the last duckling. May 2012

 

It is not cold so much as not the same.

You can only rub a coin for so long

before the imprint vanished,

or your thumb runs out of skin.

Maybe the word is remote,

this estranged sense that

 I'm no longer front in the line.

Maybe the clues came even before

 I felt put out,

the question about the other man

 I consider my friend,

 his book on her bed where mine used to be.

Maybe I took down her picture

too often from my page,

 unable to bear looking at it,

 not because she was any less beautiful,

 but because of how it made me feel,

like a duckling following behind

 a flock of duckling, suddenly finding myself last.

The clues there like a detective novel,

 only I was not wise enough

to pick up on them until the damage was done

 and she put me out to pasture,

 and brought someone else in to her barn,

not cold, not hostile, just remote

 as if I longer matter in whatever plans

she had cooking on her stove,

the last duckling.

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Cast out of Eden Feb. 16, 2014

 

I do not know

What is wrong with him,

Except my best guess

That his misses her

(as we all do

And always will),

Having had his taste

Of something so sweet

We can’t imagine

Life without it,

And yet, somethings

Must come to an end,

No matter how good

They may taste,

And the wasteland

We live in

After having been

Cast from Eden

Seems all the worse

For our needing

To navigate it alone.

I can’t say

What he feels

Is love,

Since I don’t always

Know what love is,

And only get

The echoes of what

I think it might be,

He aching the way

I ached,

When she cast me out

Of the  paradise

Of her life,

I suspect he doesn’t

Even know her,

To understand the pain

She endures,

Which has nothing

To do with either of us,

We look in a mirror

And see what

We want to see,

Not what is

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In the dead of night July 20, 2015

There is no way to know what she does in the dead of night, what she allows inside her, what drips from her lips or hips when she is done – the private life, the moan and groans on the privileged gets to hear, though I imagine it all, and know she knows more about it than even I can imagine, having learned it all from some old woman on some cruise, who gobbled up brothers and sisters like candy.

I know she knows more than I do, from how she talks on the phone, from what she askes to be done, what she does on the far end I cannot see, even though I can never know what she does when I’m not on the other end of hear, or who she does it with, or what she demands of those she shares that dark nights with, dripping when done in all the right places

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Years like horseflies July 19, 2015

 

If I knew you would be here soon, I would wait, even when I know you won’t be. I watch the summer rush by the way others have, and other will, and I push aside each day the way I might a house fly, a persistent nuisance I would abandon if I could. I cast aside years now as if they were days, or put them in a drawer the way the poet does mothballs, perverted for no good reason, each drawer overflowing with details and memories I cannot resurrected, each day, week, moth, passing as if a century, quickly and then, not at all, not quickly enough to eradicate the thoughts I had, and wished I hoped would come true, knowing you will not come soon or at all, but like a horsefly or butterfly, you hover just beyond my reach.

 

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The intensity of heat Aug. 21, 2025

 The rain comes followed by a deep chill, an oddity for the end of August, with no groundhog an early arrival of fall, no leaves changing yet, just the shiver and the sense of change, our lives altered in the aftermath of July’s intense heat, this pre-Labor Day modification I welcome yet also resist, not wanting winter to arrive too soon, not wanting to lose the romance summer brings, that potency I cling to, filled with tender memories I stoke up in my dreams at night, stirring up as much sweat as the summer head does. I need it, need to feel it, need to have that aspect in my life, this sweat reminiscent of something sweet that vanishes always when the cold comes, no one to rub again to keep me warm. 

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On the brink feb 17, 2014

 

I'm still on the brink of it

the moment I perpetually live

again and again

 a repetitive dream

 where I feel my way

through the buttons to flesh

 cupping my hands around it

the tremble of it as ruthless in me

 as an earthquake

I live in constant state of anticipation

of longing, of wishing for it

when I know I can't have it,

 feeling flesh I have not felt in years ,

shaping it the way a sculptor

might from a bit of moist clay

 making it this then that

 flat at first then long and thin and potent

reshaping it again and again

from a brief memory of when

it once was real

 I live with the echo of old texts

like the voices of crazy people hear

 telling me to do things I ought not to do

even in private, even in the dark

still I do them, feeling what I imagine I feel

and the feel of real flesh

that happens to be mine

 One vision, one touch

 inspiring me even when

 it's not real I

 am still an interrupting volcano

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where she goes. Feb 6, 2014

  

nobody knows least of all me where

she goes

whether she will ever come back

 who exactly these beings

 she calls angels are

what exactly happened

to make her leave

was it a small man again

ruthlessly reading the virgin mayor

the riot act

or some other reason

 even her poems do not

bring better understanding about

 “don't try to save me, she one wrote

 Yet she needs salvation

 the way we all do

these angels on her shoulders

whispering words of wisdom

and hope she can't derive

 from the more ordinary people

in her life

nobody knows but her

 as to what exactly transpired

why she flew the coop

or slip the shell

to where she is gone

what new shell

 what New path

 she hopes will save her

 now that she has worn out

the current path

nobody knows where she goes

while I sit on the edge of my chair

scared she might be gone forever

 

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