what he could possibly endure

Most days there was a smokey haze between them
And this fog formed uneven walls 
With tiny openings just wide enough 
To let toxic fumes leak through

In desperation, she let out her slow poison 
He turned himself inside out to survive
But was never the same man as before
Nor she the same woman

They had interwoven like a tree wrapped in vines
They wanted to thrive  under any conditions
That’s what all lovers long to do 
Tragically they couldn’t harness the moonlight
Nor grow within the embers of dying flames

(This is part of a collaborative poetic effort between myself and Cassa Bassa. Make sure you check out her blog by visiting Flicker Of Thoughts. She’s a favorite poetess of mine.)