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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Why do I love thee? Aug. 21, 2014

 

 

Although I love thine eyes, it is not for those that I feel so strongly, even though their stare penetrates to the depth s of me and stirs my heart like no other can.

It is not just for thine smile that I love then, even though each time I look on it, I feel the irresistible urge to kiss, to taste what you taste, taste like, and feel your sweet lips against mine.

It is not only the way you stand or walk that intrigues me, though I admire all, and feel my heart stirred when you pass, not goddess so much as fully woman.

It is not desire that merely draws me towards you, even if for not it makes me quake, for as we know time changes such superficial attributes, and if only for these things I love, I know they will not last.

No, I love thee because you’re something more, something potent and permanent, I know will go on and on, regardless of how time might seem to dim those things, you are much more and always will be.

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Lost at sea again May 20, 2025

  

I’m down at the place where the rich people park their yachts, and feel like I have come back home, back when at a kid I crawled under the hulls of the boats my grandfather build to tighten the lugs on windshields, he was too old and fat to reach, and in those moments his attention turned elsewhere, I’d grip the steering wheels and pretend I have gone to sea, still on dry land, still trying to impress the girl next door, whose well-endowed chest I once saw when she failed to shut the blinds to her bedroom, sending my hormones adrift, leaving me (and not for the last time) lost in the high waves I could barely navigate, she letting me kiss her when she climbed into the boat at night, and still all these years later, I’m still lost at sea, if not with she, then with another, down at the place where the rich people park their yachts, as I wonder, are we all in the same yacht now, me, she and that mysterious other.

 

 

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To tell the truth Aug. 20, 2014

 

She can have anybody she wants, lost in this on-line dating app where people constantly lie, when she insists on telling the truth. I read all the bios of these unreal people and realize none of them are worth her time, boating about this or that when her boasts by far outweigh anything they can say, truth being the bone marrow she once boasted about, marrow that keeps our blood flowing, as painful as this might be, and her truth hurts most because I am not among those she would chose if she chose to choose. I won’t pretend to know her inside and out. I see only the veneer, the shinny surface that draws men like me to her, more than flies to honey, more like a bee to the deep-seeded flower, assuming that if I could get deep enough inside there through whatever possible orifice, I might stumble onto who she really is, hiding herself behind the perception of truth. She doesn’t lie like all the others in this app, she just leaves out those important details as to who she really is and what she really wants, refusing to totally expose herself, perhaps too wary of those of us who do not tell the truth at all.

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Lucky to have survived Aug. 30, 2025

 She looks so different I almost do not recognize her from her photo, long dark hair flowing down onto her shoulders, when in the past she could stuff it all under a hat, but not the baseball hat she wears for this photo, as if straight from a tailgate party, only there is no stadium behind her, just a lake surrounded by green, and a dog lying at her feet, poised for some purpose I cannot fantom, if only to suggest at how free she feels, unaffected by the turmoil of the world beyond her, from which she has managed once more to escape each time the world turned upside down, she always flees, to a place where she believes the world can’t harm her, this place of peace near water, as her face bears a strange expression as if she really has succeeded after all, and she understands how lucky she is to have survived.

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Can’t stop May 27, 2015

  

I never want it to stop once we’ve started it, heat of summer, chill of winter, we keep warm with it, or sweat it out, smearing ourselves against each other, a pleasant massage we translate into something better, smearing each other as if with butter, the taste made more taste the more we engage, me behind, arms around your chest, you on top, riding, in winter we could heat the universe, melting the ice caps, causing the seas to rise, drowning ourselves in it all, while in summer we melt like wax, in and out, leaving a residue of our event behind, dripping, too hot to touch, and yet, we need to, as I sip from a copu I just filled.

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Something to regret April 26, 2025

  

I could have gone with her to the dance, but decided against it. Just why I think of this these days, I can’t say, maybe because I still feel guilt over it, as I have about other things, other women, in more recent times.

Her eyes were blue, not brown, her hair blond hair long, dripping down the back of the seat in study hall in Junior high, yet like the more recent addition, she was just too cool to be caught in public with the likes of me – me spending more time in the assistant principal’s office than in classroom, though because of her, I never missed study hall.

I still recall the look of disappointment on her face when I told her no, or later, how angry she looked when I showed up at the dance stag, and like the more recent version, never again speaking to me, no more flirtatious looks over her shoulder, and now, all these years later, I still do not understand why I did what I did, or what I said, when as with the more recent romance, all I wanted was to be with her.

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Rubbing it out of me May 26, 2015

 

I fill it up and hope it won’t burst, the irresistible urge I still feel but cannot appease, worst in the morning when I wake from dreams I only then realize ARE dreams, then again at night when I ought to know better, even if the ache for it is the same, both things putting a face to it, and being inspired by it, the need to go as far as I can, to satisfy all I can, before the illusion like a mirage fades, and I am left to my own resources, to rub it all out as hard and fast as I can before it fills up, and risks bursting, worst in the morning after it has had all night to build up inside of me.

 

 

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Prostate treatment Jan. 12, 2026

  

They tell me it helped people with prostate problems; so, I do it often and think of you.

It’s like riding a bicycle, they tell me, you never forget, or a car with a gear shift I grip harder than I have to when I go for a ride each night before sleep, in that limbo where I can see clearly see your face floating above me, as I treat my ailment, a balm to sooth all that makes me ache, slipping finally into dreams the moment sleep comes, this diet of self-satisfaction I believe will cure all that ails me, and it almost does, like sailing down this river of life in a row boat, both hands clutching the oars, and in the midst of it, when it comes over me like a fit, I wonder what I did before I had you to inspire it, stroking the cool water of this river with my oar tip, again and again, stirring up the froth that I think keeps me whole, a prostrate treatment done with you always in mind.

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Dream within a dream Dec. 28, 2012

  

Does she sleep long enough to dream, this dread of nightmare she’s expressed so many times dove the years, the locking and unlocking of doors, need to keep safe from real or imagined dangers, no high road, only the lowest of low, we dare not tread on too long, the end of the year making it all too real, too painful to dwell on, a nightmare from which we need to wake, yet when we wake, we still dream?

Do we trust sleep to hear us, or are we trapped in a never-ending cycle of fear, scared to close our eyes to sleep, terrified to wake up, this dream within a dream, with the realization we might never wake?

Do we sleep long enough to dream, to feel the dread of nightmare when all we want from life is love, and fear most what love can become, and if it was every anything more than mist in the morning, the need to fell less pain, this dream we dream with the hope when we wake we will feel hope still, how we might untangle ourselves from this chain reaction, wake up to find we are not awake at all, just dreaming a different dream we can never wake up from.

 

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Frozen in time Aug. 29, 2014

  

I stride through the narrow streets to where the water tower stands, a tower casting its long shadow over the Acme even in the dead of night, traffic thick on the street where you live, a steam of stream of headlights and resounding horns. I take refuge in the supermarket, the way my mentor once did, who himself imagined as I image his mentor did, striding down lonely aisles, although I think mostly of you, the poems I still treasure even when they are painful to read, fruit and vegetables over time coming to rot on the vine, while I crave fresh fruit from you, even when you have already moved on, down some other aisle, perhaps sampling things in the frozen aisle you know better than to eat, ice cream we both crave, or even meat too dangerous a fare you mostly avoid, both of us lost in the lost world, while I still crave the vegetables you once slice for me, viciously, deliberately, as if slicing pieces of me, while debating which aisle you should put me in. I hear my mentor’s mentor resounding in the poems you night, a treasure I still treasure even frozen in time.

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The scent of a woman May 25, 2015

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The scent, so pungent I can nearly taste it, swirls around me the closer I get, not perfume (though that, too), but the essence of what I want, need, must have for each inch I come, the drumbeat of my heart fueled on this smell. I am an old car driving on fumes, I breathe in, swallow, absorb though my skin, so potent I can’t stop myself from reacting, pumped up until I am so bloated I might soon explode, an odor I can’t stir up for myself when I take it in, all yours, all the time, an elixir that drives me insane, yet I can’t stop wanting it, making me ache to get ever closer, to smear it all over me, to spread you open so I can breathe nothing else.

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My Charlie Brown tree April 9, 2025

 

 

I call it my Charlie Brown tree, a frail collection of sticks that poke up in the corner of the yard, too skimpy to accumulate more than a few leaves even in the heat of summer, and yet, at this time of year, first to spout.

I dare not attach a Christmas ornament, for fear it will break a limb, not an old tree – having popped out at some point after our arrival here, yet not as sprite as spring chicken either, somehow managing to exist, reflecting my lack of impact on the wider world, just there, just surviving, just making its bit of green when the seasons change, knowledgeable enough to know what it is supposed to do, even later when the fall comes and it lets its leaves turn, a miniature version of the trees that soar high above in the neighboring yards, me and my tiny tree, somehow managing to carry on as we are expected, giving now too much, just enough.

 

 

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