Leaves turn to brown Nov 19, 2025

 Nearly all the leaves are gone and those few still clinging to the branches flick with flex of snow between The raindrops,  

What was once vibrant is now gone, not quite Brown but on the verge of it,  most littering the ground around my feet as I walked to the yard to collect dishes to feed the cats,
Knowing all things must pass, hope still lingering in my brain as I feel the cold bite of rain and snow against my cheek, 
This pattern of coming and going, of love and then lack of it, still puzzles me when I know it can never last, 
Not quite winter yet but near enough,
We still needing to suffer through the holidays before we get to the depths of it, when the risk of snow is more acute, and all these leaves we see now are scattered and diffuse, locked in the embrace of freezing that makes me think love will not return and yet I wait patiently for spring to come, hoping upon hope that green will replace Brown and the limbs will once again be fille, for for now I endure

The woman in the model room next door Sept 10, 2024

  

I book a room in the same motel

I’ve booked year in and year out

For decades, though now, I recall

That one night, that one year

When I lay down listening

To the bed in the room next door

Pounding against the wall

And the loud moans of lovers

One of whom I dreamed

Back then was her,

Wondering as I drifted

In and out of sleep,

In and out of dream,

What sounds she might make

And so I make them up

Myself, shaping her

In my mind

As the woman whose moaning

Oozes through the thin walls

And aggravates what I already feel,

I book the room again

All this time later,

Thinking, what if it really was her

(though I know it wasn’t)

And still sometimes dream

As if it was

 

email to Al Sullivan

A fantasy life May 16, 2015

 

No one is immune.

You keep on keeping on for a long as you can until you can’t, and then give up, going through the motions other tell you to go though like those half naked mannequins in department store windows where someone manipulates the arms and legs, and positions the head to be the most appealing to those looking in from the sidewalk.

None of it is real or authentic as she seems to believe, locked into a fantasy beyond which she thinks she sells to the public, a kind of kids game when she dresses up to be someone new each time, putting on adult clothing in an effort to feel grown up, when none of us really are.

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Morning wood 2015

  

I wish she would

but no she won't

 I dream of her on her knees

 as I stand in the shower

warm water dripping

 off my head and shoulders

as she takes my morning wood

into her mouth

 it is just not something she does

and as much as I might ache for it

I do not blame her

 one does not ask royalty

to kneel when it should be

the other way around

I dream of that too

 pressing that button between her legs

until it vibrates

my tongue teasing it

tip going round and round

as my mouth drinks her broth

 I am the witch that

kneels before The cauldron

casting spells that might

 bring us both to our knees

me taking in her morning wood

as she does mine

 

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worm in a green apple June 23, 2012

 

There is no such thing as a secret 

in a world so tiny as this one is, 

we all rub elbows constantly

 and something spills out 

when we least expect, 

what I suspect is general knowledge,

 with me the one out of touch 

because I spend so little time in this world, 

when I live in another, somewhat remote

 which is why when E says 

she knows all about the owner and the poet,

 I’m the one that’s shocked 

and I shouldn’t be, 

since I believe it was going on early on

 and tried not to let on, not even to myself 

(painting myself green with envy over it,

 thinking maybe it really isn’t going on, 

hoping it is my vivid imagination,

 hating E for seeming to confirm 

something I want to deny,

 this apple pie vision of a world

 that otherwise is rotten to the core, 

with me green when the apple isn’t.

I am the worm that crawls out of it, 

and I hate myself for thinking 

what I am thinking,

 if it is really true.

email to Al Sullivan

Hidden aug. 2012

 

the ritual is always the same

 the long ride South

 to hide out in an office

 where nobody sees me

trying to escape the heat of summer

in which there is no cheer

 Labor Day looming ahead

bringing only promise of cold

and rain and falling leaves

 a time I used to find comfort in

a time when I tried to embrace change

but find nothing beyond it

but a void

 a question of what might happen

 could happen

I wait for to happen

 but do not know what it is

 I wait for

caught up in a poetic web

 I can only translate

I do not understand

war waged weekly

now ancient history

 she, me, they

moving to something else

something uncertain

maybe even something unreal

I don't believe

I rely on the rituals

 the morning coffee

the long drive to the fortress of a desk

 she has never seen or touched

and so unlike my Harry Potter Hive up north

has no stain of memory

her touch has never touched this

 so there is no lingering memory

of good or bad

 

email to Al Sullivan

the slightest flame (2015)

 

the Russian poet said it best

 the embers of old love

should not cause distress

 not let love became sad  again

 even when we all know

 we cannot still be friends

he like me plagued with jealousy

 that put the stake in the heart

of what might have been Bliss

 but is now lost and left both

 to pay the cost

one cannot renew

 the embers of a fire gone

but this does not stop me

from feeling fond

for what might have been once

and yet never was

the tenderness felt now

after all this time

is not the same flame

it was when first stirred

but not ignited

yet little stirs

the slightest flame

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