Devil; Worship Aug. 8, 2013

 Satanism is not Devil Worship, my best friend tells me when I tell him about her, the only girl I've professed to love I've never taken to meet him, and so, he never stole, this Irish Catholic boy, whose theme song is "Sympathy for the Devil," and who knows the dark side better than anybody I know, fed up with a God would would deny us all our earthly pleasures, those things that make life on the planet bearable ,only God would make us wait for uncertainly in the afterlife, when we need to embrace it now or spend our lives in mortal damnation.

"Hell is on earth," he says, then echoes something she wrote in a poem about fair being unfair, and good being bad. "You don't kneed a black mass to get something good out of all this," he says. "And don't need God to deny you happiness."

email to Al Sullivan

Waiting for the thaw to come Jan 23, 2025

The cold locks us in its embrace almost as soon as the snow ceases, the dead of winter with more than a few weeks before groundhog tells us if we get an early spring, those are the darkest days we must somehow endure, waiting out the winter, bundled up in our beds, rubbing against each other like boy scouts sticks with the vain hope we can offset the chill

 I prefer the hot days when we work up a sweat that way, feeling every inch, the soft embrace of bodies in motion, no desperate attempt, just pure pleasure of it.

 it is difficult to feel anything grand with numb fingers or toes, with that one part shrinking under the deep freeze and no way to thaw out, yet perhaps it is best way to get through it all, one deep inch at a time

email to Al Sullivan

Stirring the coals April 6, 2012

 

I don't know

where her voice ends

and the dreams begin,

having talked to her

on the phone at night,

nodding off with her

still in my ears

her shape in my vision.

She sends me pictures

that ooze into me

stir up something

I did not know

 could be stirred.

Like someone with a stick

 stirring up coals to a fire

I assumed long dead,

her shape floating up with the sparks,

 her voice as sweet as

the songs she sings

, and as devastating,

 leaving me to clutch my pillows,

 leaving me vacant

when I wake and realize

she's not there with me,

just as mirage I see on the ceiling

 as I open my eyes,

 a mist that dissipates

with daylight,

leaving me stirred and cooked.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Tea time for Alice May 5, 2014

  

Everything is a dream, a mist that drifts over this vague landscape, exposing things at odd moments, just not all at once, or all we need to see, the places, part of a dreamscape we revisit again and again at night, never real enough, often a tease, like a sad Alice stopping briefly for a bit of tea, unable to make sense of what she sees, when she meets those who take tea with her, and so, she moves on from this seat at the table to the next, hoping the tea will taste better, or the view might bring her Joy, nothing she sees adding any detail to the dream, nothing to part the mist she strolls through, or explain how big she seems at times, or small, as she sneaks through keyholes into places she was never meant to be, all of it too vague, too unreal, and yet at the end of the day, it is also all she has, and might have to live with

 

email to Al Sullivan

Free bird November 13, 2014

 

I hold it up in both my hands

This trembling, feathered creature

I can identify only as a bird

Because it has wings,

Broken wings on which it

Cannot fly away,

But will the moment I mend them,

The way it must

Its soft touch lingering

On the tips of my fingers

And on my lips as I wish it well,

Aching to touch it again,

And again feels its softness

Against my calloused palms,

Feeling its warmth against

My warmth,

It breathing my breath

This precious moment

Caught in an instant

And release, this heart break,

This lasting gift that

Must be given away,

Real and unreal,

Previous, but not possessed,

A dream dreamed

But not forgotten,

A memory so vivid

It always seems real,

My wings broken like its are,

My heart throbbing

With the same need,

My gaze fixed upon it

As it sails into the sky,

A bird with wings

Then just a dot

Against the brightness

And then gone.

email to Al Sullivan

The knight of night Sept 30, 2012

 

What is it that so attracts her thus if not a ring of gold on her finger or the fence that keeps the mowed lawn contained

does she love for the sake of love or is love simply not enough, and who would be the waking soul if she could have he wants, it all, the arm around her when she drifts to sleep still there when the morning light peeps in, and who would be the person invited, someone who is heart is so beknighted, the face that would not fade in time but remain as potent as to remind her how good a lover can be at last, as to compare with those of the past, that it is all so astounding that the face she sees at night is still around when the morning bells toll  and her gaze still fully adores, can she really find such a man, someone she can keep near at hand, that indeed would astound, if he could really be found

 

email to Al Sullivan

Melted metal September 15, 2014

It rumbles through you

Like a late night earthquake

The back beat ripping

Open this thin civilized veneer

To expose what we all are

Deep inside,

The tsunami rushing

Through out vein

To some primitive call

We thought we had

Long evolved from

We breathe deep breaths

And drink deep draughts

And still it comes on

A fire in the belly of a beast

We all become
the screech of loud guitar

Like a hot poker

Stirring up slumbering coals

Until we turn into melted metal

Aching for that moment

When inspiration makes us

Solid again,

This life gets into the blood

And then lays dormant

Even after all these years

All pretence at being

So prim and proper

Until the first note

Like the first light of dawn

And we crumble

To the rumble and shake

And we become what

We have always been,

Swept up and consumed

Inside and out,

The floor boards vibrating

Not from the bass drum,

But from something inside us

Pushing its way out.

email to Al Sullivan