The same path every time March 30, 2025

  

Gravel shifts, each step precariously balanced, slick with wet of early rain, blearing the world, shrouded with fog, the pale green of spring buds popping up, thirsty for more than winter could provide, as am I, this stumbling, bumbling stroll through time we must take each season, as if brand new, yet not, configured again, as we forget previous steps, the slick step, the wandering step, repeated again and again like a Metrodome pacing out the music of our lives, repeated even when we do not recall its previous beat, the chill wind carrying the early wet until we are drenched, this path, not the least traveled, but the same path we travel each time, trying to put out of our minds that we have been here before, desperate to keep it from being the same, when it always is.

 

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I can barely remember May 17, 2025

 

I can barely remember what it felt like the shape of it, how hard or soft, warm or cool, moist or not, or how it must have felt against the palms of my hands, a slow massage as foreshadow of what might have come later, and did, the details of which escape me all these long years later, though in earnest, I still crave it as much now as I did then, perhaps because it has been so long, a dessert making a man like me all the more thirsty for it, a sign of oasis, just a mirage I see with eyes open or closed, struggling to remember what it looked like when at last exposed, this hope the same I imagined when she undid the buttons and let me gaze. I can barely remember and yet cannot help wanting it, just the same.

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she dances 2014

 

if she dances

it isn't with me

the slow grind of it

torture to my imagination

 as I wonder who her partner is

she is a vague shape

I see when I close my eyes at night

a memory of a dark figure

I recall from long ago

if he dances I barely perceive it

 like the shadow in a dark room

there yet not so complete

 I can make it out in the Twilight

the shape of who she dances

with vaguer still

no face to put to the shape

 no voice to hear

 only her siren song

set lingering in the mist

her  eyes as deep as mystic caves

glittering from some light beyond the dark

 not sunlight or moonlight

perhaps some light she emits

 all from herself

to which men like me are drawn

 like moths

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Reruns 2014

  

if I had it to do all over again

 I know I would  still do it

even  knowing I should not

 knowing it can't last

that desperate grasp holding on

a chess master who is

distracted from the game board

by her protruding chest

 or deep dark gaze  or worse

 The depths I imagine I might reach if inspired

I do it all over and over in my head

 always feeling the landscape

 with the tips of my fingers or tongue

 or a more potent part of my anatomy

throbbing always

 wanting to want it

stoking up my own fires

with the image of her my head

filing it all under Cardinal knowledge

if I could do it over

those few precious moments

 I would and I do already

like a rerun in my brain

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pulp (2014)

  

The pulp fills my mouth

As a bite through the skin,

As sweet and tender as

I imagined when plucked

The plum from the box,

Dew dripping from it

As I plunge in

Only not as cool as thought

This flesh would be,

Warm against the flat

Of my tongue

I am reluctant to swallow,

This embrace, this taste

This consumption I ache

To achieve, my mouth

Filled to the prim by it all,

But I still want more,

Another bite, taking all

That I can get into me,

Thinking I won’t get more

This hunger, this needed,

The emptiness I ache to fill

One precious bite at a time.

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I am the rod April 1, 2015

 

Mine is not the rod that Moses bore, more the twisted stick, a slithering serpent seeking the burning bush, the unconsumed fire that draws me towards you, but in the dark of night, a candle stick with wax that drips, never expired, tapered to the tip, slipping between your fingers as you hold it, a light in the night I ache fore, that keeps my eyes open even when weariness wears me away. I am the rod, the snake, the candle stick. I am the wax the drips down into you, filling you up. I am the drips that paint your lips, the ooze you lick, the never ending fire inside.

 

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When the wind blows Aug. 14, 2025

  

The wind blows through the leaves like fingers through your hair. I paint the image of your face on the landscape, although I know you’re not really there, this stirring of the heated world we live through, sweat over, and pine about, not able to feel if all for real, the gentle kiss of moist and heated lips, the imagined press of hips, the slow sway in a dance that can only grow more intense the more we engage in it, the wind scented with our scent, stirs up in me a need I know we cannot meet, this late in the season, this so distant world, the wind gust lifts up your dress, a seasonal tease as I peek at the precious fruit under the canopy of leaves, the wind blowing and I can’t help think of you.

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