I hide in the open, in broad daylight, a street walker too scared to get caught behind the desk they hire me to sit in, down in the most remote place, while she and the men wrapped around her fingers, try to figure out what to do about me, me, fearing she might actually get to be my boss and fire me, so, I walk in the heat of sun, desperate and scared, counting off my life with each step, if not the 13 steps to the gallows, then enough to hang me with, could she really be a boss and would she fire me if I piss her off again. I walk looking over my shoulder at her fact that his not there, the image of her eyes burned into the back of my brain.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
poetry journal Aug. 15, 2012
I hide in the open, in broad daylight, a street walker too scared to get caught behind the desk they hire me to sit in, down in the most remote place, while she and the men wrapped around her fingers, try to figure out what to do about me, me, fearing she might actually get to be my boss and fire me, so, I walk in the heat of sun, desperate and scared, counting off my life with each step, if not the 13 steps to the gallows, then enough to hang me with, could she really be a boss and would she fire me if I piss her off again. I walk looking over my shoulder at her fact that his not there, the image of her eyes burned into the back of my brain.
Keeping it contained april 5, 2014
on the surface, she remains stately and calm
like a seascape that
hides its storms
deep beneath
reflecting an image of peace
she does not really feel
she seems so solid
so self assured yet
like volcanic lava
sways with heated
liquid
she dares not release
home again in a city
where all this churned
up
and from which she fled
does not still feel
the stirring heat beneath even now
even after others proclaim
her dilemma not so much a cure
as a suspended
sentence
where she can keep it all contained
just a bit longer
where she might find time
to better contain it
does she still feel
it's rumblings
that threat of eruption
the urge to return to what
drove her for help in the first place
all this out of sight
for t
hose of us who see her
the invisible turmoil
she deals with day in and day out
especially during the
dark times
when she is almost always alone
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
who is the cub reporter now May 2012
I get a rush like a drug rush
when I get her email saying she needs my help
because the mayor she covers just got busted,
email, then text and not just from her,
but from our former temporary boss,
all of which I miss because I’m still on the road
when it happens.
I see only the notice on my phone
as I drive
my heart beats faster
as I press the accelerator
to get to my office
where I can respond,
caught up for the first time
in that cub routine,
as if I actually believe
she needs me when she doesn’t.
She’s too good at what she does,
and I know it,
and yet, it is as if we have changed roles,
I need her,
I am the cub reporter,
a feeling I also know can’t last.
girl on stage sept 20, 2012
I look at the video of her with the band years out of date and I think I might have fallen for her even then become a groupie offering her anything for just One look or even a pat on the head black top orange skirt in one film other outfits and others she always the same the center of my attention of fixation I might have had long before I fixated on her for real before I even knew who she was not a rockstar yet a bright spot on the stage thick with old men playing old songs none of which mean anything to me without her on stage with them maybe it's hindsight me thinking this and attraction that might not have been any attraction at all I later felt attracted to her and maybe in the depths of night listening to her other songs I still imagine myself as her groupie and maybe I always will
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Gripping smoke 2015
I do not wake up to monkey brain
just a stiff hangover from dreams
I can't resolve
the stirring of the night before
the lingering memory
of late night texts
now gone if not
forgotten
the “wish you were
here” syndrome
the teasing whispered words
I still hear my head
as I drift off
I no longer clutch
the cell phone
the way I did back
then
I changed numbers too
many times
to ever get the ping, the vibration, the longing
I merely dream I do
the wake clinging to
them instead
like grasping smoke
the recall slipping
through my fingers
the harder I grip
poetry journal July 20, 2012
I keep thinking of that old lady at that old people's home who walked around claiming she needed a man to fuck, and how impressed she was by the sheer honesty of that need as if we old people had the same needs young people do, only can't just go into some pickup bar and pick up someone when there are so many young people to choose from, though hearing her say how much she admired the old woman made me admire her, even though saying it where she did in front of our boss shocked me and made me wonder if I will need it too, the older I get
What becomes you 2015
The flaws become us
so what seemed
as uncommonly and broken
as the old poet says
becomes that which
we treasure most
even which we envied
the plowman's heavy steps
over landscape we
still ache
the tread
the wrong face
we imagined then
now cherry blossoms
as Pink as a lips I dreamed to kiss
petals scattered
everywhere in my heart
what was so unshapely then
covers me so that I
dream
the drip of your lips
as you drown me
floating out of me
into you
anew
gun to my head july 30, 2012
I picture it
she holding the
handgun
to my temple
her finger with polished nail
twitching on the
trigger
and me cringing
waiting for the bang
and my brain
splattered across the pavement
and it is all my own
damn fault
insisting on sending
that text message on her birthday
though I think of how
much worse it might
have been
had I actually sent the cards
physical evidence
leading to my execution
or at best the bushwacking
one more cease order I need to obey
and will I hope
finally getting it through my thick head
she has no use for me
in her life
It was a mistake
a foolish side trip on a trip to the top
not really needed or
wanted
in these days
an annoying perhaps even an obstacle
between her and what
she wants
and I feel the cold
metal of the gun
at my head and she telling me
behave or else
Monday, July 28, 2025
An old bone 2015
I wake in the dark of night
not to hamster in my
brain
just the tap tap and ping
that would ring in me long ago
too vague to pin down
as anything more than
wind scraping leaves
against the windows
haunting no less
the spirit rising out
of the mist of sunset
to return to Earth again
when at last the sun rises once
more the tap tap tap
like inpatient fingernails
the ping staring down deep
in my bones
felt more than heard
an ache rather than a memory
of things I cannot
reverse
that exist
persist and remain
lodged inside me
like a bone if only
half swallowed
I can't spit up or digest
Dream (2006)
Suppose.... I would daydream about you at council meetings, watching you at parades, at debates, watching the characters you become in your films, etc., etc. various daydreams always wondering if...
Now suppose (again, just using you as my character minus the reality) you were doing the same thing about me, daydreaming as I speak to an official, watching me walk in the parade, admiring as I work with an animal rescue or stare as I care for an elderly patient.
Neither one of us know nothing about each other but we share the same daydreams, wonderings, fantasies about each other. If one or both of us learned of this and both decided to persue those dreams it could be a magical relationship.
That is why I say I wonder, especially since many people classify me as "unapproachable" I wonder if there ever was mutual daydreaming going on...
sorry it took me so long for this reply, I had to read my story one more time before I put it away for now.
I kept thinking of the first time we met, and how I had to
struggle to keep my gaze from watching the swell of your breasts where your
shirt dipped.
As I lay in bed, I kept imagining what they would feel like
if I eased my hands under your blouse, feeling each nipple between my
forefinger and thumb.
Of course, it couldn’t stop there. Where my fingers go, my
mouth wants to follow, and from wishing my mouth on yours, I dreamed my mouth
slowly eased down as my hands lifted your shirt, tongue playing off the tip of
each nipple, licking as if ice cream.
How this was possible in a place so public as that, remains
a mystery, but the more I pondered you, the more alone we seemed to be, just
the two of us, now seated on the same side of the table, my hands easing under
your shirt and skirt for more contact with your skin, something electric
sparking in me whenever my hands made contact.
While no candle glowed during our first meeting, I imagined
one now, the movement of the flickering flame reflected in your dark eyes along
with the image of my face as I rose once more to kiss your lips.
I felt as if a real fire burned in both of us, growing more
out of control the more my mouth melded with yours, my tongue seeking out yours
as if I imitating the love making I most desired. Feeling you pressed against
me, feeling your tongue and lips, feeling your bared breasts against my chest,
made you even more irresistible.
Then, somehow in my imagining, we are both naked, my over
you, craving contact with every inch, as if I needed to every part me to feel
every part of you, my mouth finally working down into the space between your
legs.
I taste you even as I dream, and feel the tip of my tongue
dancing over you and around you and into you, as if we really were in the same
room, and I really knelt before you, though the growing pain between my thighs
testified to my desire that in my dreams, I ease into you slowly, moving in and
out, feeling your breath against my cheek, my eyes open, staring into your
eyes, my mouth now repeating the motions from below, my stare studying the
growing look of haze that pleasure brings in your eyes, me moving much more
quickly than I want, needing to make this moment last, needing not so much the
explosion that will soon follow but the continued contact of flesh, me needing
to keep the contact, to forever touch on every inch, our movement only making
the pleasure more intense.
But as in all good things, I feel me exploding inside of
you, and then, wake up, sweating, and full, and still aching for you.
When the moon gets in my eyes 2015
The moon careens across the night sky
even sometimes during the day
floating for a time over the steeples of the city
we watch from the wrong side of a river
we spend our whole lives living beside
moon who is pale face stirs up her face
even when I want it
otherwise
a haunting presence
ever presence in the sky
in my eyes painful for wanting
what I can never have
waxing and waning
the way she does at times
casting me in her favorable light
or blinding me with
darkness
on those terrible New Moon nights
and still I stare up taking all she has to offer
Enduring the gritty city 2015
there are too few lawns
in this neck of the woods
this having no woods either
for a gal sitting in a window
looking down at a
grid work
of a gritty City
the hunger of which she
must feel
with each expelled breath
of cigarette smoke
all this place brings out at night
in her place among
them
her hunger and theirs
tied by some imagine
thread
she can't manage to untie
only endure
taking pleasure from
the string of souls
who she invites in
then does not see
again
touching something
only
not the something she needs
touched the most
floating above her self
watching them do
their best
to satisfy her when they have
neither the touch nor the tenderness
to make her feel it down deep
where it all counts
more grit in this
gritty City
she endures
Sunday, July 27, 2025
What I hear and don’t hear (2015)
I hear her voice in my head at night
Just before sleep grips me,
Not a call in the dark,
A remembrance of
Something I can no longer
Hear for real,
Wishing I could,
The voice of someone
Who has changed
From someone I knew
When, long after
The fair days turned sour
I hear it all,
Good and bad,
The reverberation of it
Blasting through time,
The last voice
I lase heard
Saying how she only
Hated some men,
When after that,
Silence,
Leaving me to
Whistle passed
The graveyard
Of what used to be
Filling my head with
What I thought
Should have been
But never was
And never will b e,
Staggering through
A landscape
Littered with fallen leave
And naked branches
Fall into winter
Without hope
Of spring,
My footsteps
crunching leaves,
the only real sound
I hear
Sail around the world with me
I originally wrote this after the poet and I went on a trial cruise she was covering. But I was uncomfortable because of the sexual and S&M implications, although i always knew it would be a song.
Sail around the world with me
Sail around the world with me
Cast your arms to shield me
Every time I lie at your feet
I feel your warmth flowing
over me
Lift up your wings and fly
with me
Take me to a place only you
can see
Every time I hear you whisper
at me
I feel the pleasure of your
company
Sail around the world with me
Drive your love deep inside
of me
Every place your fingers
touch me
Brings me such wonderous
agony
You are all that I ever want
to see
All I need and all I’ll ever
need
Sail around the world inside
of me
Tell me that you will always
want me
Fragile as moth wings 2015
to touch it I must become a moth
wings just dusting
the edges of each leaf
a tease to get you to
open yourself up
even my fingers need to be as gentle
as not to bruise you
more so if I use my tongue
to draw open your
pedals
so that the nectar
flows out
to possess it
to hold it
to taste it
I must become a bee
letting your essence stick to me
collected to make
into honey
not to intolerably
Sweet
least not yet easing you open
like a bud
letting you expose the place
I ache for most
not own just to sample
the taste much more
tender than wine
yet Juice fragile as a
kiss
a touch
a lick
no more
Don’t stare aug. 2012
don't stare
not at all
in any direction
she happens to be in
not even with my blind eye
I grip my pen and
keep it poised on a
pad
in which I have written nothing
and do not intend to
aware she is across from me
at the table
looking at me and
daring me to look
back
and I don't dare
the whole office is one bit minefield
a wrong step and my life will explode
don't stare don't stare
even when she speaks
it won't be at me
I am an invisible Man
I no longer exist
I occupy space the
way
a rock might
unmoving, unmovable
not even organic
don't stare
don't take the cheese
that get sets off the trap
just sit wait go back
to the to the hole in the wall
where I am expected
to reside
this one day per week
but not here safe
only as long as I do
what I'm told
don't stare
don't even blink
The spark that keeps the flame lit 2015
There is no reprieve when you go away
how long last the day
crawling from hour to
hour without you
worse even the longer nights
when your silence fills me
leaves me just as empty
a new moon that never
waxes
and I am left perpetually in the dark
longing for a spark
or
even the flickering of a candle flame
I can barely protect from the wind
always at the point
of snuffing out
if not for my
persistence
at keeping it lighted
even when no hope exists
except the hope I bring to it
the palms of my hands
around it
warmed by needing to keep it alive
if only for my own
sake
when all else has
fallen into dark
it is the spark that
keeps this flame lit
Saturday, July 26, 2025
Like a pornographic bar scene May 21, 2012
expecting him to be
impressed
as the couple on the
stools beside mine
talk about how they got here
and what they want to
do,
making me just a wee bit nervous
as his girl flirts with me
as my girl flirts
with the man behind the bar,
all this meant to make up for
the Birthday
celebration
she promised me a
week ago,
but chose not to,
already insulted by
the card and candy I brought her
as a make up gift,
me, unable to do anything right,
confused by all the
flirting going on,
me, she, the girl
next to me,
and the man she came with,
the bar scene like a pornographic movie,
only I can't be sure who will play the principle parts.
Sunrise 2015
I wake to the dark before the dawn
to wait for the rise
of the sun
only this beach
this place having
no fingerprint of hers
except for those
I bring me,
a refuge I sought out
as a cure
bathing not in the
seawater
but in the first light seeking
a rebirth
only this place
at this time of day
can bring
and yet this place
still recalls her
like a seashell I
cast
out into the waves
only to find the waves
dragging it back to my feet
a perpetual repeated ritual
of which I give up
only when I realize
I cannot cast her
away so easily
not just because it
is impossible
to shed her memory
but also because I
don't want to
Keeping the arrow in 2015
like cupid
I have taken a wound
from my own arrow
a self-inflicted
piercing
that went straight
to the heart impossible
to draw it out
without doing even
more damage
would make it fatal
the devil in me
who flung these
arrows at others
yet cannot recover
when
I flung one at myself
some things never heal
even when we think they do
we keep from festering
by keep the arrow as deep inside
as it will go because
having it
feeling its sting
when I move the wrong way
my heart beats fast
as to remind me
that once there was
something
the wound
the pain
the joy as well
the tick tock in my head Sept. 15, 2012
I hear the tick tock of the clock in my head.
Filling a space where my thoughts collide,
this last gasp before the cold sets in
No tea leaves to tell me what comes next
I have kept silent to keep out of the cross hairs
only I do not know if that is enough
or should I run around like a chicken without a head
announcing my sky is falling,
or stick my head in a hole in the ground
and hope nobody notices my butt sticking up in the air,
a perfect target for someone to kick
as if the tick of the clock I hear in my head
is really the tick of a time bomb about to go off
can I trust time to heal old wounds
or will they fester and get worse
even when I dive for cover
I still hear the ticking and feel
my heart beat keeping time to the ticking
which ever way it goes, good or bad
or maybe nothing at all
give up you can't win Aug. 3, 2012
I'm up to my neck
and sinking fast,
she telling me not to fight the inevitable,
my toes seeking the bottom that
won't exist until I drown,
quicksand filling my lungs
long before covering my eyes.
There is mercy in what she says
as if she feel sorry for me
after I got bushwhacked on her birthday,
like a mistress with a whip
telling me how pain can feel
less intense if I surrender to it.
Toes still seeking solid ground
I already know does not exist.
Give into it, surrender,
as the old rock song says,
but don't give your heart away,
while in the back of my brain I think,
"too late," as I sink deeper,
trying to abide by her wish
for me to ease
struggling, only I'm terrified
if I stop I'll cease to exist.
I should have listened July 2012
I should have listened to what she said
when she said she forgave me and then go away
my fingerprints still on the keys of my cell phone
long after I sent the
message I should never have sent
birthday wishes she
did not wish to get
and I wish I had not
sent
the backlash so bad I
felt the world
on my shoulders, and
my back bloody from the lash of words
I should not have
And I knew I should not have
and still I did
trying to cling to something
I should have let go of
when it let go of me
blowing it out like so many
unneeded birthday candles on a cake
I know no one will
ever let me eat
I should listened
when I was told
now I get scolded maybe worse
deflated, a sagging
sad outdated birthday balloon
my fingers clinging
to even though
it's struggles to
remain afloat
some lessons need to
be learned the hard way
the singed fingers
the best lesson
as painful as this might be
I should have listened
and now I lick my wounds
and down deep knowing
I did this to myself
I should have listened