I will not compare thee to a summer's day August 19th 2012

  I will not compare thee to a summer's day

 the heat of which boils inside me

making me hate the sweating passion

 these long nights bring

the kiss of summer wind

rattling the leaves from spring in my bones

the longing in the dark

 the Press of moist flesh

 the wet kiss that lingers

and then consumes me in memory

I sleep fitfully and wake

To the same intense heat

 as when I fell to sleep

 this eternal summer vacant

 as I recall what came prior to this

 the buds of may spoiled

turned brown before their time

 as I ponder them and wonder

who is fairest when I know

it is the this summer

stretched out with metaphor

 to painful rack

 exposed, excluded, extinguished, exiled

to watch from afar

 I will not compare thee to a summer day

 but to the long nights

the cold nights

when we exchanged

whispers in the dark

when we still believed

anything was possible

email to Al Sullivan

All I want for Christmas Dec. 9, 2012

 

Frost decorates the limbs of trees as I stroll down a path I have wandered many times, ice sleeves for bare limbs, ornaments for the evergreen too early to be Christmas and yet, close enough, the Lord & Taylor windows filled with images of a world I wished I lived in, the perfect little village with perfect little people, none of whom are me, though in looking back from last Christmas to this, I think maybe you are, even though you no longer share the same village I live in, we both aware that our world has altered too fundamentally to fit in any store window, where business sells illusion, and love is not what we thought it was, high road or not.

I stroll through a wood mother nature as decorated, no tiny people, no phony sleights, just the harsh bit of coming winter on my cheek and the wish for the sound of reindeer that will never come, the old song playing perpetually in my head as I walk, all I really want for Christmas is you.

email to Al Sullivan

Paying tribute to the past Nov. 28, 2025

  

a chill wind blows from the ocean the boardwalk Creek under each step I take on this day after Thanksgiving ritual I make each year though too cold for the long walk to the gold trim hotel where I know she won't be anyway, only in my imagination, this need to be here, to resurrect a past that goes well past that summer time weekend she spent here or even the birthday dance she did for her mother on the sand, back to my roots with the band and the sagging roof of the old Stone Pony, and the parade of people whose names are memorialized in plaques on the backs of benches that line this boardwalk from the casino to the theater. I stop and pay my respects to Clarence and wish I could do the same for her, but the brittle chill makes my fingers ache, so this year, I got from the heated theater to the casino and back, the images of the past flowing through my head.

email to Al Sullivan

Silent running Aug 18, 2012

  

if you stay silent

 you become invisible

like an old submarine movie

where the bad guys have to guess

 where the good guys are

and try to blow them

out of the water anyway with depth charges

silence isn't golden

and even if you keep your mouth shut

 you can't guarantee survival

or keeping all those precious things

you have clawed your way to collect

what they want what you have

by they you might mean  me

they will get it if you

 don't fight to keep it

and being quiet

going under the sonar or radar won't do

you intimidate me

because you are powerful on the surface

though as it turns out

your jelly underneath

 vibrating to each attack

so shaken you can't fight back

our stares might shoot through you

but only out of envy

 this sense you have what we may never get

you need to stay visible on the surface

where we all can see just how powerful you really are

email to Al Sullivan

Bad luck day June 13, 2025

  

I thought I could avoid this bad luck day by taking a car ride into the country, only to find the car would not start, a dead battery I thought was dead till I replaced it and the car still would not budge, charger be damned and I get to walk to half mile to get my prescriptions and my evening meal and the other odd bits of ill love  that transpires in between this superstitious silliness, magnified by my discomfort; you don't escape fate easily even when you don't believe these things have anything to do Friday on this date on the calendar yet which happens, and yet just happens to happen on this day

email to Al Sullivan

vibration August 19, 2025

  

the vibration moves up from the wheels on the tracks and into the train car in which I sit, vibrations too uneven to predict until they hit, others on this southbound train seemingly unaware of it or could not care, the man with the cane, maybe or the woman with the baby carriage with the dog where the baby should be, the young girl with purple hair and red eyebrows or the old man with a cap from a war no one else in the car recalls except for me, we all vibrating together, stuck side by side in this journey we know will not lead to a happy end, the train and its vibrations, all we have, giving us some sense of passage we might miss without it

email to Al Sullivan

Until love comes May 5, 2015

  

I suspect she does it every way possible, not out of love, not yet, or recently, with lovers, friends, friends of friends, even friends of lovers, the man who comes each with coke that is neither regular or sugar free, slept with her best friend’s boyfriend and with his girlfriend, sometimes one on one, sometimes all together, three does make a pair, done upside down, sideways, tied up, back door or front, sometimes in her mouth, done in so many angles she might need a geometry class to untangle it, done with people she likes or not, even those she doesn’t know, out of boredom or pity, she offering herself up like a sacrifice, a girl on a half shell, done and done again, she knowing more about it than anyone, until love comes.

 

email to Al Sullivan