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.

email to Al Sullivan

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.

email to Al Sullivan

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.

 

email to Al Sullivan

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

email to Al Sullivan

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.

email to Al Sullivan

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.

email to Al Sullivan

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.

 

email to Al Sullivan