On those cold nights alone Jan. 16, 2026

 

The cold makes my fingers sting, even when I push my hands deep into my pockets, this season’s grip firmly on me as I count off the days until I can again be free.

I’m farther out in the wilderness than I recall from before, with nothing to spark life back into my aching limbs except by my own invention, the illusion of romance lingering as I drift off to sleep at night, and still clings to me when I wake in the morning, sunset, sunrise, neither able to do for me when I wish it could be otherwise, someone to hold my hand in the cold, someone to keep me warm sleeping beside me, thinking of her most during those chill nights when I need her warmth, need her to rekindle me, and make it possible to get through the night.

 

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That look on her face June 15, 2015

 

You can tell it from the slight flush of her face and slightly crumpled lips, like an admission of guilt, and her refusal to look anyone in the eyes, pleased, yet maybe just a bit ashamed, maybe thinking someone might blame her, trying desperately no to look at pleased as she really feels; she’s like this every morning after, and clearly wishes every morning could be like this; Just who she was with the night before, who can say, though it might just be someone different each time, though not every morning does she look this way – though on those mornings she does, you can tell it right off, the flushed cheeks, and maybe a bit difficulty in walking (suggesting she did more the night before than she could handle, and yet would not stop, won’t stop next time either.)

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Making a dead rose bloom again Jan. 20, 2013

 

The rose no longer blooms as it ought to, dropping when sunlight should make it glow. I prick my fingers on its thorns, and feed it with drips of my bleeding, this need swelling up in me, unsatisfied, and I am reduced to a beggar, so pathetically desperate to see the rose glow again, stirred deep in the night to seek out what is no longer there. Even the scent has gone sour, and yet, I hold it up to my face, aching to catch a whiff of what I once embraced.

How does one revive a dying rose, restore its beauty and its glow, make it again what it once was, or perhaps it can never be again, once cut from the bush that brings it life, and makes it flourish. One can find no joy clutching a dead rose, or squeeze from it a scent it no longer possesses. This sad thing I hold, still makes my hands bleed, but no matter how tight I hold it, I get no pleasure

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Breadcrumbs Jan. 14, 2026

 

She leaves no breadcrumbs as she once did, nothing for me to follow, leaving me to fend for myself, no clues as to what life is like for her now, in the wilderness where she resides,

no evidence to suggest she does well or not, nor great plans she might have devised for the remainder of her life, choosing perhaps to adopt to a much more laid back lifestyle, free of badges of distinction, nor the glory she seemed to need so desperately in the past, as if she’s thrown all that baggage off the train she travels on, needing none of it in the new life she’s chosen for herself, true or not true, who can say, I just stare down at the tracks here, looking for breadcrumbs that do not exist, as she fades in the distance.

 

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Oh that black dress Sept. 1, 2014

 

 

She sings like an angel, but oh, that black dress, just enough at the top to keep my attention, even as she sings about Metropole, bobbing up and down on stage like a cork, the band playing on behind her, beside her, more than just eye candy, and I think maybe she did not tell the whole truth about the role she played, giving the band leader a peck on the cheek before slipping into another song, Papa won’t you dance with me, he playing the role of papa as he takes her into his arms, but oh, that black dress, as vibrant as a rare jewel, all this years before I knew her, although I watch over and over, hearing her voice in my head long after the film clip expires, seeing her in that black dress deep into my dreams.

 

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a joker May 29, 2012

 

 

I know I am doing wrong 

the moment I snap the picture 

of the sign hanging over the sidewalk

 along that part of Tinker Street, 

and I tell myself I will 

never post it anywhere 

she can see it,

 but I do, I am a tease, 

an imp, a practical joker 

whose humor causes grief

 I do not intend.

I always think other people

 will get the joke. 

They never do, 

and perhaps it isn’t a joke at all,

 that sign symbolic of a past

 that is not my own,

even though I have 

passed beneath long before 

I ever heard word of her, 

an unnoticed bit of history

 she alone might get 

and would get angry over, 

the way people get upset 

when someone walks 

on the graves of loved one,

 I plant no flowers here,

 I merely pass on 

captured bits of things I see 

and with the vague idea 

I can see what these things mean.

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Burying it in tissue paper June 14, 2013

  

I look at her photos on my phone the way I used to look at the Playboy centerfold when I was a kid, too old to be pinning over such stuff, unable to help myself from doing to, needing to, undressing her in my mind, the way I needed to do when looking at the already naked ladies that porn brought later, the result always the same, the self-satisfaction required to ease the pain those pictures bring, sometimes, taking longer tan other times, always ending up with the small mess I must burying in tissue paper, some nights letting me drift off into a firmer reality of dreams, while other nights, I cling to it all, as if it was real, feeling the throb of what those pictures cause deep inside me.

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