Seventh Heaven again? April 14, 2012

 

Leave it to me

To get lost

On the way

To an affair,

Scribbling down

The wrong address

So as to wind up

Staring up at a building

I knew could not be hers,

The moan of the Lincoln Tunnel,

The scent of its traffic

Clogging me up,

This massive building

With more windows

That god could ever open,

Seventh heaven?

But which window was hers?

Her persistent text

Asking where fuck I am,

Repeating the correct address,

My face blushing

Even though she couldn’t’ see it,

Finding my self striding

Towards her building

Feeling no confidence at all,

Lost inside my own head

Seventh Heaven?

email to Al Sullivan

Alone in a lonely fortress April 2012

 

 For all its windows and doors,

for all its neatness, the stacked jeans,

 the piano and piano music,

for all the glittering kitchen utensils,

 the paintings on the walls,

the books on the book shelf,

the computer and keyboard,

even with the book on the bed,

this place, this home ,

 this sanctuary, exudes loneliness

and isolation like a self-imposed prison

to which she had times

 and for special people,

 invites visitors who no matter

 how often she clicks her heals

or chants "there's no place like home"

they leave and she

while protected behind

the mighty walls of this fortress

finds herself alone,

 defending her most vulnerable self

against real or imagined threats,

 having too few implements of war

with which to do so,

 a lone defender in a lonely world

 filled with things she loves,

 but not those people or that person

 she most needs to share it with,

 no one to watch her back,

no one to make sure she's safe.

email to Al Sullivan

Google mix up April 2012

 

 

"Where are you?"

she texts me as I park

across the street from

the Orthodox Jewish place

a block up from the street

where she lives,

my Google map app

on my cell phone

directing me to an address

 that is not hers,

my tapping in the wrong address

I come to a massive brick building

out of the 1920s that has stood here

 above the Lincoln Tunnel nearly 50 years

before the first shovel lifted

the dirt to build the last tunnel.

"Where are you?

Why are you not here?

 Are you coming or not?"

I scratch my head and think

 maybe I made a mistake

 and ask her to resend the address

 just to make sure,

 realizing only when she does

 I'm at the wrong place and

need to repark many blocks further north,

passed the historic water tower

 and the supermarket and the liquor store

and the Chinese take out.

"Where are you?" she texts and

 I , with fumbling fingers text back,

"I'm almost there."

 

email to Al Sullivan

Filling the holes April 2012

 

 

She texts me to tell me

She is full of holes,

The old Beatles song

Filling my head,

She speaks in riddles

She expects me to resolve,

But not nearly as deep a mystery

As she is

I never know what she expects

Me to do next,

Needing a road map

To search for familiar landmarks

No path less traveled

Only the dark woods of her eyes

And this ache to go there.

If she expects me to fill all the holes,

I’m not sure where to start,

what do I fill them with

if I could?

 

email to Al Sullivan

Rubbing it raw July 2012

 

I rub the clam shell

 with both my thumbs,

 and think of you,

wearing myself raw,

leaving bits of flesh behind

for you to remember me by,

a jealous child,

 hurting all over

 except where the skin rubs raw.

I rub the clam shell

 with both thumbs

to cure the ache

 that goes deep down into my bones.

The more I rub, the worse it gets,

 I need to rub all of me

 against all of you,

leave me smeared over all of you,

to relieve the pain.

The clam shell’s pattern

imprinted on me, inside of me,

 just as you are

 thumbs feeling the rough surface,

 rubbing it smooth,

though it is my flesh that wears out first,

 until I have no more flesh to give,

still, I keep rubbing.

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That face that owns me April 2012

 

She gets mad each time

I unfriend her on social media,

and I'm too scared to explain why.

Morning and night,

night and morning,

 I keep seeing her face on my smart phone,

 pictures she send to me via text,

or on social media,

her deep gaze swallowing me whole

each time I turn on my computer.

I am drowning in those eyes,

 yet unable to sink or swim,

 a lost soul without lifeboat or life jacket,

the best I can do to keep afloat

 is to close my eyes and pretend

 this is not happening,

only when I open my eyes again

 all I see is her face,

and can't explain the ache it causes me

how little control where I am

and what I am doing,

so, I shut off the spigot,

stop the flow of photos

that I am chin deep in already

 unable to explain to her why.

email to Al Sullivan

Starting over Sept. 9, 2025

 

Gone, as if in a puff of smoke, a cheap magic trick, a step back to where it all started, perhaps to start back, older, but no wiser, perhaps saddling herself with the same old guilt she felt all those previous times, never quite good enough, when she clearly is, struck down by fate or ill luck, she clearly does not deserve, back to the same place every time, only without all the time she used to have to spend in order to restart again, gone, but not forgotten, there but not there, starting over again

email to Al Sullivan

Front door back door man April 5, 2014

 

She was another man’s wife, yet she wanted to be with me, her long naked body stretched across the bed in my cold water flat, leaving me nothing to imagine, taking me into her mouth, then to deep laces, insisting I use both doors to come and go, secretly making plans to stay with me when I wanted no part of that, even though I enjoyed her nightly visits, the touch of her lips, hips, kisses, yet not so much to surrender my solitary existence, this one time barmaid who put out for special patrons at her boss’ insistence, later doing the same for her husband’s friends, of whom I was not one, me, the sneak thief stealing her self-declared virginity night after night behind her husband’s back, a front door man, a back door man, who she insisted I keep coming, even when we both knew it could never last.

email to Al Sullivan

Bonnie April 2, 2025

  

Bonnie, my boss back then, always dressed up as if going to a formal ball, drenched in Chanel No. 5 and eyelashes so long they might have served as bat wings.

I was her go to guy, the employees she could count on to go anywhere when one of her other employees called in sick. I often found her waiting at ach store or Kiosk to make sure I arrived, though I often feat her warm beath on the back of my neck as she made sure I did the job right, or so I thought, she married to some icon of Wall Street with whom she had to compete, and me, the lone wolf living in a cold water flat in Passaic, always nervous around her, feeling her fingers touch my hand or arm or cheek as is wanted something else from me, something she could not talk about openly, and never did.

email to Al Sullivan

Marching each other’s parade May 26, 2014

 

The parade goes on with me in the middle of it, making me wonder if she’s in the midst of a parade wherever she is, this time and place where we both reside, just not side by side, she, perhaps, seeing no reason to toot her own horn or wave her flags, having passed on from all that while I still linger in it, I search the crowd for a sign of her face, knowing it won’t be there, and I wish she would strut her stuff in my parade so I could stand on the sidelines and cheer, yet, not quite aware of what either of us has to cheer about, unless it is our ability to survive, to have made the next day or week or month or year, relatively unscathed, even if what we wanted we could not have, the dreams we still have yet have no want to make come true, and so, we celebrate the least bit of success, the beathing in and out and the promise we will for the foreseeable future.

email to Al Sullivan

Stirring up the volcano again April 2012

When it stirs you up,

 it stirs you completely,

you can't go back to what you were before,

like the old Science class lecture

mixture and chemical reactions,

he iron filing and magnets

the stuff our teacher used,

but she did not know

 about the volcano

stirring up inside me,

 waiting to explode

 now, as I wait for

the next text to come,

I feel it again,

brewing,

 a chemical reaction

magnetic attraction

nothing can make undone,

she tapping out the message

 from a place so remote

I feel lost in the translation,

like Morris Code,

 my heat beat quickening

each time my phone beep

 with message received,

the stirring up inside,

the imagined scene

I see in my head,

 I don't talk about it,

fearful it might make

 the volcano erupt.

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Davy Jones’ locker April 23, 2012

 The eyes across the table stare

and I can't help stare back,

here in the office, neutral ground,

this safe place where we can meet once a week,

 then go our separate ways.

Eyes some claim as windows to the soul,

 deep brown, deep down, each glance I make

I find myself drowning in brown water,

 too deep for the common man to swim

 without risk of getting too deep, and yet,

never deep enough, the need to go as far down

into her so I might learn all her secrets,

at the same time scared I might find out too much,

 breathe too much of her into my lungs,

 my soul becoming a Davy Jones lost in her forever.

 

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Immortal love February 10, 2014

 

I wonder what it is she did

Before she found love,

If not this time, then

The times before that

Stretching back to that first time

Was she merely engaged

In simple pleasures

A sleeper who did not wake

Until the sun rose and cast

Its light on her bed

Where it came upon

Two bodies entwined

That moment in the sun

When she woke to find

A thief had stolen her heart,

And would not return it,

Even now, even as her world

Crumbles and she’s force

To move on,

But to where, which direction,

Does she had a map to guide her

To some other life,

Some other love

That will fill the space

This love created when

It vacated her,

Does she still see his shape

On the distance wave

Like a sailor’s widow

Calling for his return,

Plain hears, immortal

Her love and his,

Still bound together

Even when their bodies are not
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A sad kiss for a sad man April 2012

It was not much of a kiss,

a peck on the cheek in broad daylight

back where she had parked her car,

where banks converge on three corners,

a music store, a five and dime,

 a lottery shop and a bus stop,

though on Sunday

devoid of life,

no one to witness the affair,

I felt disappointed

No more than what

A brother might give a sister,

A mother, a son,

Staring after her in the fumes

As her car pulled away.

All those midnight interludes

Imagined passionate embraces,

The cheek to cheek

Chest to help

Loins throbbing at first touch,

I felt stupid, and stumbled back

To sit in my car,

Shivering,

A sad kiss for a sad man

 

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Making pearls July 15, 2013

 

Making pearls

 

 

July 15, 2013

 

Sure she's scared,

she should be,

the end game to a love game

that started out in her mind,

real because she thinks it's real,

painful because love imagined

causes pain.

made real by constant rubbing,

the way a clam makes pearls,

if you caress long enough

This thing she clutches

with heart and hands

 molding it into a precious stone

like the stone in a ring on a finger

 that's not hers,

 glitters all the more

when she ceases it,

it's not hers either.

You can't make love by making love,

but often you can't keep it,

forced it to cast out

into the endless sea

, watch it sail away,

 into some else's arms.

 

email to Al Sullivan

The rattle of ice April 24, 2012

 I can almost hear the rattle of the ice

from the photograph she sent me

tending bar at her father's house

somewhere in NY state,

 a role she plays because she did it

 for a living at several places

 and she likes the idea of having a purpose

 when she goes to see the man she

supposedly claimed to our work mate

had died when she was still a kid

the sound of the rattling ice filling my head

 as I look at the pictures of a place I never saw in real life,

 she telling me she could not meet her

because of this obligation,

 her life spread out in the parade of bottles,

 each drink unique still she needs to sip.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Lost in the supermarket May 2012

 

I am of two minds about all this,

 maybe more multiplying my personalities

each time I think of her,

aching yet not over the usual suspects,

 drawn and yet repelled,

 like that poem she wrote

in which we/they all either cling or flee,

only there is no longer anything to cling to,

maybe smoke or to run away from,

 since she has already left,

all this bouncing around

inside my head like a rubber ball,

 inciting me to jealousy I have not right to feel,

 she, free to be with he or them or even me,

 though she clearly no longer wants me

and I feel lost,

like a kid in a supermarket unable

 to find my way through the long aisle

where I don't belong.

 

 

email to Al Sullivan

Wanton? (January 2014)

 

It is wanton

To want it

To want others

To want you,

To want them,

To find joy

In physical pleasures

Bodies colliding bring,

The smashing of atoms,

The chain reaction

We feel deep inside

Ourselves in an

Act of love

(as they call it)

That is more than love,

Needing not to be more

Than just a moment

In time when

We feel it,

Embrace it,

Wanting to be wanton,

Because at times

That’s all there is,

The touching and

Being touched,

The unlocking of doors

That lead to joy.

Is it wonton,

Or is it what we need

To sustain ourselves

In a world where

There is so little else

To pleasure us?

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The big picture April 15, 2012

 

She slices the vegetables

With sharp, harsh strokes,

Each blow a snap against

The cutting board,

As if she is thinking

She is slicing something else,

A cool spring morning

Turning to a bitter chill

Inside, and I don’t know why.

I’m too scared to ask

What might be wrong,

Or to divert her attention

From each stroke, fearing

She might slice off her finger

Or mine, by accident,

Or something else on purpose,

Her gaze focused downward

Though she seems not to see

The vegetables she is cutting,

And I think she’s enraged at me,

Something I said or worse

Something I should have said,

Or accomplished, some gift

Of life I should have provided,

Yet in my ignorance have not,

Snap goes each piece

Of this breakfast puzzle,

A jig saw being dismantled

So might never get to see

The big picture

After all.

 

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