Variations of Antony and Cleopatra (2014)

  

In my salad days, I was green in judgement, perhaps cold in blood, knowing that the stroke death is  as a lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired, and her music, moody food for us, who trade love, and I come to understand that she makes the most hungry where she most satisfies, and I need use my lips to gently pry her open, to lie beside her, with her, within her, knowing that when she leaves this world so much vanishes with her going.

I have Immortal longings in me:  The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip: I am fire and air; my other elements. I give to baser life.  Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips. While I continue to wrestle with you in my strength of love.

In time we hate that which we often fear. We are ignorant of ourselves, begging for what harms us most, and our inner wiser nature denies us these things for our own good, and so it is profitable for us to lose this voice, those prayers, and for what good turn: “For the best turn of the bed.”

And when I kiss her, the first and last of many, I taste her orient pearl, desperate to think that desolation does begin to make a better life, and for her, now, seeing her true love vanish. Let him forever go.

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Forbidden zone Sept. 2, 2014

 

This is when I miss Jerry Lewis most, seeing him exhausted, the haze from the cigarette dangling from his mouth, reminding me of my life at home with my uncles and the haze of cigarettes hanging from their mouths.

I walk beside the river and look over at the skyline and that cluster of skyscrapers among which was one where the telethon took place, recalling my Labor Day trips there, and my standing outside on the sidewalk waiting for my group’s turn to go inside.

Now everything seems empty, someone else’s face where the famous comedian’s once was, and I wonder at how we keep losing things we love, how important pieces of our lives vanish, not appreciating them when they still were here, love being the most terrible loss of all.

I stroll along the riverfront walkway at the bottom of the cliffs, seeking out in this landscape for what was most recently lost, the massive bulk of history hanging over me, the while house that leads to her street, a forbidden zone I must avoid or come too close to, lost but not forgotten, most acute at this end of season when all things begin to fade.

 

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A blind man feeling his way April 2012

 

 I was never this giddy even at 16

when I fell in lust with my science teacher

 who was dating the head coach of the football team,

 all I could do then was stare,

,now I post silly things on her Facebook page

 she tells me I should take down

since her whole family

 and her most trusted friends

will see it and know what going on

(if anything really is).

What the hell am I thinking?

Why can't I stop?

This is not natural,

 the way puberty was back then,

 the normal progression of a boy

 entering into his teens rather

re-defining for me what people

mean when they say second childhood,

 this need to feel out my way in a fog

 of my own creation,

 to know if what I see is real,

 to touch it, to know if it is soft or hard,

 hot or cold,

 there or not there,

 like a blind man gauging reality by touch.

 

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Heart and brain Dec. 10, 2012

  

How do I tell my heart to forget her, something my brain can’t even do, unforgiven, unmasked, left without her at last?

How do I forget what I thought she might possess, the warmth in the chill of night?

How do forget her light, alas at last she is rid of me?

How much darker the night becomes without her light?

How do I keep on when all is done, she is gone, when she is shed of me already?

How do I convince my hear all is over, when my brain tells me it is not so, when it is clear she must go, has gone, won’t return, my heart still beating too many beats at the thought of her, my eyes still see her place where she sat, my brain convinced she is no longe there, but my heart does not buy it, defies it, beats madly as if she still is?

How do I convince this miscreant heart to accept it, to forget it, even when my brain already has, brain telling heart to get over it, when my heart sees what it wishes to see and always will.

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Dolphins are angels July 2, 2024

  

The gods ride the waves

On the backs of dolphin,

As I spy them from shore

Coming to me when I

Most need them,

Back then as well as now,

The same thoughts always

Running through my head

As I step into a dream scape

Each time I reach the sea,

The ghosts of the past

Lingering on the sand,

The way foam lingers

With the receding waves,

And I search the choppy

Surface of the sea

For signs from the all mighty.

Looking to distinguish

The rough surface from

The dark shapes,

Gods coming to me on their backs

When ever I plead for relief,

In good times or bad.

Coming up out of the depths

As if just for me.

 

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Chaste and unchaste June 21, 2015

 

Does it always have to come this, chaste or unchaste, rubbing raw this phony sense of holiness, when all we want to do is be wanton, and for no real good reason except that it feels so good?

Can we use our tongues for more than talk, to explore those holes we know are rarely holy, front, back, top, bottom, inside out, words getting us through the door, though it takes much more to convince you to undress, to let me come inside where it always feels the best, this unchaste moment we knew had to come, even when we claimed we would avoid it all, our brains painting it all out, planning it like a military campaign, finding some way to get you to surrender, to give in, to let me find those parts kept most secret, to make unchaste what we might keep chaste if we foolishly kept to the promise we would not go there, knowing the whole time, this is where was always wanted to go

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Silent night Dec. 2013)

  

I keep hearing her sing

Silent night,

Even when I don’t hear it

On the internet,

A song I used to sing

But don’t have the range

Now that I’ve grown old.

I hear the song when

I stroll through the town

I cover,

Or down the streets

Of the town I will

Cover soon,

Twinkle of lights flashing

As I pass bars

And restaurants

And see images in some

I think might be her,

But are not,

The coal rattles in

My stockings as I

Make my way for yet

Another change of year,

And know all of what was

Now fades,

Even if I vaguely remember it,

And she is already moving on

From her role as Santa’s helper,

So, she can get back to

Helping herself.

I stroll the streets

Of Hometown, too,

Where her memory

Is most vivid

And therefore

Most painful,

I am living with

The ghost of Christmas past,

But none of Christmas future,

I hear her singing Silent Night

It is all that I have left.

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