Saturday, January 24, 2026

Down pour October 13th 2025

  

Cool air comes after the rain, not yet frigid but far from the blistering heat that greeted me prior to the down pour, this pattern always the same despite the predictions of the chicken littles who constantly tell us the sky is falling, when in fact it is only rain; the pain we feel not from rain or heat but absence of something we need or want, the spirit of it continually within us regardless of what weather brings, the ache we suffer when we forget our umbrella or the eye patch I once wore, and so become invisible. I still venture forth in the rain or shine in heat or cold because it is what life is and we need to feel these things just as we need to feel love to know we are still alive


email to Al Sullivan

Friday, January 23, 2026

Cupid’s lament August 23rd 2014

  

All this time later, I still feel the sting of it, the arrow in my heart, a dart self-inflicted, the way Cupid did himself, aimed at someone only to have it bounced back and strike me in the place I had aimed for in her, my heart beats around it, I dare not pluck it out, wishing the whole time she had been the author of it, and her aim, true, this war we wage with no victors, just casualties like me, a blow struck, reverberating still inside me each time my heart beats. Yes, I still bleed.

Had I aimed better or better still, refrained, I might suffer less, hating the notion I did this to myself and have no one else to blame, a love-stick Cupid, blind to everything, bleeding deep where it cannot heal;, my own arrow sticking out of me like a thorn, and all these year later, my heart pounds at a reminder of my ill luck, while she is off and free, untethered by any arrow, least of all mine.


email to Al Sullivan

Sunday, January 18, 2026

Going back

 May 19th 2025 


I wish I could live my life backwards, the way Merlin did, to avoid the pitfalls and unto my mistakes I can see coming, even at the cost of not knowing where I end up, forgetting not what I did before, rather what I am expected to do, and I wonder, will love be better in the rewind then when I livd my life going forward? will going back alive the pain of it as I approach it the other way around, reverse the whole thing so I forget heartbreak or, as I look ahead (back) to what made love so special when it began, recoup the magic before the vanishing act, time making the whole thing better until I get to the nub of it, that special moment when I first recognized that love was love 

Still longing for it

 June 19th 2025 


I still think about it, about not having it when once I did, one of life's painful lessons we must learn the hard way, not self denial rather exile, all these years later, still mesmerized, hypnotized, unable to make heads or tails of it, or what led up to its decline, and whether it was really real in the first place, you don't long for it for so long and think it was empty, the residue of something telling you it must have been something once, even if it no longer does, even if too much time has passed, this evaluating it, real or not, I still long for it, still think about it, about what it meant if it meant anything and if it still does, when I wanted to

Getting to the core of it

May 30th 2015 I crawl across your skin with my fingers, spider like, that same hungry look in my eyes, and I touch those most sacred places, the knot of hills, the depth of the valleys, dry land and moist, then repeat this with my lips and tongue, tasting the salt of sweat then the sweet juice that inspired by it all, a slow crawl over a landscape I ache to learn more about, in every way possible, to feel how the Earth moves with each inch I travel, the shake of you as you shudder, I taste it all as if I traveled miles from top to bottom, the lingering over each earlobe, the slow suck at each breast, then to the core of it where the greatest treasure is, as I reach as deep as I can to get all that I can

Friday, January 16, 2026

Echoes Dec. 29, 2012

  

I talk to myself in an echo chamber, so, the only voice I hear is my own, when I still wish I could hear yours. Maybe it is still there somewhere, rebounding off the walls of this museum I call my brain, most apparent in the dead of night, in the silence the world sometimes brings after sunset when the echoes are least unbearable, and I can suppress my thoughts as I search for yours, this late in this dying year when we are condemned to look back at what we’ve done, and who we’ve become; the echoes not as acute as the need for me to listen for the more subtle voice I know must be there, not so direct as conversation as we once had, and yet, an unbreakable connection you do not wish for but most somehow tolerate. I listen for you to speak, to whisper in the cacophony of echoes, to relate something I might otherwise miss, a piece of this history collected in my mind, an exhibit I must revisit each night when I close my eyes and listen for you, praying not to lose your voice among the echoes of my own.


email to Al Sullivan

Thursday, January 15, 2026

Fighting fire with fire May 28, 2015

 


The fire inside her burned so hot, I had to use a fire house to extinguish it, or tried, her inferno setting me ablaze as we wrested to subdue the flames, rolling back and forth, in out of control fury as I pumped myself up to get to the point where I could squirt inside, but alas to no avail, the more we pumped the hotter the fury got, consuming us, and yet we could not stop, needing to reach that point where we could eject it, and then let the flames subside, as we clutched each other for support, her fire still smoldering even as mine went out, hers setting me ablaze again, until we both came to realize, the only way to contain it was to fight fire with fire until we were consumed.

 


email to Al Sullivan