When she goes she’s gone Feb 7, 2014

 

she did it again

even when she said

she'd die if she did

somehow still survives

 if not thrives

 moving on as

she has been expecting

 one day she was there

doing what she was hired to do

then taken by angels to a safe place

 she says where she can heal

 it was a year ago or so

 when she left us

feels as wrong now

 as it did then

as if the cosmos press against her

fated to repeat this

at least once more

where did she go

 I asked

they don't know

did she quit or was she fired

they still don't know

all this bubbling for some time

till finally it boiled over

 another shell abandoned

 or evicted from

 leaving behind baggage

she lacks strength to carry

 had she wanted to all

what's Left behind must

stay behind

 part of a life she

no longer wishes to live

 or can't bear to

not saying where she is going to

 only that she is gone

 box full of office possessions

carried out the glass doors

 to the cold street

when she goes she is gone

 

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Blue movies on Times Square Aug. 22, 2015

  

I saw my first blue movie in a sanky theater on 42nd Street in 1968, a Times Square dive full of perverts whacking off to either side of me.

I was scared to touch anything, the backs of the seats sticky, and I dared not look too closely at what else went on in that dark, my gaze firmly fixed on the larger than life people doing all they could do on the screen, not completely sure if all the moans and groans came from there, penetrating me with scary wishes, if only I could have been one of them (On the screen I mean), desperate enough, crazy enough to make those theater seats sticky, trying not to think of myself as 17 as one of the many groan men stoking themselves up in the dark, knowing anyone of them, for a moderate fee, would do the same (or more) for me, or maybe would want me on my knees, we all in need to make this little blue movie of our own, for no one to watch.

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Don’t try to save me feb 26, 2014

 Her absence stuns me,

even when I know she hated me

 when she was here

“I don't hate men only some men,”

she said meaning me

 and yet for all

 the slings and arrows of misfortune

 I miss her now that she is gone

the empty space

that vacancy I can't completely explain

 knowing as I know now

 just how much pain he feels

why she needed to do what she did

go where she went

seek the help of angels

when mere mortals could not do

the world here is different without her

 the way night might be without moon or Stars

 where dark is intensely dark

and we have no lantern

 to illuminate it

 and must tolerate this emptiness

even if we feel now empty inside as well as out

she went where she needs to go

 to find something she could

 never find here

 a search for a lost chord

or  Spirit or savior

when she is the one who needs to save herself

“don't try to save me ,”she once wrote

nobody can

 

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down to earth june 18, 2012

 

we can't defy gravity or time

one always keeps us down to earth

and the other wears us out

the perpetual cycle of rising and falling

we thought of when younger as progress

but we never come back to

the exact same place we started

we just think we do

 it is like a decaying orbit

 in which we fall a few degrees lower

 with a cycle

gravity bringing us lower and lower

 and if we are lucky

 we crash softly

 but as time proves

 we all eventually crash

and if we can we get up

walking where we once flew

down to earth

 

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maybe I can fly out aug 4, 2012

  

I really think she meant well for me

 when she told me not to squirm

a man can't swim in quicksand

no matter how strong he is

she preaching not to the choir

but from it

an elevated a songbird

 who has been here before

looking down at those of us

trapped in the pews below

 it takes more than Faith

to survive all this

 and still more to come to understand

how we got this deep into the thick of it

our knees bruised from prayer instead of pleasure

I really think she meant well

 when telling me not to fight it

not to struggle against something

too far beyond me to win against

you can't swim in quicksand

you just sink faster

 words of wisdom perhaps

 from a songbird who has seen others like me

though she doesn't understand

 I'm neck deep already

and helpless to do anything

but flail my arms and hope

 if I can't swim then maybe

I might fly out of the muck I'm stuck in

 

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One of the boys Nov. 24, 2012

 

I still want to be one of the boys, the stiff crowd, pressing up against her in frightful places, faces flushed, waiting our turn at the troth, the privileged all boys club that gets her as first prize, but only if each does what she tells them to do, and maybe, I once was one, now I’m not, pressed against a bedpost instead, working out my pain, the long, lost sheep whose flock as moved on without me, moaning in the meadow but no one hears, getting what satisfaction I can get from being alone, when in fact I would trade it all away for a chance to be part of the flock again, scurrying behind her, baying for her attention, when I know I’ll never get the chance, watching it all transpire from a distance with other boys, living in a limbo, a non-existence, when all the other boys will get what I want, as long as they wait their turn, and gives her whatever she wants.

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crash course aug 2, 2024

  

I know as little now

as I did back then

when I thought I knew more

 but didn't only that

 she hated me then

 and I know not how

 she feels these days

like flying through storm clouds

and not knowing if lightning will strike

a precarious flight

I take and risk crashing again

this blind flight more than a little insane

 no GPS to guide me only instinct

 when I've already proven in the past

how cockeyed instinct sometimes is

misreading altitude and speed

 unaware if my flaps are up or down

 and just how far above the ground I am

needing some other instrument

to warn me if I am on a crash course

to nowhere

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