The box aug 29, 2024

  

it never really goes away

you just put it all in a box

and put the box in the drawer

somewhere in the back of your head

 and try to forget it

only you never do

can't because bits of it

always seep out the cracks

in the box where the duct tape peels

and out the drawer and into your head

 and then you think about it again

 the memories of it how good or bad it all felt

 how much you would like to go back

and do it all over again only

 this time doing it right

sometimes at times like these

 you feel the longing again

 the ache you forgot about

how potent it is

was and always will be

and you try to stuff it back into the box

 only you find it no longer fits

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Where Burr shot Hamilton sept. 9, 2024

 

I go back each week

 to the place where Burr shot Hamilton

and feel the vacancy

 passed the building where

she perched to smoke from her window

 on to that stretch of road

where I can see the New York skyline

 spread out like a feast

 a road I took on a bus as a kid

for this view even though

that bus took way longer to reach New York

than other buses did

the view worth the delay

then and even now

though her absence fills my head

 when I come when I look

 out at the River from the park

 the world before me like an oyster

 she used to eat

I can't come here now and not miss her

even though her time was a painful one

 and always will be

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Milk and cookies Dec. 23, 2012

 

I would leave cooked and milk for Santa; I would rather leave these for you, if you do not hold it against me, this dietary diarrhea we must endure, how not to get fatter or older or maybe somehow remain wise, this time of year always haunting me, for fear I’ll end up with coal in my stocking when I hope for so much more; perhaps don’t deserve, like the bicycle I wanted for my birthday, or love I need yet cannot find. I would leave a gift for you on your doorstep, yet know you’d hate me if I did, no happy times text message, no Christmas card mailed from some remote and unrecognizable location; You would always know who sent it, even if I’ve refrained from using my name, mile and cookies left on a table near the tree, not for the fat man, but yet a sign of love I can never get enough of, even if you give me coal, even if you hate me for wishing you peace. I would leave milk and cookies if only I could.

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The day after the day with the longest night Dec. 22, 2025

  

It is the day after the day when winter came, thought the cold arrived earlier, a stranger in the night after having lived through a mostly mild Fall, this day after the day with the longest night, and I wonder at the dreams I have, if I got less from this day than what I dreamed the day before, waking erected, having imagined something that never happened when I sincerely wish it had, what we embrace in dreams eludes our conscious minds, feeling the need, drawn to it like a desperately thirsty man to a well, where we drink until we drown and this does nothing to make us less thirsty or less erect, we still wake craving.

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Out in the cold Dec. 2, 2012

  

I fear I will not hear that voice again, even in harsh refrain, a silence so astounding it deafens me, this plant I once saw as a rose (with all this thorns), now seems a weed I dare not pluck, having no other to take its place; even if its scent is sour rather than sweet, I know thee are still fair, most of all in my thoughts, and so the fault need be with me, a faulty gender who has turned perfection into something spoiled, how much service I would render thee if I could, if then would let me, to rejoin what once was, happiness, though I know this is not possible and so what joy I take from thee is all in my mind and dreams, what satisfaction I must generation for myself, even tough it is you that will always inspire it. I know a warm heart beats within thee, inside thy breast, only it does not beat for me, and that from thee I might generation a million unspoiled pleasures, should chance allows it while in reality I am out in the more desolate, desperate and cold, as if in a winter rain that withers all it touches rather than makes things grow.

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The last leaves Dec. 10, 2025

 

The last leaves from the trees in the yard are gone from limbs, strewn flat on the ground in need to be raked, when the forecast already predicts a deep chill, though not yet below freezing, the cold seeping deep into my bones, retained until spring thaw, mother nature’s holy ritual as the calendar winds down to the official first day of winter, and then three bitter months of bitter cold we must endure before we feel warmth again, before we see the first buds promising the return of leaves to the trees, promising a sense of hope, the way we hope love will embrace us, each day marked off as if a prison sentence, locked in this frigid embrace until we are recalled to live, love resurrected as with the leaves.

 

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What connects us May 9, 2015

 

I like to think there is more to connect us than what lies between those legs of yours, though in the dark of night, when I move, I often think of you, I stroke up the fires that makes you come alive in my mind, and imagine again how it feels to plunge in deeply and hear you moan, this fantasy that arrives just before my eyes close and I descend deep into dream where it all become that much more intense, and no number of strokes can contain it.

I like to think there is more to it than this, and yet, this is what I miss, the game of tag, touching that button I know will make you react, each time I get deep enough to push it, this thing we do (I imagine) that connects us again and again.

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