How do they express it? Feb. 2, 2015

 

How do they all express it to her if not with flowers and candy?

Do they kiss and caress day in and day out, finger her curls, the buttons on her blouse, touch her lips with the tips of their fingers?

Is that all what love is, these outward signs and signals?

Or is there more to be had than can be found between the bedposts, some comfort felt, but not expressed, an arm around her shoulder that does not lead to his hands upon her breasts?

What is it that she waits for when a love expresses love, what message can he send that is no coupled with Cupid’s arrows?

Can love be found between the words and actions, those deep silences that seem endured when they are really endearing?

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When the madness comes March 2, 2025

  

When I speak of March Madness, I don’t mean basketball.

Spring causes more than pussy willows to sprout, even before Aprile brings its golden showers.

March Madness making me sway even before I have a right to, drinking no ambrosia to get me drunk, lining up to take my turn, one brave man dipping his wick into dark places other men have been before me.

Better last than never, sprouting in the moment the air changes, and I feel my insides changes, banging my gavel against any soft surface that will tolerate it, this madness coming up on me each March, stirring me up until I am ready to explode, this need a need I never cease to need, laid bare, a throbbing memory I ach to make real again, each year, this time, when the madness comes

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Obsessed or not obsessed? April 17, 2012

 

She is obsessed just as her generation is, not with love or passion, while I still live like a naïve child,

Full of that John Wayne manhood that seeks to protect rather than dominate, desperate to preserve the mystique of virginity, seeking innocence where there is none.

I’m haunted by the off-off Broadway play I went to see where ordinary moms start a garage band and revert to the rock & roll stereotypes, the one song sticking in my mind a week later when they sang, “You can’t fuck them all.”

And this rang all too true from those days long ago when I worked as roadie for a local band fronted by a woman and get the feeling from my talk with this woman in the office she has the same ferocious appetite, and how she finds some men cool to hang out with, men she finds extremely attractive.

She talks about having worked in a bar in Manhattan where management fully expected her to put out for special clientele, and how she got locked in an office with one, somehow making her escape, never to go back there again.

Who is she? Where is she going? What she wants from me?

I’m not even sure how much of this hunger she professes is real, or more terrifying, it may be more intense than even she lets on.

At the same time, there is something frail about her, and behind her mask of indifference, deeper secrets stir.

 

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Guilt by association April 9, 2012

 

 

She lowers her voice

When she mentions the rape

Even though others in the bar

Can still hear her

especially the women,

 all of us with wrong chromosomes,

mere cads and potential rapists, too,

I feel guilty, thinking what I'm thinking

when she speaks about

the most traumatic moment in her life,

being drugged and used,

a tissue disposed of by morning,

 a man with whom she had

already made love, who became entitled,

taking by mickey what she would not offer,

 and I think, I am that man because

of all the lurid thoughts running through my head

 when in reality I would settle for a kiss

(a foolish notion, I think, since

I want more and more

 just as that rapist did,

 I'm just not crazy enough to take it.)

 

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Castration March 1, 2025

  

I castrated it for my own good, shooting down the spigot to keep it from overflowing, this need to spread my seed always at the heart of it, to press into dark places where I know I don’t belong.

I castrate it to keep it from wandering, know if I don’t, I won’t control where it goes, when I know if goes where it wants, where I want it to go, too.

I feel the ache of it from my nose to my toes, and this desire to penetrate, to lay down and have my will, if I do not cut it off. You can’t deny something so much a part of you, deny what you want and will always want, so, you do what needs to be done to keep it in the coral where it belongs, to keep it from plunging into someone else’s coral, to keep it contained.

I cut it off even though it is the last thing I really want

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Filling us up july 27, 2012

 

she pumps up egos

 as if we are all flat tires

forcing air into our bodies

 through that small

yet significant nozzle

 we all possess

 making us feel as if we are needed

when in truth she needs us

 feeling our heads up with hot air

that has us prancing across desperate highways

 at speeds faster than sound maybe even light

we feeling so inflated, so important

 we can't help admire her

 almost willing to give her anything

so she will keep us feeling that way

she fills us up knowing

without her we are empty

 stranded along the long road

 without Jack or spare

she fills as up

like she would of flat tire

 and keeps us filled

for as long as she needs

 wants, yet never long enough
 for each of us aching for her touch

 on our no nozzles

so we can feel whole again

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When no is not enough April 10, 2012

 

He was her best friend’s boy friend who hit on her

 whenever his girlfriend wasn’t looking,

Trying every tick in the book to drag her into bed,

Flirting even when his girlfriend was in the same room,

A girl who trusted him never to hurt her,

So persistent he was that she finally gave in,

Making love to him when her best friend was away,

She thinking maybe if she gave in just this one time

He might get the whole thing out of his system

And the campaign to get her would cease,

When it only whetted his appetite to have more,

She flatly refusing him firmly, but he like a bull

Saw only her waving a red cape in front of him

And he plunged ahead even more determined

Seeking to repeat what he already had had,

Becoming more aggressive each time she said no

Until finally when her girlfriend was not around

He took what he wanted when she didn’t want him to

A moment in time that still haunts her all these years later

Forcing her to flee what she had until then thought of as paradise,

The perfect life she had hoped would last forever,

She unable to stroll those pathways or glimpse those trees

Without seeing him hovering over her,

The bull charging with his horns glistening with blood

And she helpless to stop him.

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