Thursday, October 9, 2025

Water tower April 10, 2012

 


The tower haunts me,

awake or asleep,

 a relic from another century

that always reminds me of you,

rising high in the sky where I pass,

 or even from place where

I should not see it from,

 a brick spike I pass

when I come to you

and when I leave,

 symbolic of some deep desire

I dare not openly express,

yet feel deep down into my bones,

ripe with the memory

of songs you sing,

with me a pathetic Hercules

 or Odysseus

who must be tied to the mast

of my ship so as not slip into doom.

You, the unquenchable siren,

 who resides just north of where

the tower stands

for all the water this thing once held,

 cannot satisfy this thirst I have,

 always there to remind me

of what I want but know

 I should never possess,

always visible though

most vivid in those hours

 when I dream deepest.


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Inch by inch (2013)





your fingers, still warm from wrapping around the cup of tea,

 reach over the table and touch mine,

 your nails pale against my tough skin,

 the pace of each finger leaving their impression on the back of my hand,

 hard, but not too hard, dtermined to draw my hand to you..

 The pale room hums with the remote movement of of remote traffic 

too far beyond the walls for either of us to feel,

 this room filled with your preferences, with your clam shell stare 

and your oyster lips, is all there is,

 heated breath rising and falling with its own tides,


 inch by inch my hand reaches over the table top to where you are lingering 

as the soft embrace between each button, 

warm growing warmer, breathing nearer to despair, 

the air as thin as mountain tops and me an anxious mountain

 climber desperate to reach the top, inch by inch



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Wednesday, October 8, 2025

The worst wounds July 30, 2014

  

There are no easy victories in this war of words waged on pages that are no longer pages made of paper, although the devastation remains clear, the wide range of abused branches set to flame in the exchange, the painful turmoil only exaggerated rhetoric can bring, wounds forged so deeply and with such rage that no stitch in time can made them heal or at least heal correctly, leaving twinges on gray days we must endure until the skies turn blue again. No one win when both sides stumble away with wounds this deep, inflicted with the most terrible weapons, no knife or bullet, but with sharp edges of what we call love, and it is far too late to surrender, the damage already done, a treaty managing merely to halt the hostilities, not mend what has already been done, war of words more debilitating than an atomic blast, radiating into every park of the anatomy, especially that places we previously derived pleasure from, the worst woulds rising from where the hear once found surety in.

 


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Safe and sound May 30, 2025


I park and watch the rain drops gather on my windshield, making my already blurry vision that much worse, this distortion of reality that brings me strange comfort.  I do not wish to see the world too clearly reveling my illusion of safety that I feel as I watch the world get wet while I set dry inside, unmoved by the elements, I grip the wheel and wait for the rain to cease, if it ever will, these blue days, this mood I crave, to fee alive even in the midst of adversity, the knock on the hood, the tear of a planet, a day in the rain, safe and sound if only for the moment, all too blurry to fully make out.


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Poetry Journal Feb. 20, 2024


 Feb. 20, 2024

 

She must be scared to death or maybe bored to death, having to do this all over again after so long believing she would never have to – the hamster wheel in her head spinning faster and faster or maybe – as Todd Rungrin once put it – the merry-go-round she just can’t get off of or at least not on the ground, spinning round and round, up and down, dizzying to watch even from a distance, painful to endure since she assumed the ride had ended long, long ago.

This is not what she wanted when she bought the ticket; it is what she got stuck with, and must wait out the ride, for when the spinning stops, wherever that goes, and wherever she ends up


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Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Feel it April 15, 2015

  

I feel it more than I see it, her shape filling the spaces new leaves will soon occupy, thit time of year, each year, will continue to haunt me, teasing with the memories of how she felt an d how she still feels, which I knew but never will know again, the wrong kind of green in my eyes, pondering about the lucky man or men (maybe women, too) who get to feel what I’m denied, a specter in my dreams that ruins me the luxury of even imagining that man, those men or women, are me, and ow different it might feel being with her as one of a multiple of men or women, the mind’s eye always exaggerating the most banal act, when I might settle for a handshake or a kiss when even an orgy would not be enough, contemplate every way imaginable in the absence of the possible


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Wine (written in 2013)


 

The liquid sloshes as I carry the bottle into the office.

Red wine though I know she mostly drinks white.

It sloshes like it did that day in her apartment when she didn’t have any and I didn’t bring any and we both strolled down the street to the liquor store, where she bought it and brought it back, red wine instead of white, sweet as blood.

Maybe it’s why I bring red wine this time, as a memory of a happier moment when that wine led to something else just as sweet.

I hold the bottle by the neck and keep it by my side, trying not to let it seem obvious to the receptionist what I have.

She guesses anyway, wanting to know why I’m here when its not Tuesday, though knows that, too.

They are too close for my comfort, telling each other everything, and I’m scared if they share this bit it’ll spoil the whole point.

How do I explain how innocent this really is, my bringing in a bottle I promised after she – my coworker – asked for me to take her out for a drink.

After my leaving her at the bar that night, It felt awkward going out with her again. So, I told her I would drop off a bottle instead.

How could I be so stupid, coming in on a day that no one expects me and so makes it all too obvious I’m up to something, and the receptionist has a nose for such things.

But I picked a day and time when I know she wouldn’t be at her desk upstairs, not trusting myself to see her after her screeching at me on the phone, knew if I met her face to face at this moment I might melt, still aching, still wishing we might go back to that first bottle she shared in her flat, and what transpired after wards.

Too much wine has flowed under the bridge since then, red wine, white wine, and those terrible in-betweens.

Even on Tuesdays, when I’m supposed to be here, I almost melt, seeing her across the meeting table, struggling not to look too deeply into her eyes.

I get drunk just looking at her, as if I am a bottle full of wine whose cork might pop if shaken too briskly.

Or even that first time, after the texts started and how disappointed I felt when she suggested we go out for a drink, a Thursday, maybe, when I said I couldn’t, having still work to do, meetings to cover, and yet utterly elated by her merely asking – drunk even before we had the chance to have our first drink.

At least, I got a rain check.

This came around the same time she started to text him at night, innocent ramblings at first, the drip, drip, drip of something ready to pour down into my life, the first sips of a fine wine I opened my mouth wide, edger to receive, joyful exchanges even when I crossed that line of sobriety I knew I could not step back from without pain.

I wanted to drink up whatever she offered, greedily imagining what might come next.

Back then, after such late nights, I voraciously anticipated sitting across the table from her at the office on Tuesdays, reshaping into a mental reality what were mere dreams the night before.

Now, here, in the office, standing before the receptionist’s desk with my hand gripping the neck of the bottle I brought, I feign innocence, desperate to recreate a baffled look, and then to explain how the bottle was a gift, to apologize for a disagreement she and I had had over some work related issue – hoping that she had not shared the truth about how I had abandoned her at the bar, or the intense pain in her voice screeching at me as I stumbled home drunk on too many glasses of wine, that taste still sour on the back of my tongue.

The receptionist looks at me as if she thinks I’m drunk, too. This is not good news. She is too close to the girl upstairs, perhaps close enough to have shared talk about me, even though the girl upstairs keeps secrets.

And what if the receptionist tells the boss, a man I already suspect of being involved with the girl, as drunk on her as I am, and possibly as jealous, maybe jealous enough to find a reason to fire me for messing with her.

It’s only wine, I think, and I’m only doing what I said I would do, to make up for leaving her at the bar, to make up; for not going out for the drink she suggested we do.

I am utterly confused – as if I have already consumed the contents of the bottle I’m carrying.

I’m scared the boss might come out of his office and catch me here on a day other than Tuesday. So, I hurry up the stairs, determined to get the whole things over and get out before the whole situation gets out of hand.

Half way up the stairs, I catch her scent, not overpowering, just there, an occupying force I’d not reckoned with, haunting, pervasive, as if she’d left a trail from the front door to her desk, a subtle perfume that grew more powerful with each step closer to that space she occupied upstairs.

It is the same scent from the German bar, where she posed like a goddess, her long fingers gripping the stem of her wine glass, her pink lips staining its rim, and me with the almost irresistible urge to stick my finger into her white wine to paint her lips with it, to have her tongue lick the liquid from the tip, to draw my finger into her both as if sucking the wine from it.

Her absence sobers me as I inch towards the desk, which is so stark, it’s almost as if she might never return.

I put the bottle on and flee, staggering back down the stairs, the images of our last encounter in the bar haunting me.

I say nothing to the receptionist, and do my best to avoid passing in front of the boss’ open door, and once outside, I feel revived, thinking how maybe things might return to how they were before I abandoned her at the bar, maybe even back to that first time in the German bar when I stole a kiss, a foolish notion, of course, but a pleasant one.

I’m all the way home when I get her text.

She is not happy.

Someone, the receptionist most likely, called her about it, and maybe also told the boss about my unscheduled visit.

It’s like I’m back in the bar again, not the German bar, not even the later bar, but that last bar, my mouth filled with the bitter taste of wine I haven’t yet had a chance to sip, but know that it is sour and sad, and I realize, regardless of the promise I made to bring her the bottle, I somehow again made the situation worse.

I try to tell myself I did my best, made my peace offering, and if she doesn’t appreciate the effort, I kept my promise.

This is not my fault.

But I’m wiser for the experience, knowing I wont trust the receptionist in the future, if there is anything in the future to possibly trust her with, and I won’t make any more unscheduled visits to the office.

Then, the receptionist calls, telling me the boss wants to know why I have a bottle of wine sitting on my desk in the alcove.

“That was for her,” I say.

“Well, she doesn’t want it,” the receptionist says, “and the boss wants you to remove it as soon as possible.”

“I’ll be there on Tuesday.”

“That’s not good enough. He wants you to get rid of it now.”

“But I’m all the way home.”

“That’s not my problem,” she says and hangs up.

My head is spinning. I can’t believe how bad it is, first the thing at the bar, now this.

I take the long walk back down the viaduct, glaring at the receptionist as I pass, not bothering to climb all of the stairs to the desk where I put the wine, but stopping at my harry Potter place.

It’s obvious she doesn’t want peace.

I uncork the bottle and start drinking it on my walk back, feeling a bit better by the time I get home, not quite drunk, yet pacified, not quite back to where we were in the German bar, but far better than that bar where I left her, feeling the buss, living with the memory of those better moments, when we sipped wine together, seeing her still in my head, the glistening of white wine on her lips which made me wish to kiss her, knowing I still do.


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