It is not stardust that gets in our eyes all these years
later, but grains of sand, the hour glass, broken, the storm slowly fading
away, not yet letting us see a clear view of the past, yet not so blinded as we
once were, more a dreamscape of what we once thought as possible, lost in a
rage of wind, so we are left with the remnants of the dream, shredded rays
still clinging to us after we trudged so far and for so long with the rage of
sand set against us, able by luck or fate to have avoided the pitfalls and quicksand
we once believes would consume us.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
Poetry Journal Jan. 14, 2024
Friday, July 25, 2025
Two words July 29, 2012
I bushwhacked myself by sending a text
even I know I should never have sent
after having abandoned the crazy idea
of sending her cards for her birthday
knowing too that if she hated the card
I brought to the bar that night
how much worse would three cards be
even though this time
it really was her
birthday not mine
what harm could a simple two-word text produce
a gesture of
friendship
a shot in the dark
desperate still to
rekindle a flame
we both know can't be reignited
without exploding like a badly made firework
I should have known and certainly know now
how potent even two words can be
as I feel the
backlash across my back
leaving welts across my memory
that won't heal soon
too bloody response I think
for two simple words
though words can be as deadly as bullets
I hear it's your birthday july 2012
I keep thinking this is my mother's birthday too
when it is not
hers and my mother's are off by a day
not to mention all
those decades
though in my mind time no longer matters
and we float in a limbo of feelings
marking them off on
my calendar
like a prisoner xing
out the days
till his release
I keep thinking I
want to stay silent
to let this day
tumble away into the past
the way all or
ordinary days do
the march of time
we think about only as we
blow out the candles on the cake
or at those more
general occasions
at year’s end when we are all feeling
that much older
I know I should not
do or say anything
this is her
celebration not mine
and yet I know I'll
do something stupid
I always do
Seeking his approval Jan. 8, 2025
I never brought her here to seek his approval the way I had
all the other women I claimed to have loved.
she might not have come had I asked, too long a trip West to
where he had set up his last days of his life in a trailer, having been cast
out from the library he loved also with the passing mother who had been his
biggest supporter
Maybe I was scared then, this woman this poet would fall for
him the way all the other women had before he, and now she is gone and he beyond anyway to
meet him again and I return here to the old library then to the new one down
the road, briefly pausing before the house on the lake where he had lived and
where I had always brought the women I loved
And I wonder, would it have made any difference in the
outcome had I tried to bring her here and she agreed to come?
Perhaps only in my mind.
Poetry Journal Jan. 12, 2024
Jan.12, 2024
Greener pastures Oct. 20, 2024
People clutch
Their hats and hoods here
On the waning days
Of what organizers call
A green market,
When all we get
In the way of green
Are the tops
Of the carrots they sell,
This concrete planet
I have landed on
In the midst or
Rising and falling
Temperatures,
Far from the river we love
The flow that connects
Me with your
Remote location.
There is more green
Where you are,
Spouting up,
Even at this late date,
A week or two before
The clocks go back,
Only not far enough
Back to reconnect,
This environment
In which I am trapped,
And you, fortunately
Have escaped,
A real green market
Even amongst
The changing leaves.
A love struck Cupid May 2012
I am sooooooooo selfish!
A love struck cupid
with a self inflicted
wound,
the mis-aimed arrow
with no Venus to
blame,
she, psyche,
giving me this birthday gift,
granting me this
moment
with her and it is not enough.
And I sit on this stool,
streaming in my own
froth,
she glowing beside me
in the dim bar light,
not yet ingesting the
ambrosia
Jupiter offers as recompense,
her life as merely mortal,
free of anguish,
only jealous gods
like Venus can inflict,
and here, I am
a jealous Cupid
denying her the attention she deserves,
so completely foolish as to believe
I can even remotely
satisfy her needs.
How to you (me) bring joy
to someone who needs
more than any mortal can give?
How do I even dare to think I can?
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