Those grinding gears May 10, 2012

 

It is always possible to grow,

even after you have assumed

 everything has died,

 the promise of spring held out

, yet still denied,

a slow, mournful stroll through

the dismal landscape life becomes

in the dead of winter.

Spring always follows,

yet not always as soon as we need,

 sometimes a false spring,

 like a false dawn,

raising unrealistic hopes,

 stirring up wishes that may never become real.

After so long out in the cold,

 you’d think you’d be stronger,

 the passion of youth sustaining you

 even as youth fades,

 the Disney tale expressed as fraud

when Toto pulls back the curtain

 to show just how the world really works,

 all those ugly gears grinding.

 

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what she is not. aug 4, 2024

 

Shakespeare said her eyes

are not as bright as sunlight

 and coral far more red than her lips

her breast not nearly as white as snow

and her hair is black as wire

and if her cheeks blush

 it is not nearly as comely as a rose

and her breath not nearly as sweet

and her voice does not always music make

and no goddess is she

that floats above the ground

 on what she strides

and yet…

and yet…

this love of his is

is still Divine

more Worthy than precious stones

 more potent than sun, rose or coral

 and for all this he loves her still

so as for him

as go I as well

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altered reality July 25, 2024

  

I don't know

what to make of it

this altered reality

this game of tag

something I can

no longer touch

even though I still feel it

this coming and going

then going again

these visitations

as if by saints who are not saints

or space aliens who abduct us

 and return us to our old reality

 fundamentally changed

not so much for the worst

but utterly different

so it is impossible to go on

 as we were like a Time Warp

we steered into a different track

to a different destination

we never intended to steer for

and now can't stop ourselves from going to only you are no longer part of that ride or it's destination but a site we see

 out the window of this train

 of fading images,  a billboard advertising

a life we might have had

had we've been wise enough

 to get off the train in time

 

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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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