I will not compare thee to a summer's day August 19th 2012

  I will not compare thee to a summer's day

 the heat of which boils inside me

making me hate the sweating passion

 these long nights bring

the kiss of summer wind

rattling the leaves from spring in my bones

the longing in the dark

 the Press of moist flesh

 the wet kiss that lingers

and then consumes me in memory

I sleep fitfully and wake

To the same intense heat

 as when I fell to sleep

 this eternal summer vacant

 as I recall what came prior to this

 the buds of may spoiled

turned brown before their time

 as I ponder them and wonder

who is fairest when I know

it is the this summer

stretched out with metaphor

 to painful rack

 exposed, excluded, extinguished, exiled

to watch from afar

 I will not compare thee to a summer day

 but to the long nights

the cold nights

when we exchanged

whispers in the dark

when we still believed

anything was possible

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All I want for Christmas Dec. 9, 2012

 

Frost decorates the limbs of trees as I stroll down a path I have wandered many times, ice sleeves for bare limbs, ornaments for the evergreen too early to be Christmas and yet, close enough, the Lord & Taylor windows filled with images of a world I wished I lived in, the perfect little village with perfect little people, none of whom are me, though in looking back from last Christmas to this, I think maybe you are, even though you no longer share the same village I live in, we both aware that our world has altered too fundamentally to fit in any store window, where business sells illusion, and love is not what we thought it was, high road or not.

I stroll through a wood mother nature as decorated, no tiny people, no phony sleights, just the harsh bit of coming winter on my cheek and the wish for the sound of reindeer that will never come, the old song playing perpetually in my head as I walk, all I really want for Christmas is you.

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Paying tribute to the past Nov. 28, 2025

  

a chill wind blows from the ocean the boardwalk Creek under each step I take on this day after Thanksgiving ritual I make each year though too cold for the long walk to the gold trim hotel where I know she won't be anyway, only in my imagination, this need to be here, to resurrect a past that goes well past that summer time weekend she spent here or even the birthday dance she did for her mother on the sand, back to my roots with the band and the sagging roof of the old Stone Pony, and the parade of people whose names are memorialized in plaques on the backs of benches that line this boardwalk from the casino to the theater. I stop and pay my respects to Clarence and wish I could do the same for her, but the brittle chill makes my fingers ache, so this year, I got from the heated theater to the casino and back, the images of the past flowing through my head.

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Silent running Aug 18, 2012

  

if you stay silent

 you become invisible

like an old submarine movie

where the bad guys have to guess

 where the good guys are

and try to blow them

out of the water anyway with depth charges

silence isn't golden

and even if you keep your mouth shut

 you can't guarantee survival

or keeping all those precious things

you have clawed your way to collect

what they want what you have

by they you might mean  me

they will get it if you

 don't fight to keep it

and being quiet

going under the sonar or radar won't do

you intimidate me

because you are powerful on the surface

though as it turns out

your jelly underneath

 vibrating to each attack

so shaken you can't fight back

our stares might shoot through you

but only out of envy

 this sense you have what we may never get

you need to stay visible on the surface

where we all can see just how powerful you really are

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Bad luck day June 13, 2025

  

I thought I could avoid this bad luck day by taking a car ride into the country, only to find the car would not start, a dead battery I thought was dead till I replaced it and the car still would not budge, charger be damned and I get to walk to half mile to get my prescriptions and my evening meal and the other odd bits of ill love  that transpires in between this superstitious silliness, magnified by my discomfort; you don't escape fate easily even when you don't believe these things have anything to do Friday on this date on the calendar yet which happens, and yet just happens to happen on this day

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vibration August 19, 2025

  

the vibration moves up from the wheels on the tracks and into the train car in which I sit, vibrations too uneven to predict until they hit, others on this southbound train seemingly unaware of it or could not care, the man with the cane, maybe or the woman with the baby carriage with the dog where the baby should be, the young girl with purple hair and red eyebrows or the old man with a cap from a war no one else in the car recalls except for me, we all vibrating together, stuck side by side in this journey we know will not lead to a happy end, the train and its vibrations, all we have, giving us some sense of passage we might miss without it

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Until love comes May 5, 2015

  

I suspect she does it every way possible, not out of love, not yet, or recently, with lovers, friends, friends of friends, even friends of lovers, the man who comes each with coke that is neither regular or sugar free, slept with her best friend’s boyfriend and with his girlfriend, sometimes one on one, sometimes all together, three does make a pair, done upside down, sideways, tied up, back door or front, sometimes in her mouth, done in so many angles she might need a geometry class to untangle it, done with people she likes or not, even those she doesn’t know, out of boredom or pity, she offering herself up like a sacrifice, a girl on a half shell, done and done again, she knowing more about it than anyone, until love comes.

 

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Not a sound I really hear August 22, 2014

  

It is not a sound I know I really hear, except in my head, as I lay down in bed, home or abroad, haunting me the way marly's chains did old man Scrooge, not because I will carry the weight of it, but because I cannot, the dream of a dreamer I here moaning and groaning and I'm not its cause,

 I do this to myself, of course, having no cause to blame her, I insist on dreaming what I dream, hear what I think I hear, wish I am the one causing it, reacting to it as if I am, the slow, steady beat of it that is not my heart, only the echo of wishes tumbling around inside me from head to toes, exasperated by what I want rather than what is, and how it would all resound if it was for real it

 is not a sound I hear for real yet feel it just the same, clutching myself as I embrace I ache, if that is even possible, when it is not, the sound coming again and again and all I can hope to do is hold on, keeping a firm grip on my reality until it all passes and I can step off into new dreams

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The echo of her songs November 19, 2012

All that remains is the music I hear, sometimes only in my head, sometimes for real songs she sang for some heartbreak that is not mine bittersweet accompanied by an old lover who used to cheat, maybe this music, these songs, are about him, but I think not, too soulful, too much coming from a place inside her nobody can reach, the shell within a shell where her real self resides, the remnants of this life we lead over this short span of time, like fallen notes on a sheet of music played over and over until I foolishly come to believe they were for me, yet it is all that remains, after all else's gone, like the wreckage of a sailing ship washed up on the shore, each piece part of some masterpiece of a sailing vessel nobody can reassemble, only mourn, the songs echoing in all the shells she's lived in so far, hinting at more to come, her secret hideaway inside herself, where no one can find her, only hear the beauty of her voice, as if over the wide sea, lonely but remote

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Yellow Leaves Nov. 27, 2025

  

Yellow leaves cling to the tree outside my sunroom window, the last batch before the deep freeze comes, on this day when the big balloons make their way down Broadway in the city that never sleeps across the river, this day when we seek reasons to be thankful, when – at this time of life – grateful just to have survived, having had what we hand when we had it, a gift beyond reckoning, appreciating the small things that over time have become big things, even when they have settled down into the yellow leaves of memory, those things that cling to us and resist the deep freeze we know must inevitably come.

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A picture a thousand words won’t make 2014

  

Night time passed

Once more without you,

One of a thousand

Or tens of thousands

I will pine about

Making shapes of you

In the dark

Like a child makes

Pictures with crayons

Unsubstantial

As compared

To the reality we once knew,

A vacancy I still

Cannot fill,

A picture

A thousand words

Do not make

When we’ve forsaken words

There is nothing to bring back

Nights as they once were,

Merely the memory of them,

With each new night

And its recollection

Making those memories fade

Leaving us with a thin outline

We need to refill

With things

Other than what once was

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the voices in my head sept 10, 2024

  

I still hear her voice in my head

 the way a mad man might

 stirred up after all this time

 like dust from a place I failed to sweep

 yet find needs sweeping

the midnight phone calls

the text after text

the memory of what it was

 or never was

how can I even be sure

 I hear her voice even

 when it's not there or on the CD player

or SoundCloud

what was and perhaps could never be

a voice long gone silent

 in the waking world

 yet not yet dreams

I wish to hear the sound

even when the images fade

 and I need to remind myself

who it is they are connected to

Eden abandoned

hell not fire so much as absence

the inability to have

what I desire most

my fault. her choice

she being the one to decide

who to talk to

 who is worthy of attention

 when all I ache for

is to hear it again

for real

 

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Wind and rain August 17, 2014

  

 the wind rattles the windows and I think it is you, this ghost that rises with the flash of light and rumble of Thunder, and in the dark I wait and dream, rain peppering the roof and walls, the way I want it on you, to sit secure, there in some cupboard where I might tear open the buttons of your blouse and feel both, trembling under my still chill palms, hand at the tips, perfect fit for my lips, the rattling windows, the rain on the roof and walls, and you beneath me as if I am a cloud and need to bequeath to you all that has pent up in me for so long, a deluge flooding each orifice and still unable to fill you up, windows rattling, wind blowing, me inside you for refuge, I tear at your slacks until all is exposed, rain-like into you, all I can no longer contain, this storm everlasting, me needing to break free, needing to be satisfied, when we both know it can never be so, I sit here, wind rattling the windows, rain spouting out of me but not into you

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In the dark May 4, 2015

 

in the dark,  I still fall, too brittle to wait for it to be real again,

 in the dark, I search for a place to place my tongue as I feel the snake sniffing as if to strike

 in the dark, I clutch the gear shift with both hands, trying to get the gears to mesh

 in the dark, I wait for the moment when it becomes real again, the way that first kiss was real, and the first touch of all her sacred places

 in the dark, I kiss again, I touch again, and find that place to place my tongue  fingering my  snake

 in the dark I still believe anything is possible, even when it is not, even when it's all I wish for all the time

 in the dark

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Free as a bird May 27, 2025

 

 rain dots the tops of cars as I steer down the central shopping district, too early for the stores to open and so it feels as if I strive through a ghost town, a few early risers getting coffee, a few street urchins selling bottled water, while the huddled masses still rest their weary heads in the deep sleep from doorways, sleeping off habits and their hunger until the store keeps sweeps them away with the litter, the rain clearing up the gutter except for night the debris as we wait for the normal life to pick up after the nightlife ceases, and I think of you, away from all this, free as a bird

 

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Gun Metal Oct. 11, 2024

  

The sea is never gray

this time prior to dawn

but gun metal dark

the sea absorbing

the darkness of the night

the way by day

it absorbs heat

at night it sucks into itself the dark

as I make my way to the wet sand

where the waves kiss my feet

chilling me. making me ache all the more

 for something I know

 the waves have already taken

 something as cold as gun metal

and as unmoving

 something that is beyond reach

 so even the coming sun won't warm its heart

I still long for it and feel the grip

of the sea around my heart

 the beat of which matches

stroke for stroke

 the rise and fall of the waves

the foam filling me more intensely

I feel to join it

the in and out of it

my warmth cast out

 into the gun metal wave

 until the sun comes

and if by miracle

the seas warm it again

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vacuum July 31, 2024

 

nature abhors vacuum scientists tell

perhaps explaining how it feels

to stumble onto a place where her face

once stood prominent,

along with her bits of wisdom

all gone sucked into some

 black hole of emotion

I still can't explain

 the blank page from which

 I can only retrace shapes from memory

and even these imperfectly

confusing what was

with what I wished would be

still hoping for some miraculous Resurrection

 I come back to it again and again

seeing nothing except what I bring to it

 the unfulfilled desires

 the intensity of forgiveness and pain

the shadows that hide

in the depths of space

many many light years

 between what was

 and what might have been

 

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I look north oct. 16, 2024

 

I look North and think of her

 this time of year

 the changing leaves

 the memory of her leaving

the same road still connects us

 as does the river along which

the road goes

the tips of the mountains

greeting me each time

 the lips of cliffs

the narrow spaces to either side

 I ache to go

 knowing I won't find her there

I look North and think

of change this fall

as well as others

 spelling out new directions

 that all seem to pursue the way

she has gone North this time

 South another

like pieces of a puzzle

 I can't help but put together

in my head

tires rumbling over the rough

surface of this world

 as I drive north

 to see the trees

 the leaves and

always the memory of her

 

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Salesman at the door? Aug 16, 2014

 

I’m so glad we don’t have milk men these days or door to door salesmen selling vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias.

I’m glad she is not my wife, the housewife who stays at home with apron on, but nothing else, who calls for pizza delivery with an unexpected tip.

It could be worse. She could be fucking the mailmen, too, or the Prime driver, or even the man in the mustard green UPS uniform, getting her afternoon delight as prelude to an evening with me, the perfect housewife who brings herself to me naked on a half shell, where I suck her up along with the remnants of all who came before me, never knowing of their visit, grateful for the lack of milkman or salesman when there are so many more modern me she can engage with.

If she was my wife, I could not work, my mind pondering all the possible combinations, her visit to the shopping mall with other housewives, the livid luncheons, the cocktails afterwards, the afternoon gigolos who wait for women like these to prey one, no milkmen, no salesmen, just pizza for two – with me coming home to give her an afterwork cocktail, drinking her up with all those who came before me, while I wonder who will have her after I fall asleep.

 

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Dream Oct. 22, 2025

 

 

I did not dream of her, that last and vivid dream before morning brings consciousness, stark as sunlight, and yet edged with the lingering mists dreams always contain.

I did not dream of her, although I could have, recalling a place we both shared for a time, a bank that was not a bank when we inhabited it, and has since ceased being what we shared after we abandoned it.

The dream thick with the remembrance of those final days, hers, and later mine, as we closed the door on that place, and recall the people who shared that space with us, heavy with regret, and wishes things might have gone better, and now, this late in the day, too late to do anything but look back, my character sponging off free giveaways of food banks used to give when I was a kid, then shifting out on the streets – where the water tower stands – and some maniac driving a Datzun B210 backwards off the pier into the river, desperate to be rid of that rattling piece of junk, with me, bearing witness to the end of us, watching him ride off (with a girl who might be her) into the sunset, while I fumbled with my camera phone, unable to take a picture, aching to find a face beyond the glare of the windshield, later, waking, believing it was her, gone, but not gone.

 

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Each step we take Aug 15, 2024

 

We stumble through

The dessert of our lives

In search of an oasis

That may not exist,

Desperate to reach

The far side before

We die of thirst,

Our only real hope

Is to keep moving,

One step after the next

Knowing if we can

Take the next step

And the next after that,

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We might achieve our goal,

It is never easy,

There are always

Obstacles that get

In the way,

Not mountains or

Even quick sand

But pitfalls nonetheless,,

Any wrong step

Possibly becoming our last,

It is difficult to avoid these

And still look to where

We must go,

And yet we need

To keep our feet

On solid ground

The whole way through

 

Testing the limit Aug. 14, 2014

 

Is there any limit to those who keep her company, by day or night, rolling around  in wrinkled bedsheets, seeking to do what she likes best or what she might like to do next, the parade of those who stumble, love-drunk through her otherwise locked doors, married or unmarried, none certain what exactly to expect, perhaps even shocked at what transpires when they leave.

What is the limit, if there is one, to the idea of joy, not just the physical presence (though that is amazing in itself), but the feel of what we feel when we come too near, the promise of something so utterly intense we’re never certain we can survive it, yet are drawn to it – moth to the flame—to test our mettle, and learn the ropes even if it means being tied to her bedposts, to let her have her way.

Is there a limit to her joy? Does this come with a number on it? Or is the whole universe hers to explore, she needing to go as far as she can so she can learn what is enough, and how can anyone keep up with that, clinging to the pillows as she stretches it all out and asks, “Are you coming yet?”

 

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your river and mine sept. 8, 2024

  

this River and that river

are the same river

even if we are miles apart

 reflect the same sky

for the moods may swing

 a different way

 your river bank with trees

 mine with skyscrapers

 yours rich with the scent of pine

mine with the heavy exhaust

 of barges and computer trains

 your river flows into my River

though it takes some time

 your water kissing my water

 and it is divine

 your River mingling with mine

 for those few miles where

 both Rivers reach for the sea

limbs entwined perhaps overheated

as they rub

your River and my River pressed together

 chest to chest in an endless caress

your River and mine becoming one

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Twinge before the bite July 1, 2025

  

They found it difficult to put it in, doctor and nurse, me on my side, knees to my chest, it poking at me here and there before finding the gap it needed to reach.

I only cried out once before the real pain came, the twinge and then the bite, with the doctor giving me the countdown to how many more I needed to endure, always more than I thought I could stand, the twinge and then the bite, another piece of my flesh, put into a jar for posterity, bits of me already foreign, like spit as a kid that got cold in the palm of my hand, good for somethings, but never to reingest, something alien, not of this earth, the nurse clutching the monitor to tell the doctor where to strike next, twinge before the bite, as I bit my lips against it, with only a few more to go, before it is over, if it ever is, jus a few more, twinge before the bite, if I can hold out.

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A witch’s brew Aug. 21, 2025

 

Heat, inside and out, this scalding month we must endure before fall brings cool again, and winter offers its deep freeze, this sad cycle of life we also must live with, bits and pieces of day to day we lose track of as time goes by, the taste of sweetness we thought of when young, almost – but not quite – forgotten, the people to whom we cling, and wish for, but cannot recapture, except in dreams.

I still wake sweating, just not the kind I cherish, and still see the face to whom I fell so strongly, even if I’ve not met her in the flesh for some time, all the small details lost, even if still clinging to me, and in my dreams, the heat of the day translated in the one of night, into a passion I can no longer regain, lost but not lost, there but only in the vaguest way, stirred up like a witch’s brew in the rem of sleep, dream up dream, steaming me up inside, and still lingering long after I am awake.

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