The dirtiest part of your body April 2012

 

She says she wants to see it,

 even if Frank Zappa said it was

not the dirtiest part of the body,

and not at all what I would want to see,

although I'm not her, and she's not here,

 and I hold it in the dark, feeling its warmth,

 and it's throbbing, the ache of it

going deep down into me

as she asks me to transmit,

no way for her to feel the power of it

 the way I do,

via pixels and airways over what it will need

 to go to jump from the dark room where i sit

 and the lofty space she waits in to receive it,

 she cannot know how it trembles as I hold it,

how it has a mind of its own,

she is never going to understand its pain

 at such a distance, this potency,

this need, this thing my palms surround

as if something holy,

certainly precious,

 an object of desire I send off

with the push of button.

 

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Puppet master April 12, 2012

 

When she texted me about the hair brush,

I was tempted to ask which end she used,

the smart aleck response I might

 have spouted out in junior high,

 which might have made her angry

 just the way my remarks did with bullies back then.

Just why she told me this, I may never know,

 just as I may never know more about her than I know now.

I am too caught up in what I think she is,

 yet haven't a clue if what I what I think is real,

if she actually likes me, or if she just likes

yanking my chain with remarks like

she made about the brush,

to see how shocked I might get,

though I would like to think she trusts

 to tell me these things,

 though i don't quite trust myself to believe it,

feeling as if I am a puppet

she the puppet master,

 each time she pulls a string,

 my limbs jerk

 and I do what she wants.

 

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Rain in early spring April 8, 2015

When the rain comes, I stare out into it and wish you were here, and wonder what it might be like to be with you, out there, where old leaves litter the ground and new leaves just begin to bud, unable to contain the downpour fall leaves or those more in season might better handle, and I wonder how it would feel to lay you down, both of us naked and drenched, having my way with you, filling up each deep crevice as the rain drips off our lips and hips, our hair drowned, our bodies smothered with each tender embrace, giving warmth to each other against the still chill aftermath of early spring, what it might feel like to smear each other, my wet body against yours, to kiss wet lips, to press wet lips against wet lips, to drink an ambrosia only nature can provide, and shudder, just to think of it.

 

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the price we pay. Jan 31, 2014

 

we always pay for it in the end

 we get you for a moment

 only to have the bill come

always more than we reckon on

 even when we knew the cost

 would come high

heartbreak the least of it

 and for this I count myself fortunate

and pity him, my friend and rival,

 for the suffering he has to endure

his love lost less than this mind

 has and perhaps it is because

of how much more he adored her

each of us the thieves to either side

of him on that hill

 the one thief promised redemption

 for all the kindness he gave

our suffering Christ

she one of the two Mary's we both desire

 a Mary with two faces

each equally desirable

if for different reasons

My friend and rival forced to pay

 the steeper price for

 which I am grateful

I did not,

 though down the I seek to be him

to have been so kind

 as to win that special

 piece of her heart

the man who knows

the right combination

to unlock it

and did

 while I fumbled with it

and lost it

and regret it

all this time later

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Exotic spice April 5, 2025

  

The scent of it rises out of the unknown, an elusive fragrance just on the edge of perception, a teasing touch I feel inside each time I breathe, lost if I breathe too deeply, and yet I do, craving to get at it, to have it wash over me, through me, yet it always remains teasingly distant, refusing to be pinned down, like a humming bird with wings vibrating too quickly to be seen, or captured, and so, as much as I crave it, I must cling to what I have, not what it might become, always there, always beyond reach, yet something I always reach for again and again, its scent evading me, like a spice I taste in some elaborate dish, unable to precisely define what it is I taste, and yet at the same time, knowing if I can catch the scent or taste it, I might ruin it.

 

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Old ghosts May 27, 2014

 

We pass this place where tall windows stick up around a wide porch from those Victorian days where men with long cigars smoked, while inside women displayed themselves like trophies, a place so notorious that angry wives knew just where to go to collect their husbands, men who luckily knew the trick how to get the big windows to open down so they could make their escape, leaving naked women sprawled on couches still lingering on the edge of quick romance, all these years later converted into a bed and breakfast, only marginally haunted by those old ghosts, though in the dark of night, in the rooms above, the bed posts still banged against walls and the sound of moaning women can be heard downstairs, over the sound of waves crashing to the shore a block away, nobody remembering the tricky windows, nobody trying to make a quick escape, shaking the chandeliers the way an earthquake might, ending finally with the cry of delight, as men make their way back down to the porch to smoke cigars, history always managing to repeat itself

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The ghost in the cupboard Nov. 10, 2012

 I climb out of my cupboard to the vacancy beyond, the stairs absent her footsteps I so often strained to hear, all gone, and gone forever, not even the echo, only the remembrance of it, the clatter of her heals below, muffled by the carpet, yet still there, the hurried movement passed where I set, a pause, a moment, slightly above, to take stock of me and my attention, to determine if I cam looking or not, moving on when satisfied I am, while pretending not to.

I climb out of my cupboard because of hear none of that now, only the footsteps in my head, and how I will neve hear it all again, for good or bad, while the ache I feel remains, magnified by the lack of their reality, my step replacing her step, just not the same, like a ghost who haunts this place, and me, most likely forever condemned to carrying the links of chains I have wrought, when all that has filled this space has gone on to fill some other for someone else.

I climb out of my cupboard thinking I might be surprised somehow, finding her footsteps still there, when I know they won’t be.

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