Yellow Leaves Nov. 27, 2025

  

Yellow leaves cling to the tree outside my sunroom window, the last batch before the deep freeze comes, on this day when the big balloons make their way down Broadway in the city that never sleeps across the river, this day when we seek reasons to be thankful, when – at this time of life – grateful just to have survived, having had what we hand when we had it, a gift beyond reckoning, appreciating the small things that over time have become big things, even when they have settled down into the yellow leaves of memory, those things that cling to us and resist the deep freeze we know must inevitably come.

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A picture a thousand words won’t make 2014

  

Night time passed

Once more without you,

One of a thousand

Or tens of thousands

I will pine about

Making shapes of you

In the dark

Like a child makes

Pictures with crayons

Unsubstantial

As compared

To the reality we once knew,

A vacancy I still

Cannot fill,

A picture

A thousand words

Do not make

When we’ve forsaken words

There is nothing to bring back

Nights as they once were,

Merely the memory of them,

With each new night

And its recollection

Making those memories fade

Leaving us with a thin outline

We need to refill

With things

Other than what once was

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the voices in my head sept 10, 2024

  

I still hear her voice in my head

 the way a mad man might

 stirred up after all this time

 like dust from a place I failed to sweep

 yet find needs sweeping

the midnight phone calls

the text after text

the memory of what it was

 or never was

how can I even be sure

 I hear her voice even

 when it's not there or on the CD player

or SoundCloud

what was and perhaps could never be

a voice long gone silent

 in the waking world

 yet not yet dreams

I wish to hear the sound

even when the images fade

 and I need to remind myself

who it is they are connected to

Eden abandoned

hell not fire so much as absence

the inability to have

what I desire most

my fault. her choice

she being the one to decide

who to talk to

 who is worthy of attention

 when all I ache for

is to hear it again

for real

 

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Wind and rain August 17, 2014

  

 the wind rattles the windows and I think it is you, this ghost that rises with the flash of light and rumble of Thunder, and in the dark I wait and dream, rain peppering the roof and walls, the way I want it on you, to sit secure, there in some cupboard where I might tear open the buttons of your blouse and feel both, trembling under my still chill palms, hand at the tips, perfect fit for my lips, the rattling windows, the rain on the roof and walls, and you beneath me as if I am a cloud and need to bequeath to you all that has pent up in me for so long, a deluge flooding each orifice and still unable to fill you up, windows rattling, wind blowing, me inside you for refuge, I tear at your slacks until all is exposed, rain-like into you, all I can no longer contain, this storm everlasting, me needing to break free, needing to be satisfied, when we both know it can never be so, I sit here, wind rattling the windows, rain spouting out of me but not into you

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In the dark May 4, 2015

 

in the dark,  I still fall, too brittle to wait for it to be real again,

 in the dark, I search for a place to place my tongue as I feel the snake sniffing as if to strike

 in the dark, I clutch the gear shift with both hands, trying to get the gears to mesh

 in the dark, I wait for the moment when it becomes real again, the way that first kiss was real, and the first touch of all her sacred places

 in the dark, I kiss again, I touch again, and find that place to place my tongue  fingering my  snake

 in the dark I still believe anything is possible, even when it is not, even when it's all I wish for all the time

 in the dark

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Free as a bird May 27, 2025

 

 rain dots the tops of cars as I steer down the central shopping district, too early for the stores to open and so it feels as if I strive through a ghost town, a few early risers getting coffee, a few street urchins selling bottled water, while the huddled masses still rest their weary heads in the deep sleep from doorways, sleeping off habits and their hunger until the store keeps sweeps them away with the litter, the rain clearing up the gutter except for night the debris as we wait for the normal life to pick up after the nightlife ceases, and I think of you, away from all this, free as a bird

 

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Gun Metal Oct. 11, 2024

  

The sea is never gray

this time prior to dawn

but gun metal dark

the sea absorbing

the darkness of the night

the way by day

it absorbs heat

at night it sucks into itself the dark

as I make my way to the wet sand

where the waves kiss my feet

chilling me. making me ache all the more

 for something I know

 the waves have already taken

 something as cold as gun metal

and as unmoving

 something that is beyond reach

 so even the coming sun won't warm its heart

I still long for it and feel the grip

of the sea around my heart

 the beat of which matches

stroke for stroke

 the rise and fall of the waves

the foam filling me more intensely

I feel to join it

the in and out of it

my warmth cast out

 into the gun metal wave

 until the sun comes

and if by miracle

the seas warm it again

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