Lions, tigers and bears March 4, 2026

 

We crawl up to the fence behind the high school for a glimpse of the wildlife there, not a Doe or Fox or even a groundhog, but lions, tigers and bears.

I’m Dorothy telling Joe this isn’t Kansas anymore, and he – aspiring one day to become a cop – is so scared, he’s as pale as a scarecrow, and as courageous as a cowardly lion, trying his best to play the role of tin man, we both know he has heart.

I keep hoping he won’t faint especially when we get a whiff of what we cannot yet see, but when we get to the top, we still can’t see

We cut class to do this, while other, wiser kids, hide out behind the gym smoking cigarettes

Even I wonder if we are crazy, and whether or not someday we might both regret this, if we live so long.

In the distance we hear the train, freight trains bound for the Greenville Yards, or passenger trains bound for Hoboken, I can’t tell, rides we intend to take, but need to do this first.

Something growls when our feet hit the ground on the wrong side of the fence, Joe suggesting we go back, me thinking its too late for that, moving ahead through the maze of buildings and cages, the sanctuary where authorities bring wild animals straight off the planes, animals we hear, but cannot see, and ache to, and I wonder if they feel safe here, or are they scared of what comes next, where they will be sent once their incubation period ends, and I’m tempted to set them free, Joe freaking out when I suggest it, telling me I’m crazy, and yet, hearing the stirring inside the cages, I think: what if it was me there, like them, not knowing what to expect next.

I don’t get the chance. Someone with a flashlight, maybe a gun, starts shouting at us. Joe runs. I hesitate, caught in the middle of wanting to do what I said, and fleeing before I wind up in a different cage, me and those poor creatures, those lions, tigers and bears.

The man shouts; I run, too, knowing I will never get the courage up to do this again, a regret I’ll regret for the rest of my life.

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Niave

If you don't fuck her somebody else will 
This is a variation on a rolling stone song that ran through my head now and back then when I still did not know how the world worked despite having it sometimes thrown in my face like a big wet pussu
If you don't fuck her somebody else will 
Just may be true for every woman I have ever known and known in the biblical sense 
This idea of multiple partners of how many there can ever be and how lucky a man is to settle down with one or two or have a few in this life never knowing that these women may have had hundreds of men in theirs 
I still think about that when I think about her about how naive I am and was and probably always will be this obsession to to believe that the world is not based on sex when it absolutely is 
And it stinks yet at the same time it excites 
This idea that the woman I was with; her maybe with her; never was with could have lived a life of total wanton
And I would never know 
And in the midst of that in the for not having been or done or will ever do the same thing 
And how when she hinted head this life beyond me this twirling twisted world in which men tumbled over to be with her how shocked I was how pathetic how scared and how I wish I could have been her in the same things 

The reawakening April 2012

 

She says her friends saved her,

when she ceased interest in it

how she just wanted to be left alone,

 only didn't,

needed something even she

 didn't see she needed,

yet did,

her friends seeing it,

brought it to her, not love,

 not even lust, just fun,

playful banter in bed for two,

 he and she taking turns

sometimes together, saving her,

 making her remember

what that part of her life truly meant,

 spreading her out,

laying the ground work for

maybe something more one day,

fun times not love time,

 through she says she loved every moment of it,

 feeling that part of her come awake,

 the old ache, the need, the love,

 the feel of it in and around her,

 the fast breathing,

the wonderful sweat,

 hearing her moans at a distance

as if all this happened to someone else,

until finally she felt what if felt like to feel again

dripping with the pleasure of it,

making herself want this again,

possibly again and again and again.

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Gail May 6, 2026

 

 

She wants to paint my toe nails pink,

I say, “No fucking way,”

“No one will see It with your shoes on,” she says, though I will know its there.

I’m high, but not that high. But I am in love.

I’m 17 and in love with this 19 year old girl I met at the print factory.

She squeezes my toes and says, “please!”

I agreed to give her a foot rub in exchange for her giving me one, but it’s clear she doesn’t want to stop there.

“It’s not like I’m asking to make you wear lipstick” she says, “Although you would look good in matching pink.”

“Someone would see that,” I tell her and try to yank back my foot, but she holds on to it.

“You could wear matching pink panties,” she says, “No one will see those.”

“The next thing you’ll want if for me to a bra,” I say, struggling to make sense of something that seems senseless to me.

“I’d love to,” she admits. “I could dress you up like a doll, a stockings, skirt and sexy blouse and all.”

My head buzzes.

“Stop,” I tell her, too confused.

“We could do it here,” she says. “My older sister’s clothes might fit you. I’m pretty sure I have a wig, and I’d be thrilled to make you up, eye shadows, lipstick. I’m sure you’d look beautiful.”

“I’d look like a sissy and people would mock me.”

“You wouldn’t go anywhere,” she says. “You could do it and we’ll stay here.”

My high is getting worse as my hormones kick in.

“No more of this,” I tell her.

“Please!!!!!”

“No!”

“Oh, all right,” she says with a pout. “But let’s not waste the pot my brother got is.”

She hands me the joint, I suck on it, feeling relief.

“Take it all the way in,” she scolds me. “Don’t you know how to smoke pot.”

I comply, feeling the world grow even hazier.

“Won’t you think about it,” she says, meaning her plan to decorate me like a Christmas Tree.”

“I don’t want to do it,” I say, although the pot is working its way into my brain.

“Just think about it,” she says, handing me the joint again. “I’ll be fun.”

 

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Invisible woman May 8, 2025

  

She’s there, she’s not there, or maybe it is merely my imagination, haunting me like Marley’s ghost, perhaps warning me to keep my distance, I don’t know, although I wish I could put a finger on it, to know if I’m doing right or wrong, some barometer to tell me what direction I should be going, whether the temperature is hot or cold with the forecast all too vague, if only someone would say: stop or go, a traffic light with some indication of when I should slow down, a stop, or if I can go again when the light turns green. All this is not what it seems. I am lost in space even all this time later, trying deal with the whims of an invisible woman.

 

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My Harry Potter life July 1, 2012

 

 

She’s on vacation

I’m jealous,

 wondering who she is with

and wish it was me,

knowing the hates me,

yet I can’t stop

writing all little love poems,

 like a 16 year old kid

whose hormones have just kicked in,

the kind of poems

I should have written her

 when I first got with her,

full of angst and lust,

 poems I know she will never see,

 each dripping with my need not hers,

we—I mean me –

being too selfish to share,

wanting, not giving back,

 a spoiled toddler in a tantrum

 when she looks

 in any other direction by mine,

 my imagination painting a scene

 with silk sheets and intense embraces,

 even though I know nothing

 of where she went,

 let along if she went with someone,

 here in this dusty alcove,

a Harry Potter without his owl,

waiting for the elf to come

to drop the cake

alone again, naturally.

 

 

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Liz May 7, 2026

 (This is part of a series of true stories, slightly altered by largely how they happened)

 

I tell Liz I go both ways on the drive to her house from the club. I figure it is a good way to get into her pants, when I’m just the sound man, and she loves the band. And she wants anyone of them to take her to bed.

She has pictures of David Bowie in every room, and I figured this might give me the edge if I tell her I’d dress up as a girl if she want – when no one else in the band would dare.

I’m more than a little drunk, and maybe don’t know exactly what I’m saying, it just felt right coming out.

And it seems to work. She seems legitimately impressed, claiming she doesn’t find many men like me who are willing to say it outright.

She’s in the van with me, and when we arrive, the rest of the band is there, and other girls from the club, for a party Liz held in our honor.

Over time, guys pair off with girls and wander into rooms elsewhere in the house. Hank falls asleep.

Liz is like a bumble bee going from one man to another, from this room to that, while I wait and hope she’ll finally reach me.

She smiles at me. She points to one of the still vacant rooms, a bedroom, and I stagger in that direction, falling over pieces of furniture I can’t see in the haze.

I don’t turn on the light in the bedroom, I just sit, and wait, and wonder what is taking Liz so long to arrive, and when she sticks her head through the cracked door, she says for me to get dressed.

“I’ve left you stuff on the chair,” she says, pointing to the corner of the room.

I have to squint to make out the skirt, blouse, bra and panties.

“You expect me to put those on?” I ask, horrified.

“You said you would,” she says.

I don’t recall putting it exactly that way, and tell her so.

“Do it for me,” she says. “and hurry.”

I’m too drunk and horny to argue, and do my best to comply, feeling the softness of the clothing she provided, though I struggle to get the bra on, then sit on the bed to wait, thinking how great the sex would be, how much better she would think of me, but I feel like a whore.

When she finally arrives again, she’s brought her brother.

“He’s into Bowie, too,” she says. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit in the corner and watch.”

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