must not do it aug 17, 2024

  

I must not do it

even if I ache too much

I must hold back

must tell myself to hold on

 and accept whatever gifts she gives

as insignificant as they might be like

 The echoes of whispers in the dark of night

these are my own wishes bouncing back at me

not any reflection of what she is or wants

 this all too mysterious an existence

of saying nothing

 I read clues from the shadows and tea leaves

 I must refrain; I must not do it

 must keep to my own road

even if there are times when

 I see her on her own and ache to cross over

 to greet her

 this I must not do

I know it would only get me lost in the woods

full of wolves and my own desires

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Our furry friends

 March 2, 2026 

We always outlive them, our furry friends, who when Young we adore them for their looks or silly disposition,or  tender hearts, that over time, grows into something much, much more, family, friend, a loved one who's stayed firmly at our side through good and bad times, missed all the more because it was there for us often when no one else was, a companion who we could not live without but must somehow do so now, not too overstated affection, we know their place and yet wanted more time with them, this is the Fate we accept when we accept them into our lives, the vow we take to make certain they get all they need while they are in our care, especially love. we will always miss them, if not always as acutely as we do now, at this moment when they passing is so recent. we will always love them, now and forever

Tipping point (from Bear mountain mountain)Mountain poems) Oct. 17, 2024

 

I know the leaves have

Already changed

Where she resides,

The tipping point of

When gold and red turn brown

And yet as I drive north

On a road that hugs a river

I cling to their aspect of beauty,

Taking in the painted tips

Remembering the tender lips,

the tree crowns

bulging out, making me ache

to touch, as I cling

to memory as these remaining

leaves cling,

the colors seeping into me

along with the growing chill

as the world changes

and I know I will have to

live with the barren world

when they are gone,

until spring brings green again,

yet it is not the same,

this image of leaves,

the color of the sky

the darkness in her eyes,

the setting sun peeking

perpetually through,

always drawing me back

always making me

think far too much

about what I miss,

when I miss her

most

 

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Poetry Journal May 2012

I don’t understand!

I don’t understand!

I DON’T UNDERSTAND!

This intensity of pain, nails scraped across the chalk board of her soul, a sound once inside my head, I can’t get out, a buzz saw ripping at my brain.

What did I do to inspire such pain.

I am not that important to her and yet I get this roar of it in my head, a screech so utterly raw my nerves ache just remembering it.

I don’t understand!

Did I rip off the scab of some old wound or have I created a new wound in her, that voice in my ears, as I staggered up that hill.

I don’t understand!

I don’t understand!

Maybe I never will.

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On the street where she lives

 August 25th 2014 

I hear by one time best friend's voice singing as I drive up the street where she lives,

His favorite song which has since become mine like a Broadway recital in words I get to play the role of the man wearing the gray top hat too scared to stop even for a stoplight since this is not a street I meant to drive on cast here by chance Force to Bear witness the water tower shopping center before passing the church and then her home,

On my way to a place where she is not terrified I might see her first bird like in a window high up smoke billowing from her lips as if she was a dragon my friend's voice growing louder in my head about the street where she lives because I cannot drive faster I must adore it bumper to bumper traffic light after traffic light until inching forward I have gone past and resisted even the remote temptation to stop or stand there looking up to be there on the street where she lives draw there by faith or accident just as I was with all things started me still on the street where she lives

rust. aug 3, 2024

  

it is not dust

we must mistrust

but rust

the slow painful decay of years

Shakespeare complained that

 virtue retained will someday b

e the purview of worms

and yet we dare not abandon ourselves

 and our wonton desires

that we let fall to rust

when we must trust what is in us

 this need to feed

this polish of meddle we get

from the rub of heavenly bodies

the sweat of it keeping us trim

 it is not dust I mistrust

but the rust of ill use

the need to press on

 in, out, and beyond

 to keep intact that piece

we need most in our lives

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Brave New world

January 13th 2026 

2 weeks into the brand new year and I still reside in the old one and maybe the many years prior to it, when I could still look ahead, while these days I mostly look behind, all a matter of dealing with each day as it comes, counting them off the way an inmate does, I am in no hurry to get over with, 2/3 of my life still residing in a century that has passed, while around me, spring chickens rise, having no recollection of any other century except for the one we're in, they can still look ahead with confidence that life has hope for something better than they have it now, a brave New world I will never experience

climbing rungs to nowhere May 27, 2012

 

May 27, 2012

 I did not come here

 to look for clues 

as to what happened

 back home, 

though as I stride 

through the street of a town 

that gave the name to a generation,

 I feel the vibe, 

the sense that 

while it did not start here,

 it grew here, 

as if this place 

full of aging hippies, 

Tibetan monks, 

and the relics of a time long gone,

 she incubated here,

 a wounded bird 

with an amazing voice 

who ached for something 

more than she was able to get

 using her talents to climb 

the rungs of a ladder

 to which there is no top,

 just rung after pointless rung,

 she clinging to each 

until she can reach the next, 

she assuming there might be 

a place all this leads to,

 a platform somewhere ahead

 in the clouds

 where she can finally stand

 and celebrate achievement, 

yet has not gotten there yet,

 her palms blistering

 from the continued climb 

as if to nowhere.

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i know nothing july 2012

 

he thinks I know

 what I only suspect

perhaps is terrified

 I might expose them

when that's the last thing

 I want to do

 he and she holding

my life hostage

when they think I hold theirs

 yet I am consumed

with the green-eyed monster

and feel the sting when

 I think of them together

my brain manufacturing

wild orgies and exotic trips

they engage in when

that rational part

 the big brain versus

 the small brain

tells me none of that is true

perhaps projecting

the image of their debauchery

 because I ache to do it too

 he thinks I know

when I know nothing

though I catch his glances

 and feel the fear

he is exudes

the what ifs

the dangers I pose

the knowledge he thinks

 I possess

but I don't

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Creaking wheels

 

Her wheel creak, rusted, out of aligned, on a pushcart nearly as ancient as the woman who pushes it is, wheels clacking out ahead of her like a warning, a witch's chat straight out of Shakespeare, filling the gaps left by the passing traffic.

She comes this way twice a day, one way after dawn the other after dusk, a ritual so predictable I need no watch to tell the time of day

 She, almost a ghost, with her straw like hair and her white blouse and pants, creaking almost as much as the wheels of the cart does, and perhaps with the same warning of doom, wheels staring up the broth of her life, back and forth, carrying all she owns, here and there, across this urban universe she knows too well, one creaking wheel at a time

Make me feel it

 August 30th 2014 

There's no easy way out of all this, summer slipping through our fingers like so much sand, as I sit here on the pier where someone put up a Captain Jack doll and American flag, a block away from the hotel with gold trim.
I always pause as if one of the stations of the Cross, not yet the crucifixion, maybe the place where Christ falls and Simon takes up the burden for a Time.
 I sit wishing it all had been different wiser me doing wiser things I didn't think to do when I still could 
I sit here, up the block from the quaint downtown and a religious auditorium so huge the New York Giants might play the super bowl inside of it.
 this day leading up to Labor Day weekend, The heat of Summer sizzling into me as if I am a kettle, and still boiling up inside until I'm ready to burst, 
The sea sending foam to my feet, tickling my toes, water warmer than the air as I search for dolphins and whales, vague shapes on the glittering surface that always brings me hope, here at the edge of the universe 

On the edge of the universe August 30th 2014

There's no easy way out of all this, summer slipping through our fingers like so much sand, as I sit here on the pier where someone put up a Captain Jack doll and American flag, a block away from the hotel with gold trim.

I always pause as if one of the stations of the Cross, not yet the crucifixion, maybe the place where Christ falls and Simon takes up the burden for a Time.

 I sit wishing it all had been different wiser me doing wiser things I didn't think to do when I still could 

I sit here, up the block from the quaint downtown and a religious auditorium so huge the New York Giants might play the super bowl inside of it.

 this day leading up to Labor Day weekend, The heat of Summer sizzling into me as if I am a kettle, and still boiling up inside until I'm ready to burst, 

The sea sending foam to my feet, tickling my toes, water warmer than the air as I search for dolphins and whales, vague shapes on the glittering surface that always brings me hope, here at the edge of the universe 

Thee are a rose Aug. 26, 2014

  

Thee are as beautiful as a rose, and just as dangerous.

I’ve pricked my fingers on your thorns and still – after all this time, all that I’ve thought and felt – I still bleed, forced to admire thee from afar, to keep from pricking myself again, to bleed more.

I feel time’s passing as you must, too, these few days ahead of the calendar turning and you get another year to add.

Thou are no less beautiful on that account, younger by far when compared to me, still graceful, still desirable, regardless of how many days on the calendar pass.

I make no comment save for this, which you will never read, springing out of the all too sparce desert in which I live out my life.

You are the rose that grows here, ever present, undiminished by the cruel world in which we all must live, each page, each passing day, adding, not subtracting from they worth, and in these days, wandering this dry place, I yet to fully realize how worthy thou art, even if – when all is said and done, you will never hear these words of praise coming from these lips.

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Her scent in the air Nov. 22, 2012

  

I still smell her, not just her perfume, but her beneath of the mask of scents that accumulated in this space, this place near our office window where she could stare out at the skyline, asking herself why she is here and not over there, a scent so acute I choke on it, and yet, still feel the need to get closer, right up to the space where he scent is strongest, I breathe it in and drown on it, so filled up I can’t take in anything else except her, not a sweet or sour odor, maybe both, a scent that stirs me up inside and forces a scent of my own to pour out of every pore, just from smelling her. I can’t hide it, can’t put it all back into a box, once out, I’m overwhelmed and must deal with it, somewhere private, so that when others who reside here won’t discover how I feel.

I still smell her here, a fragrance lingering on the chair in which she sat, on her desk, on my shoulders just from passing her on their stairs, or when she used to pause at the top and stare down at me, her scent filling up this whole world, still here, as is the echo of her voice when she used to walk and talk, now caught up in the fabric of my universe, even though she has gone, not too sweet, or sour, no, a scent absolutely perfect.

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Still standing October 30, 2013

 

 

 She’s a winner

If she’s still standing

At the end of the bout,

(my brain recalling

Those pictures of her

With boxing gloves on,

And the parade of testosterone

All around her,

As if she would take them all on,

In anyway they wanted,

And I’m still jealous)

She’s a winner,

Even when objectively

She seems not

All the plans of mice and men

 (as Shakespeare put it)

Dashed on the rocks of reality

and out of such wreckage

people must rebuild or move on,

me outside the ring

feeling her pain,

even as I secretly cheer her on,

watching her stagger,

swaying like a punch drunk,

 cringing at the fear someone might strike again

and relieve her of her feet,

too staggered to run and

perhaps with no place to run to.

She must stand where she is

until the fog fades

and she can see a way to win

In a world where everybody betrays everybody else,

it is impossible to know who to trust,

even those she has trusted before.

In the end, she must

 – as she has done in the past –

rely on herself to survive,

 stumbling forwards

but on her own two feet,

wary of those who offer kindness

with one hand and a stab in the back with the other.

In the end, all she can rely on is herself.

 

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On this sea of doubt June 2, 2015

  

She is a siren when she sings, her voice playing on each of us in a different way, shaping us all into an orchestra as she conducts us, stirring us up, weaving us into her songs.

I hear her whenever I close my eyes, and feel her song touch me in ways I never imagined anyone could, even though I know the songs she sings, she wrote, are for someone remote, and yet, I must tie myself to the mast of this ship, to keep from slipping into melancholy, a trance from which I know I cannot escape, her voice seemingly so soothing, I am in her spell, she is the siren who sings and whom we sailors cannot resist, this sea of doubt, this need, this painful remembrance we suffer all this time later, and yet, we never cease to listen

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The illusion of love Sept. 27, 2015

  

I come down to the place where skyscrapers decorate both sides of a river down which cruise ships sail, at a time of day when the sun glistens on the windows like sparks or fire, a moment too short to last as much the way love sometimes is, a suggestion of something grant that always later disappoints, sunset always an illusion that always leads into night, and while I prefer dawn, I can rarely come there to see it, and so must accept this brief glimpse of an unfiltered promise, and then the deep dark that much come after, the sparks on the windows, the end of the day, the parade of steel; and glass, and, of course, the illusion of love.

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A beard or not? Oct. 15, 2025

 

 

I didn’t shave today, and only partly did so yesterday. I have no inclination to grow a beard since these days it is bound to grow out white and as patchy as when I grew a beard at half my age; I feared less how old I was back then, but how incomplete, facial hair before it became fashionable again, when for a time, men refrained, perhaps too lazy (as I still tend to be) to tend to it, keeping it neat enough to keep us from looking savage.

Perhaps women admire men with beards these days, men who are brave enough to fill their face out with hair, that ragged, manly look, that manhood we only read about in books about mountaineers from long ago, though I cant’ imagined how ragged I look with a chin full of white betraying my age.

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Pink clouds June 1, 2015

 

 

Pink clouds decorate the horizon, taking the shape of lovers before the dark of night, the shifting bodies embracing each other, a dance that comes with chance, the touch here and here, the kiss of lips, the in and out of hips, this thing we see all in our heads, a wish fulfillment rarely fulfilled as we search the skies for meaning, we rarely find in life, the tenderness of soft clouds, the imagined hands we use to sculpt out of our universe that which we need to feel for real, sunset always best, a lingering time between the stark reality of day, and the back of dark out of which we cannot shape anything, clouds shaping that which we need most, the feelings we need to feel before we dream.

 

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Painting the scene aug 1, 2012

  

the heat has come

 in my brain I paint

lurid pictures of sweating bodies

 colliding

 moist from head to toe

as he (whoever he might be)

 looms over her

 the redden tip of his stick

easing into her moist red receptacle

 plugging in to make the engine run

his hands spread across her chest

 as he presses in

starting it all up again

drawing deep then out of her

 she feels all of him inside

 she clenched around it

as he pumps her

drawing not a drop of water

but intense acute pain

that spills over into pleasure

I see them naked together

 each sharing each other's sweat

each drinking the sweetness

of that moment

 lip to lip

 chest to chest

thigh to thigh

driving into her

 hoping to create fire

as both need this passion

to explode inside and outside

I need it too

I only feel the pain.

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Armor Aug. 24, 2014

 

 

I wear no armor the way she does, and so, I stand naked in the sun when she come to wage war, locked up in impenetrable metal that does not protect her from suffering wounds, yet keeps any from being fatal, while I, exposed, my breast open to each stroke of sword, not her, instead my own, as this is a battle I fight with myself, she hardened if not safe, deep in a dungeon of steel, she created for herself, unmoved, unable to fully express love, one cannot find peace inside a rickey piece of rusted steel, unable to feel blows, good or bad, she is always wounded on the inside, just as I am without,  and still, I envy her and he armor, even as I hate my inability to reach into her, needing to feel more than her wrath, needing to feel her breath, her gentle lips on mine, the feel of her breasts beneath my fingers, the depths of her into which I might plunge my blunt sword, when even that space is protected if not immune, having born all the wrath of others before me so she shows no pain even when she feels it. And yet, at times, I can see through her metal mask, sensing what she feels, hearing perhaps the constant bang of on her metal heart, as I realize I cannot never reach the soft part she does everything to protect.

 

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Stumbling block aug 24, 2012

she's on the verge of greatness

or so she thinks

putting together the plot

 that will bring a great man down

secret meetings with management

 who want to know what she knows

 and who told her and

 is her source credible enough

to risk losing it all

if the flops

she looks confident

 having confided in this man

 who gave her so much before

while sneaking James

 feeds me the details

 not saying how he knows

what he knows or why

 he's willing to sacrifice his personal godfather

perhaps like the rest of us

he's in love with her

and she reading what I write

 calls me to ask me to remove it

telling me if I leave the item

it will ruin it all for her

 a stumbling block

on this glorious road to greatness

tripping her up

a missed stepping stone

she needs and I am naturally

 in the way

though I don't want to comply

 I remove it because like James I still love her

 

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She’s no nun Sept. 9, 2012

  

I keep thinking of the movie I saw as a kid: “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Rome.”

But in my case, this must be Hometown, and I’m not completely comfortable when it is.

I don’t think I’ll ever recover from it, dreading my place on the floor between the first and second floor, my Harry Potter cupboard people pass on their way up or down, where she passes and sometimes pauses, like a tease or a challenge, daring me to speech out when I’m condemned to a vow of silence, a ledge on a personal mountain I dare not climb down from.

If it is Tuesday, I must be here, and I’m certain she’s no more pleased by it than I am – or maybe she is, a queen on her thrown, while I play the role of jester.

I feel the way I used to feel on Monday mornings returning to school without my homework done, waiting for the nuns to scold me, only she’s no nun, and I wouldn’t want her to be.

 

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A tree on a cliff Oct. 14, 2025

 

  

I see the tree on the hill and think of her, perhaps because she’s finally put down roots she could not have put down before, a tree that overlooks the world she used to live, and which she felt compelled to photograph, an old splintered pier stretching out into the river, a grass lawn locked in by a ragged stone wall, this cliff that climbs, a tree that clings to its stones, her posted pictures documenting her life in stages, though I see her still as that tree, struggling to survive, roots gripping stone as they dig down for something permanent to cling to, a tree just on the brink of it all, its leaves turning, not yet really to fall, as she clings to the last vestige of summer, a tree whose limbs will so go bare, she relying on those roots she plants to keep her whole though the expected frost to come, a tree that grows here, not in Brooklyn,, on these cliffs where she used to live.

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The back seat of her car May 31st 2015

 

I should have taken her in the car when she dropped me off -- after that night of too much wine and that's stolen kiss -- and kept her from needing to find someone else to finish the job, her calling me later to explain how she needed to work things out and how love had nothing to do with anything,  I should have believed her; I should have been the one she had worked things out with, even if in the end it might not have anything to do with love, the old McCartney song singing in my head about the backseat of the car; I should have finished the job, stolen more than just a midnight kiss. But I missed the opportunity; I still regret it and always will, asking myself if I could live up to those lyrics in the backseat of her car

 

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Down pour October 13th 2025

  

Cool air comes after the rain, not yet frigid but far from the blistering heat that greeted me prior to the down pour, this pattern always the same despite the predictions of the chicken littles who constantly tell us the sky is falling, when in fact it is only rain; the pain we feel not from rain or heat but absence of something we need or want, the spirit of it continually within us regardless of what weather brings, the ache we suffer when we forget our umbrella or the eye patch I once wore, and so become invisible. I still venture forth in the rain or shine in heat or cold because it is what life is and we need to feel these things just as we need to feel love to know we are still alive

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Cupid’s lament August 23rd 2014

  

All this time later, I still feel the sting of it, the arrow in my heart, a dart self-inflicted, the way Cupid did himself, aimed at someone only to have it bounced back and strike me in the place I had aimed for in her, my heart beats around it, I dare not pluck it out, wishing the whole time she had been the author of it, and her aim, true, this war we wage with no victors, just casualties like me, a blow struck, reverberating still inside me each time my heart beats. Yes, I still bleed.

Had I aimed better or better still, refrained, I might suffer less, hating the notion I did this to myself and have no one else to blame, a love-stick Cupid, blind to everything, bleeding deep where it cannot heal;, my own arrow sticking out of me like a thorn, and all these year later, my heart pounds at a reminder of my ill luck, while she is off and free, untethered by any arrow, least of all mine.

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Going back

 May 19th 2025 

I wish I could live my life backwards, the way Merlin did, to avoid the pitfalls and unto my mistakes I can see coming, even at the cost of not knowing where I end up, forgetting not what I did before, rather what I am expected to do, and I wonder, will love be better in the rewind then when I livd my life going forward? will going back alive the pain of it as I approach it the other way around, reverse the whole thing so I forget heartbreak or, as I look ahead (back) to what made love so special when it began, recoup the magic before the vanishing act, time making the whole thing better until I get to the nub of it, that special moment when I first recognized that love was love 

Still longing for it

 June 19th 2025 

I still think about it, about not having it when once I did, one of life's painful lessons we must learn the hard way, not self denial rather exile, all these years later, still mesmerized, hypnotized, unable to make heads or tails of it, or what led up to its decline, and whether it was really real in the first place, you don't long for it for so long and think it was empty, the residue of something telling you it must have been something once, even if it no longer does, even if too much time has passed, this evaluating it, real or not, I still long for it, still think about it, about what it meant if it meant anything and if it still does, when I wanted to

Getting to the core of it

May 30th 2015 I crawl across your skin with my fingers, spider like, that same hungry look in my eyes, and I touch those most sacred places, the knot of hills, the depth of the valleys, dry land and moist, then repeat this with my lips and tongue, tasting the salt of sweat then the sweet juice that inspired by it all, a slow crawl over a landscape I ache to learn more about, in every way possible, to feel how the Earth moves with each inch I travel, the shake of you as you shudder, I taste it all as if I traveled miles from top to bottom, the lingering over each earlobe, the slow suck at each breast, then to the core of it where the greatest treasure is, as I reach as deep as I can to get all that I can

Echoes Dec. 29, 2012

  

I talk to myself in an echo chamber, so, the only voice I hear is my own, when I still wish I could hear yours. Maybe it is still there somewhere, rebounding off the walls of this museum I call my brain, most apparent in the dead of night, in the silence the world sometimes brings after sunset when the echoes are least unbearable, and I can suppress my thoughts as I search for yours, this late in this dying year when we are condemned to look back at what we’ve done, and who we’ve become; the echoes not as acute as the need for me to listen for the more subtle voice I know must be there, not so direct as conversation as we once had, and yet, an unbreakable connection you do not wish for but most somehow tolerate. I listen for you to speak, to whisper in the cacophony of echoes, to relate something I might otherwise miss, a piece of this history collected in my mind, an exhibit I must revisit each night when I close my eyes and listen for you, praying not to lose your voice among the echoes of my own.

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Fighting fire with fire May 28, 2015

 

The fire inside her burned so hot, I had to use a fire house to extinguish it, or tried, her inferno setting me ablaze as we wrested to subdue the flames, rolling back and forth, in out of control fury as I pumped myself up to get to the point where I could squirt inside, but alas to no avail, the more we pumped the hotter the fury got, consuming us, and yet we could not stop, needing to reach that point where we could eject it, and then let the flames subside, as we clutched each other for support, her fire still smoldering even as mine went out, hers setting me ablaze again, until we both came to realize, the only way to contain it was to fight fire with fire until we were consumed.

 

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