Her name in sand August 18th 2012

 I come to the sea

to find something

I know not what

the heat of the sun

burning my shoulders

as I've bend to write

her name in the sand much

as did the poet Spencer

and as was he

the waves came

and washed her name away

and being as stubborn as he

 I wrote her name again

 hearing her voice in the waves

mocking me

calling me foolish

 to believe I can make her immortal

 with such and unsubstantial substance

 even when names writ in stone

fade over time

we all turn to dust and forgotten

 this mocking voice claims

 but I like Spencer stood defiant

 sea whipping my hair

 staring my heart as I proclaim

the way he did that said the stone

 will hold her name

 as well as my poems can

writing as he wrote

her name in the heavens

where neither sea nor death

can dislodge her

my poems keeping her above

 long after the world

has subdued it

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Watching traffic flow January 28, 2025

  

The trucks, huffing and puffing, shift gears with a grind and groan, to make the incline, while I watch from the sidelines like a fan, this chilly way with its stiff gusts of wind, making me long for a spring still two months away.

We should not hurry time when it is already like a leaking tire, gradually deflating yet in winter, in the deep freeze, we need reprieve, somewhere in the otherwise inhospitable world where we might find mercy we rare achieve, rooting for the passing traffic like sports fans, the strange faces of the tractor trailer drivers looking back down at us through frosted windshields as they work their gears and struggle to get over this hill where they can down shift again, our lives, mine, hers and others bound together by some unseen threads we dare not sever or lose ourselves in the process,

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The glass from which we drink Sept. 10, 2012

 

I don’t see the glass as

 half empty or half full,

sipping what it contains,

 still drunk on the memory of it,

even as I lose sight of the details,

and know the glass won’t

contain enough to get me drunk

this idea we can get

through life with a shot of something

when we clearly can’t,

and know no matter how

much we consume,

how long we sit at the bar,

we won’t find any measure

of redemption.

We do not drink from it to forget

We can never forget

The look in her eyes

Her glistening lips

Her posture on the bar stool

Beside us,

We drink to endure,

To take the edge off

The sting of what once

Was extremely painful,

The false moves we made

The misinterpretations of fact

We drink to keep from being

Too sober, too somber,

Too painfully aware

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Gone in a blink Feb. 11, 2015

 

You blink; it’s gone,

What you thought you would have forever is to fleeting, you can’t even see exactly when it leaves.

This aspect of love, this specter of existence, this a bit to use what you have to get, what you want to get, what you need, until one day, it vanishes, leaving nothing behind, not even a shadow, and you wonder, was it wasted when you still possessed it, did it expire before you were through with it, this twisted rope entwining love with the lust that binds us, and we must untangle it before we can untie it, and then maybe its threads still cling to us like dust or a splinter gone so deep you dare not dig it out, the whole time you wonder should you have cast it away before it cast you away, and whether it is possible to get it back, and whether you want it back if you could.

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Poetry Journal Feb. 13, 2024

 

 

 

Feb. 13, 2024

 

Nothing every last forever, entropy eroding the roots of what we believe will survive, sworn statements that we think will endure when even what we build with steel won’t survive rust eating at the foundations we put down in the assumption of strength, nothing is as strong as we assume or as dependable as we hope for, especially love, which like plastic begins to crack as soon as we create it, the near-invisible fractures  we do not notice until they begin to break, by which time it is too late to save it.

Nothing survives this world and we must accept this or drive ourselves crazy assuming we can, when we can’t save anything especially love.

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Visions of former paradise Oct. 17, 2012

  

 I will always want it, especially now that it is gone, all this hits at times like this, the melancholic autumn when the tips of leaves show their change amazingly beautiful (as is she) thick with hints of what once was (and might be again), though as the leaves fall they litter the ground at my feet, but not for me. Everywhere I look I see aspects of her, the ruby leaves as potent as her pursed lips, the retained green framing the world in which I see her face, dark eyes, her shape bursting from every corner, all destined to fade away not the nothing of winter. I ache for the spring that might follow that, knowing it is not possible, these are the last leaves of the only seasons I will ever know with her, the chill having come too early, turning the blooms inside me into brown, leaving me only the memory to cling to, the rattle of the dying leaves, and the vision of empty branches, my life swaying with the same wind, as I stumble ahead with visons of former paradise I will never know again.

 

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Body blows july 30, 2012

  

it is the day after

 the day after her birthday

and I'm still hungover

 Punch-Drunk from serving

as her punching bag

my ego bleeding instead of my nose

some bouts you don't recover

 from easily or soon

recalling those moments when

you should have ducked and didn't

feeling each body blow

ribs still aching

not quite a knockout punch

 more like a series of rabid jabs

 each leaving a permanent bruise

 even a day after the day

 after her birthday

when I served as a punching bag

 and most likely deserved it

with a referee still hovering over me

 as I lay prone on the canvas

 each count up to 10 done

 in utter slow motion

me perfectly aware

 I am out for the count

if only it would get it all over with

 

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