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.



email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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.

 



email to Al Sullivan

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



email to Al Sullivan

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

 


email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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

 


email to Al Sullivan

Dream (2006)

 

(Below is the message from the mafia don widow as part of the exchange of stories  -- giving you an idea of what her motives were, when I was trying to keep it a simple change of stories)

don't think you are getting what I am trying to say. Totally hypothetical and will use you and me for lack of creating a character.
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.

 After yesterday’s email exchange, I kept thinking about you. I didn’t completely fall asleep, but woke in fits, thoughts running through my head.

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.


email to Al Sullivan

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

 


email to Al Sullivan

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

 


email to Al Sullivan

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

 


email to Al Sullivan

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

 



email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Like a pornographic bar scene May 21, 2012


 She shows the bartender her business card

 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.

 



email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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


email to Al Sullivan

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

 

 


email to Al Sullivan

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.



email to Al Sullivan

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


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