On this sea of doubt June 2, 2015

  

She is a siren when she sings, her voice playing on each of us in a different way, shaping us all into an orchestra as she conducts us, stirring us up, weaving us into her songs.

I hear her whenever I close my eyes, and feel her song touch me in ways I never imagined anyone could, even though I know the songs she sings, she wrote, are for someone remote, and yet, I must tie myself to the mast of this ship, to keep from slipping into melancholy, a trance from which I know I cannot escape, her voice seemingly so soothing, I am in her spell, she is the siren who sings and whom we sailors cannot resist, this sea of doubt, this need, this painful remembrance we suffer all this time later, and yet, we never cease to listen

email to Al Sullivan

The illusion of love Sept. 27, 2015

  

I come down to the place where skyscrapers decorate both sides of a river down which cruise ships sail, at a time of day when the sun glistens on the windows like sparks or fire, a moment too short to last as much the way love sometimes is, a suggestion of something grant that always later disappoints, sunset always an illusion that always leads into night, and while I prefer dawn, I can rarely come there to see it, and so must accept this brief glimpse of an unfiltered promise, and then the deep dark that much come after, the sparks on the windows, the end of the day, the parade of steel; and glass, and, of course, the illusion of love.

email to Al Sullivan

A beard or not? Oct. 15, 2025

 

 

I didn’t shave today, and only partly did so yesterday. I have no inclination to grow a beard since these days it is bound to grow out white and as patchy as when I grew a beard at half my age; I feared less how old I was back then, but how incomplete, facial hair before it became fashionable again, when for a time, men refrained, perhaps too lazy (as I still tend to be) to tend to it, keeping it neat enough to keep us from looking savage.

Perhaps women admire men with beards these days, men who are brave enough to fill their face out with hair, that ragged, manly look, that manhood we only read about in books about mountaineers from long ago, though I cant’ imagined how ragged I look with a chin full of white betraying my age.

email to Al Sullivan

Pink clouds June 1, 2015

 

 

Pink clouds decorate the horizon, taking the shape of lovers before the dark of night, the shifting bodies embracing each other, a dance that comes with chance, the touch here and here, the kiss of lips, the in and out of hips, this thing we see all in our heads, a wish fulfillment rarely fulfilled as we search the skies for meaning, we rarely find in life, the tenderness of soft clouds, the imagined hands we use to sculpt out of our universe that which we need to feel for real, sunset always best, a lingering time between the stark reality of day, and the back of dark out of which we cannot shape anything, clouds shaping that which we need most, the feelings we need to feel before we dream.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Painting the scene aug 1, 2012

  

the heat has come

 in my brain I paint

lurid pictures of sweating bodies

 colliding

 moist from head to toe

as he (whoever he might be)

 looms over her

 the redden tip of his stick

easing into her moist red receptacle

 plugging in to make the engine run

his hands spread across her chest

 as he presses in

starting it all up again

drawing deep then out of her

 she feels all of him inside

 she clenched around it

as he pumps her

drawing not a drop of water

but intense acute pain

that spills over into pleasure

I see them naked together

 each sharing each other's sweat

each drinking the sweetness

of that moment

 lip to lip

 chest to chest

thigh to thigh

driving into her

 hoping to create fire

as both need this passion

to explode inside and outside

I need it too

I only feel the pain.

email to Al Sullivan

Armor Aug. 24, 2014

 

 

I wear no armor the way she does, and so, I stand naked in the sun when she come to wage war, locked up in impenetrable metal that does not protect her from suffering wounds, yet keeps any from being fatal, while I, exposed, my breast open to each stroke of sword, not her, instead my own, as this is a battle I fight with myself, she hardened if not safe, deep in a dungeon of steel, she created for herself, unmoved, unable to fully express love, one cannot find peace inside a rickey piece of rusted steel, unable to feel blows, good or bad, she is always wounded on the inside, just as I am without,  and still, I envy her and he armor, even as I hate my inability to reach into her, needing to feel more than her wrath, needing to feel her breath, her gentle lips on mine, the feel of her breasts beneath my fingers, the depths of her into which I might plunge my blunt sword, when even that space is protected if not immune, having born all the wrath of others before me so she shows no pain even when she feels it. And yet, at times, I can see through her metal mask, sensing what she feels, hearing perhaps the constant bang of on her metal heart, as I realize I cannot never reach the soft part she does everything to protect.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Stumbling block aug 24, 2012

she's on the verge of greatness

or so she thinks

putting together the plot

 that will bring a great man down

secret meetings with management

 who want to know what she knows

 and who told her and

 is her source credible enough

to risk losing it all

if the flops

she looks confident

 having confided in this man

 who gave her so much before

while sneaking James

 feeds me the details

 not saying how he knows

what he knows or why

 he's willing to sacrifice his personal godfather

perhaps like the rest of us

he's in love with her

and she reading what I write

 calls me to ask me to remove it

telling me if I leave the item

it will ruin it all for her

 a stumbling block

on this glorious road to greatness

tripping her up

a missed stepping stone

she needs and I am naturally

 in the way

though I don't want to comply

 I remove it because like James I still love her

 

email to Al Sullivan