Something is better than nothing May 2012

 

 

She asks what my plans

are for my birthday

, a surprise call after days

she when she hasn't 

and when I tell her I don't have any,

she tells me that's not right,

and suggests she and I

 ought to go get dinner together

and my heart leaps into my throat

so I croak: "Yes," and then ask

"When" thinking of those other times

when she shared meals in local pubs,

 especially the time after

the ride on the cruise

up and down the harbor,

and I think maybe we can

rekindle what was lost,

stirring life up in coals

 I though doomed to die,

 and yet, she sounds so distant

 I think she really doesn't mean it,

surprised again when she suggests Monday

 after work and I jump at it,

just like an overly eager dog

after an already worn out bone,

thinking something is better than nothing

for my birthday.

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memory 2014

 

in the end

All that remains is

the memory of it the

stirred broth I ache to taste

to satisfy this urge

that grew into something

it was never supposed to become

an unexpected butterfly

rising from a cocoon

 I thought was all there was

when there became so much more

in the end

 there is only the memory of it

 the soft touch in the dead of night

the connected lips of a kiss

we should have avoided

 the silky feel of you

 I should never have tried to feel

and embrace

a tease , an intense and

delightful pain

all packing into that limbo time creates

reshaping it all into something

that seems all pleasant

when it was not

memory hiding the truth better

than forgetting does

 shaping reality into something different

 from what it was

and revealing what it could have been

when it could never have been

 in the end

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throwing this old dog a bone June 15, 2012

 

 She rushed into our office

 like a chicken with its head cut off, 

a head as pretty as hers is,

she’s on the heels of the biggest story 

since she’s started with us, 

only nobody is getting back to her 

and she’s desperate enough 

to even speak with me, 

first asking for help she really doesn’t need, 

and contacts I know she does, 

I’m so grateful for the attention, 

I make calls to these,

 telling them to get back to her, 

which they eventually do, 

she’s grateful enough to

chat with me later about it all, 

nothing personal,

 just two colleagues rehashing

 facts of the case. 

It feels like heaven to me, 

a soft bone tossed to

an overly eager puppy,

 starving for even

the least bit of attention,

almost, but not quite

 back to those days 

when she claimed to be cub 

and me as her mentor, 

the quiet after a conflict, 

neither of us looking

 too closely at the devastation.

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Oysters April 3, 2015

 

I still recall her eating oysters on the half shell that day after the board ride and I regret that I  did not eat them, too, or maybe eased open her shell as well, to let my tongue swirled around the soft spot inside, let the wet drip our onto my lips, before I sucked it all up the way I watched her to, that moment in time when all the pieces fit and all I wanted was a slow dance, hip to hip, lip to lip, devouring each other as if we were both oysters, to swallow her whole, to feel her move around inside me as I climbed inside of her, feeling my way through her dark, moist interior until I found where the meat I was meant to ingest, she seated at the bar beside me, sucking up oyster after oyster with me wishing she would do as much for me.

 

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Everlasting 2014

 

Bruce called it everlasting

While the ancient poet said

a thousand years hearts melting

a potent kiss

your hand to my hand

as we stroll into the Apocalypse

the ache too hard, as that ancient poets said,

the everlasting memory of that first kiss

should have been enough

and yet never was

and now all this time later

 it is all there lasting

a decade or a century

or until the end of time

 the taste of it lingering

the full of it tattooed in me

so I will never forget

everlasting

a thousand years

 always melting me

from the inside

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Lessons on a warm day (1989)

 

The slowing chatter of moving leaves hints at a dying wind, this sluggish season, weaving through this bend of time, like an old river.

I think of you and your midnight ghosts, dancing in the shadows, and see these willow arms reaching out for one last embrace.

People’s faces shimmer in the water, shrouded at times by clouds or the dilapidated docks from which old ships sailed.

We may never see such things again, or the prancing children I think of as you, running along the shoreline, waving to make you stop.

The cold grave has already taken mother, father, lover, friends, the wood posts sticking up out of the muck,

You love, hate, praise these, but already sail beyond their reach, seeking new docks elsewhere, ahead, for another momentary pause in your wake.

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The rose tree (with apologies to William Blake) feb 19, 2014

 

she is the rose that still makes me bleed

 a pretty rose tree I grasp until the thorns break me

such a flower flour I might never see

 who's thorns are like a painful key

 I see and still need

 that all too delightful rose tree

what makes her so appealing to me

and why am I always willing to let her make me bleed

Her sweet scent linger but I can’t see

the always elusive butterfly that always haunts me

Who tends this ground that grows roses as sweet as she?

and why am I consumed with jealousy?

 when in fact I ought to flee

but again and again I come to feed

 and again and again I always bleed

this woman I picked off this sweet sweet tree

 with scars of her touch all over me

 what is it that I want to see

do I find pleasure when she makes me bleed

or do I want to be on bended knee

to adore this rose that I forever see

and yet cannot touch without her making me bleed

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Feeding the beast (2014)

  

  

It is the peak of it

She thinks,

The top of the roller coaster

From here its all

Down hill,

If she does not engage it,

Make the most of it,

She will regret it,

Not love, not exactly,

Not mere lust either,

This mingling

This tingling sense

Of something inside

Stirring,

A witch’s broth

She stirs

Yet has no control

To try and stop it

Makes no sense

She will still feel

The need,

Just who matters less

Than the act,

To feed this beast

All men lust after,

If she does not feed it,

Time will starve it,

The worms will eat

The remains – as

Shakespeare once claimed.

Best to give in

And feel it live

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seeking absolution. June 29, 2012

 

 He licks his lips like he always does when he gets nervous,

 ignoring the coffee he bought on the way to the park 

when I confide in him about her, 

glancing around as if expecting her to pop out of nowhere 

and uncover our tiny conspiracy,

 and the more he denies being involved

 the more convinced I am he is, 

and I get jealous, 

he telling me she confided in him about her stalker

 and I wonder if he got the same call from her

 as I had some dark night when 

she claimed to be afraid her stalker might come 

and needed me (or him) to protect her, 

an excuse I believe she used to get me (he) to her apartment, 

though what might have transpired there with him,

 I cannot say, 

though he licks his lips so much as we talk

 I suspect the worse 

(or best if he did what he denies doing)

 and I get jealous again,

 but keep that part hidden from him 

when I confess everything else,

 as if he is my priest with me needing absolution.

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Not the same river Feb. 15, 2014

  

The only people

Talking about her these days

Are the one who don’t

Know anything at all.

Those who know

Stay silence,

Whether out of shame

At how they mistreated her

Or for some other reason

I can’t comprehend,

What transpired becomes

One of a mystery

For the ages,

She and then know

But nobody else.

Maybe if I climbed up to

Seventh heaven

And pounded on her door

She might tell me

Most likely

She would call the cops.

I sit on my hands

Letting the whole thing

Fade away,

Waiting for the next

Chapter to start,

For her to make

The eternal trek

From this shell

To the one she expects

To settle into next

If she even knows

This isn’t like other times

When everything

Seemed self evident,

And we could see why

She went

I stand near the river

Where she sometimes stood,

And wonder about the old axiom

Of never being the same river

Because of the water flow

And wonder where she

Will sat out to next

When the tide comes again.

 

 

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These last days Oct 27, 2012

 

I roll over and play dead, Opossum, and try not to do what she says I do, look where I am not wanted, not at all at her or any direction, it might be misconstrued in these last days before she vacates and I need the longer worry about it, only it is like the last seconds of a ticking bomb I fear I go off before the final wire is cut and a danger expired, these last days of keeping my eyes down, my mouth shut, my movement carefree, as not to be mistaken as a threat, as I recall her nights, locking and unlocking her door, though I still do not know of what, these last and great days in a haze, I can't clear away well enough to see through, these last days before she closes the door to this place, ridding herself of having Harry Potter alcove under the stairs, and me, maybe the rest of us, these last days when she will no longer have to look only from the stairs or across the table and see me, these last days when all that once was no longer matters, these last days before she is gone

 

 

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Who do you want me to be? May 8, 1989

 

And what do you believe if not in what I am, a ghost, a set of bones that rattles with words their union, an accident, a matter of chance
Adult professor professing Truth, for a bi-weekly check, a cold hearted forgotten dreamer who has no dreams to dream
Who am I what is the worth of love
Am I to be transformed, realigned by the hammers of reality. the list, then perfect accomplishment of practicality
The failed dreamer is one who gives up the dream
That is not me, nor will death itself stay me, when the dream is no more than exhaustion or that sick perverted life of Labor which I must endure
What is to love when the dream is done
Who do you see in my shoes but an empty Being with empty eyes and nothing left to live for, working at nothing but empty phrases for doctors or lawyers or judges or fools
It is for those that can't believe that don't
I will not be turned into a statue; I will not be turned like a card; I have made my life very clear, a pool of unmoving water from which words spout
Do not turn me into bread and butter; do not demand what I cannot give
Do you dance with a poet and want for a banker
You read about us in books, but still do not understand our nature, we living on the brink of Extinction locked to a dream
What is it you want if not what I am

 

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Walking in old Manhattan April 24 , 1989

 

It isn't the same, though the streets are, filled with the same ill content I knew in my youth
You change them, the moving heart throbbing in this once empty City
I used to sit lonely in the circles of Washington square Park, the island in the Sea of faces, looking for that one that might fill me
20 years later you were here, dancing with me, shoulder to shoulder, the crowds of tourists an attraction in themselves, past and present on either side, with reveled treasures of which I have failed to see before, niches in your past intertwined with my own, no need to see the apartment where my child was born, all that was past, lost, you are new and I am new within you, walking streets I know but never like this, never with a throb of you inside me

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A wiser man might have feb 18, 2014

  

Had I've been wiser back then

 I would have allowed her to do

whatever she wanted

playful, meaningless meandering

neither of us should have taken too seriously

 let her do it with me as she wished

 like in used tissue disposed of when done

 a wise man knows his uses

and how to get his bit of pleasure

 before the playing ends

no regrets, no jealousy

just what is

giving her whatever she wishes for

in exchange for the tenderness, the intensity

the pain that is really pleasure

had I've been wiser man back then

 I might have taken joy

and gone on with it as a memory I could cherish

we never go back even when it was something good

 and yet in my head I relive it all

 reshape reality into a bunch of what ifs

and sometimes in the dark of night

when I feel the old urges growing

I imagine it was more than it was

 and take joy from it anyway

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To the moon (2014)

 

Movies still run in my head

From those dark moments

In the balcony

When all I ached to do

Was go all the way,

Deep kisses; deeper touches,

That first moment when I

Felt the tip of them

Beneath her blouse,

And deeper still

My sneaking a touch of

An even more forbidden zone

Her hands serving

As gatekeeper to keep me

From going too far,

And all these years later,

I still want that,

To feel the most

 illicit places in you,

to fill you up and

feel you tremble,

and to ache

to replace

the touch of my fingers

with some other aspect

that might fill you

all the better,

the old reels running

round and round

in my head,

making me reel,

making it all real,

what I eel

when I remember

trying to

reach the moon

 

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A bitter brew May 2012

I feel the cold kiss

 of the beer glass

as I sip at the bar,

a bitter brew I knew

 coming I would taste,

 yet still came,

 this warm night in May

more than a week after my birthday,

 the chill tip of the glass like a bitter kiss,

 the feel of good bye,

the remote look in her eyes

 as she sits on the stool beside mine

her attention turning in every direction

n except the one I'm in,

her lips moist with the taste

 of a vintage I ache to taste,

but has become a rare year

I suspect I may never taste again,

regardless of how much I hunger for it,

 the taste of my drink

 like that brew Christ drank

 in that painful garden long, long ago,

 HE as I knowing the pain

 of what must come next,

the chill of the lips lost forever.

 

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Why don’t we do it in the road Oct. 26, 2012

The old Beatles tribute to black music filled my head this last of the last few days, a not-so-polite wish I need to keep contained, as others express their well-wishes for her that she might arrive in a better place than the one she leaves and where we still reside, though I wonder how many of those who attend this goodbye party hear the same Beatles song in their hears, perhaps tender regrets for having not gotten it before she leaves, as they wonder if they will ever get the chance again, doing it anywhere, in the road or not, which only inspires in me the green-eyed monster as I imagine the whole scene, wondering what it felt like with those who actually did it, in the road or not, as if I peer through her window at them, as traffic roars down the street where she lives, the coming and going, the constant moan of it, filling up the space around us, we doing it wherever we please for as often as possible, all in my head, eyes closed or not

 

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vampire of my own making June 7, 2012

 

June 7, 2012

 She doesn’t have to say it out loud 

for me to know it already. 

the old speech about what 

I could have had and blew it

and can never get it back.

I walk around with

 the empty feeling, 

like a zombie 

perpetually envying people 

who are either smarter than I am 

or too stupid do anything 

as stupid as I have done 

turning myself in the vampire

 I once accused her of being, 

without soul or conscience, 

just this never-ending hunger,

 a blood lust I can’t satisfy

 and must live with, 

knowing I might have been

 better off by letting her have

 what she wants, and need, 

my jealousy feeding this panic

 and sense of what I’ve missed 

and can never ever have again, 

while she gives herself 

to those who don’t

 ever question her motives, 

this ache, this stake in my heart,

 but it still beats – with pain.

 

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All I have are my own hands May 25, 2014

 

In the dark of night, I grasp it, first with one hand, then both, as if I grab you as the throb of that wakes me from dream, feeling your heart beat as well as my own, I feel the softness of it first, then as I imaging you, the touch of you, the clinging sweating moment before things happen, it grows stiff, I feel as it presses against you, like a baton in some midnight parade, a celebration I must whip up for myself, imagine what it is like, feeling it against my skin, your skin, soft, trembling as I tremble and grow hard. I grip it with both hands and shake it out of me, this midnight need, this desperate feeling I can’t get for real, woken by it, stroking it to make it go asway, all of this pressing against you, as if there is still hope for real resolution when all I have are my own hands.

 

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searching the earth May 25, 2012

 

 

I know it is there somewhere, 

buried deep in the mists, 

the chill, touch of wet on my cheeks, 

is not from tears, 

though I am just as bleary-eyed, 

seeking to fill the vacancy 

of that missing place or thing 

on the other side,

 its spikes stick in my memory 

yet can’t be recalled, 

as if it has ceased to exist,

 or never did,

 the last gasp of a late spring 

from which the flowers bloom,

 just not for me,

 all is gray, not quite a fog 

yet just as blinding.

 I am Oedipus roaming the earth

 in search of a truth I may never find, 

reliving the guilt of a crime 

I never committed.

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ink stains June 22, 2012

 

 I can still smell the ink

 mingling with the scent 

of her perfume

 from our last visit here,

 the man with ink for blood, 

not visible, 

though the “for sale” sign on the door 

said something sad,

 how things come and go,

 how what we hope will 

serve as foundation of a future, 

falls to pieces 

even after only these few months,

 this place one of a number

 of such stops on a station of the cross

 I have come back to reexamine, 

to see what it was I missed 

that led us both so far astray,

 the diner, the walk, the peck of a kiss, 

memory in a fog that defies

 even the brightness of days,

 for him, for us, the end of a road 

we did not know we had taken

until it stopped.

I miss her, that moment,

 even if she makes mockery of it,

 of me laying blame on my shoulders

 perhaps as it should be.

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Night after endless night April 2, 2015

 

What  transpires in the privacy of this dark room, I care not say or even who exactly inspires it, the stroke after stroke, the vision of a picture already years out of date, stoked up like a campfire to ward off the dread of night, her face, her lips, the curves of her chest, or hips, stroke after stroke, in the privacy to this dark room, pumped up until it overflows, the fantasy of what I imagine rather than what really is, stroke after stroke, in the privacy of this dark room, invisible even to her, who cannot possibly know what she has inspired, stroke after stroke, in the privacy of this dark room, her face, her lips, her hips, inspiring it all, night after endless night

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