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

email to Al Sullivan

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,

email to Al Sullivan

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

email to Al Sullivan

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.

email to Al Sullivan

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.

email to Al Sullivan

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.

 

email to Al Sullivan

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

 

email to Al Sullivan

all I have to do is give up aug 13, 2012

she offers me compassion

when others don't want her to

 all I have to do is give in and stop resisting

what she sees as the inevitable

we can never go back to what once was

 too much water under that bridge

 you never step in the same stream twice

yet we can still find solace in the water

 soaking the pain from our feet

all we need to do is for me to surrender

 and I have already

needed to

desperate to give into her

 if only to ease the pain persistence brings

I'm uncertain what it is I resist in the first place

 squiggling my toes to feel the bottom this pit of quicksand

I just don't know how to do it

to give in

to give myself up

 how to stop

 how to nod in her favor

 I don't know how to love and not get love back

if indeed this is Love

not really lost

 she offers me a way out

 short of my having to carry the cross

she offers me a chance to go on

if indeed I must be humble

even if I must look down from afar

at what I once saw

once touched

once tasted up close

 it is not the same

email to Al Sullivan

Enema June 29, 2025

  

Now I know how she must have felt that summer when she took coffee up into an orifice other than the one for her morning ritual, without cream or sugar.

Or how I might have felt had a taken up any of the countless invitations from my visits to Stonewall in New York that summer of my induction to the army or the Golden Cup on Hollywood Boulevard where all the men looked like girls all looked at me like I was one, too, something grand, they told me, had I felt the urge to go that way, the deep plunge and then release, only this time not for pleasure, but to pave the way for the man with the stethoscope to see what it is that goes on in that remote part of my anatomy, pain without pleasure, coffee without the cream, a desperate hope for what comes out in the end will bring salvation.

Now I know how she must have felt, clinging to this desperate act to cure this ugly thing that has taken up residence inside, this act of pain without pleasure, this coffee without cream.

email to Al Sullivan

Preflight- Feb. 2, 2015

 

Out of the fire she rises again and again, she says, renewed, reborn, reinvigorated, not new so much as not the same, wings spread for flight she has yet to take, not yet aware of where she might land if and when she leaves this hollowed space, raised on a cliff for the uplift that lets her rise, always this moment when she breathes deep before the leap.

Is flight even possible wen so many of her feathers are new, and in that absence, in that moment when she expired in the fire, she knows not if she can manage flight, so, waits, watches and wonder if she can, and if she can where will it take her this time?

 

email to Al Sullivan

friends indeed sept. 29 ,2012

 

they say you only know

 who your friends are

in the midst of conflict

the hand that holds your elbow

 when you stagger

 the word whispered in your ear

when you come near to giving up

but what do you do when

 you have  already won

who do you trust

what inspires you to

this urge to fight

are these shadows you box

you say you've gotten used

to the sense of having fallen so often

exhausted, dragging you down

 and still you rise torn and bleeding

to resurrect and resume

the fight instinct taking over

something telling you you're not done yet

you say you want to give up

 but you never will

it is not in your nature

even when you seem at odds with a world

that refuses to understand you

and yet you do have some

true friends who pick you up

when you fall

and feed you words of encouragement

telling you your quest is right

email to Al Sullivan

Hanky panky aug 23, 2012

  

she tells us about all the hanky panky

 that went on behind the scenes

of American bandstand and proposes

 at our Tuesday meeting to write about it

 and from the expression on our owner's face

he's not really happy about it

 but doesn't know how to say no

maybe he's scared to open that can of worms

 that someday somebody maybe even me

will want to write about the hanky panky

that goes on right under our own noses

I hate to ask her to give me the details

 to make it very clear

 just what she sees as hanky panky

even though we all know

what happened on the set of American bandstand

what happens here my imagination

 turning it all into one non-stop porno movie

 except I’m not on top or bottom

but chained to my chair

and condemned to watch

I need details to make sense of it

and maybe I'll have to wait

until her story comes out in print

 provided it isn't censored

email to Al Sullivan

The war of the heart Feb. 24, 2025

 

This was not any kind of protest against any kind of war I’m used to, no kids inducted to fight in jungles or deserts or mountains or plains.

Thinking back, I’m not sure it was war at all, no mortal enemy, no obvious battlefield, and yet, it felt like a war, and she won, and it took me all these years to realize, though I surrendered long ago, wishing for the appeasement the losers sometimes get, though it is always to the winners go the spoils.

I never even got a goodbye kiss, just stares across a the negotiation table where she got to lay out the terms, her allies too tough for me to surmount.

Like all wars, this war has become history, the terms of engagement dictated by her, boundaries I could not cross, places I was not allow to tread for fear or retribution.

I carry my heart away in my chest the way an army carts it casualties, missing pieces of myself the way soldiers have missing limbs, with no way to undo the wounds received or given, needing to accept it all, the way Lee had to when dealing with Grant, lucky to be allowed to escape the worst of it, even now, even all these years after the fact

 

email to Al Sullivan

The next man Sept. 13, 2012

 

The next man

Is always

The lucky man

Dipping his wick

Into still pure water,

Which each of

The rest of us

Despoils over time

Having ruined

What we saw as

Perfection,

Perhaps our lust

Makes her luster so,

The glint we see

In her eyes,

The soft touch

We anticipate

When we stroke

Her breasts

It is all so new

Before we get

To touch or taste,

Nothing to disappoint us

When we finally do,

Except our own

Sad ambition,

The desire to

Contain the butterfly

We so admire

From afar,

Some things are best

Left to wander fee,

To contain them

Is to ruin them,

A lesson we must learn

She needs what she needs

To be free to

Spread her wings

Without someone

Pinning them down

 

email to Al Sullivan

That gray haze Oct. 16, 2012

 

A gray haze oozed through the window behind me, I stare down at the notepad on the table top and try to keep my hands from shaking, or for anyone to notice them but me, the last gasp, the end run, the change of era as we all wait out these last long weeks before the real emptiness starts, the gray haze oozing in, taking over, like a fog that is not a fog, sealing up the gaps. We all speak yet not about what really transpires or how we all might feel when at last she goes and only have her ghost to haunt the place where she would otherwise sit. It is like a countdown to a rocket launch we already know will fizzle out, the haze like the fumes of the frustrated stages that won’t land us anywhere but here, in this place, in this fog, in this empty space – all of it, a black hole into which all our hopes and dreams vanish, some still cling to her, beginner he to remain when she  -- in actuality – is already gone, with the gray haze filling the space where she was.

email to Al Sullivan

Presumption of innocence Feb 9, 2015

 

Nothing is innocent, just degrees we believe, we cling to and lose when we lose our grip on the world, lost in this limbo between what we think of as right, and what we think we know is wrong, the rage of flesh, the heat of it dripping from our brows among the moans and groans of joy. This passage we take, joined at the hips and lips, we can’t keep contained, we slipping over the edge from what we assume to what we think we know as real, feeling it under our skins and deep in our heads, rubbing it raw, wearing it out, unable to stop until we’re too weak to continue on, this presumption of innocence we know is not, guilty of what passed through us, even when we keep from acting it all out, and we would have it no other way.

email to Al Sullivan

This holy place April 2012

The old saying says

you can't know what a person feels

until you've walked in their shoes,

 and maybe not even then.

But what if you climb inside them,

 pull their skin tight around

my head and shoulders

stare out through her eyes,

 breathe the air she breathes,

 touch what she touches

and what would I feel like to her if she touches me.

And as I felt before in the diner

when I ached to crawl across the table

 and climb inside her,

 I feel the same here,

 in the midst of her world,

as she cuts up what we are to consume,

her long fingers touching

what we are to ingest

like a Holy Communion,

 this sacred ritual that will

bring us to some other reality,

 if not salvation,

then salivating lust that resembles love,

or perhaps merely the want of it,

 this place, this ceremony, this holy place.

email to Al Sullivan

ArmageddonJune 8, 2012

 

 All that remains is silence, 

a stroll through the graveyard

 of what’s left, too scared 

to even whistle, 

the markers propped up at each turn,

 all bearing the RIP for 

what might have been,

could never have become 

and what I knew 

could not last if it had, 

the silence of an office 

where any word might

 bring about promised Armageddon,

 the sword of Damocles

 hovering just an inch over 

the back of my neck, 

raising the hair and the feel of steel,

 no need to say in more than once, 

the list of requirements 

I must live my life by or perish,

 this is no longer a matter of self-control, 

I have no control,

I have only the need to not respond,

 while I feel as if she parades here,

 the allies marching through Paris

or Berlin on VE Day or lonely Japan

 poised under yet one more Hiroshima, 

let loose at any infringement. 

I breathe deeply and hope

 I do not move too suddenly

 or disturb what might set it all off.

email to Al Sullivan

Chained to the dog house aug 2012

  

these are dog days

and I am still in the dog house

I just don't know how to get out

 I'm like the cartoon bulldog

attached to this house by a chain

and she the sexy cat who taunts me

 just beyond reach

 only she isn't really taunting

if anything I taunt myself

 these are dog Days

filled with the heat

we can't believe

and this need we can't satisfy

 and so must to endure

the dog days of routines

that allow us to struggle ahead

even if we do not know precisely

 where we are going

and what we will find

when we get there

and whether or not

 we have reached the end of the chain

 that keeps us connected

 to this dog house

 and far from the cat

we imagine taunting us

 when she clearly is not

 

email to Al Sullivan

Impression on the pillow Oct. 22, 2012

 

 

 All that is left is the impression in a pillow next to mine where her head never lay, only in my imagination, with me above, pressing down, watching her face get that look she only gest when on the verge of it, the slow motion rapidly speeding up amid the groans (some of which are mine and some still are) as I try to replicate what I managed once as real, alone, stroke by stroke, the impression the pillow going deeper as I do, all that is left is what I imagined once but never was, the indentation left by my wishes for it to have been, pressing myself down, making her look the way she does ever on the verge, after having expended so much energy to stoke her up, to drag out of her those sounds only come with some much effort, the in and out of it, stoking a fire within, pushing her down into that pill to keep its impression long after any possibility of it becoming real, stroke by stroke.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Sand pipers oct 9, 2024

  

the sandpipers with their short legs

flee each time a wave comes in

 then hurry back after the receding water

 pecking at the bits of Life

the water uncovers

survival always in this in and out

 no fair or unfair

 no good or bad

 just this perpetual ritual

that allows them to feed

running from the waves

 only to pursue them a moment later

the in and out of it

the hot and cold

 stormy seas or calm

 like being what it is

and has always been

the need to feed

to not get dragged

 into the depths in the process

sandpipers with tiny legs and long beaks

running away and then back

pecking at the editable things

 I cannot see

 but sometimes this is all there is

all we can expect

to feed and not get sucked in

 

email to Al Sullivan

Her kiss in that glass Feb. 18, 2015

I should have left her kiss in the glass, not stolen it from the glass in the bar, her lips leaving their mark on the rim where she sipped her wine.

I should not have stared at it for so long, drowning myself in the wine glass.

I barely heard what she said, recalled later, after the temptation was beyond reach.

I should not have let my mind weave fantasies of what might have been possible, drunk on those things we would later do in fact.

I should have left her kiss in the glass at the bar, bottled up like a Gennie, keeping its wishes from exploding inside of me, my fingers lingering on the stem where her fingers had lingered, stroking it, feeling the warmth that still remained.

I should have left her kiss in that glass. But alas, I stole it.

email to Al Sullivan

Wilted flowers Feb. 12, 2015

  

Wilted flowers decorate the yard outside my window, limp shapes remaining from stiffer days, no scalding sunlight left to lift their heads, nothing to inspire them, nothing to stir up warmth , not stroke of even early spring, regardless of what the groundhog says, winter leaves this landscape strewn with the remains of what was once vibrant, and though I look ahead to when the sun returns and warmth stirs life back into the lifeless, it is never the same, the absence of that tender time when all was still possible, when life seemed full of endless promise, when these flowers bloomed at the mere mention of your name, or at its recollection of brightness you inspired, all lost now in the cold and no hope it can be reborn.

email to Al Sullivan