A blank check

Trust is always dubious

Even among close friends

Let alone political allies

Who see you as a walking wallet

And do not mind picking out

A few extra dollars

If you’re too stupid to notice

Anyway,

That blank check meant

To pay old debts

Exaggerated and split

Between conspirators

So that in the end,

They all get paid what they

Think they earned,

A dishonest honest living,

A fringe life

They know lasts

Only as long as the sucker

Doesn’t catch on,

And in some cases,

That sucker keeps signing

Away his life,

Never knowing

That he can’t trust those

People he trusts most:

Einstein once described

Madness as someone

Doing the same thing

Over and over again

Yet expecting a different

Result each time,

Some suckers never learn

And so always sign

That blank check,

And always are surprised

When it comes back

Ten times worse

Than he thought it would be.

It’s the cost of doing business

With crooks,

No matter how

Respectable they

Claim to be.

Before the tides shift

You feel for it first in the dark – this and then than, before it all gets hard and you can’t stop what happens next.

The surge of blood through my head and I stop thinking about anything else, a reckless deep sea diver seeking the treasure buried in the deeps.

In the dark, eyes don’t help at all, and you must rely on your fingers to feel the place where it all erupts.

But it rarely starts there, always first with something more accessible, the soft touch of lips and then later, if I’m lucky hips.

It’s never about conquest with me the way it is with others.

I just like the feel of it, the lingering of lips and then the tips of tongues, that first intrusion into the unknown – I remember my first kiss and who it was with, though I didn’t get anywhere near the buried treasure.

Still even then, I felt every bit a pirate, stealing something to treasure then and later.

It’s always like that – especially in the dark where I have to let my fingers go where my eyes can’t, over the curved surface most easily mounted, and later, into the warm, moist world sunken so deep it takes more than a finger to get to it completely.

It’s not always possible to get more, and so later, I get to think about the touch of it, the moist feel of where the fingers went, and the taste of it, when I’m lucky to get that far.

In the dark, where the real treasures lie, sometimes I have to be a pirate, taking what I can get before the tides shift, and I’m washed back out to sea.

Never enough

The sunlight streaks

Across her face

From the edge of

The kitchen window

As if creating it

And her, carving

Every curve from

The curve beneath

The blouse

To the lip I bit

In that pre-dawn fit

It still dripping

As we sit and sip

Our coffee this early

Morning in July,

The curve tip hard

Against the sheer

Fabric she slipped into

Drawing my gaze now

Where my lips and tips

Of fingers went,

The hunger hardly abated

This lust for blood

Stirred in my veins and brain

This need for more

Always at the core of me

Pressing up out of me

Seeking to go deeper

Each time, knowing

In the end

It can never be enough.

Winter bloom

It is not the summer flowers

I lust for most when I stroll

These remote paths

But the winter blooms

That loom over me

Or over which I stumble

Pedals spread wide before

My upturned face

Where I might catch the

Lingering scent of once

Rich perfume,

And let the tip of my tongue

Linger in the thick nectar

My fingers gripping long stalks

At whose ends un-burst buds

Ooze still with fresh dew

This loneliness exposed

This naked truth

Stripped to the bone of me

So that I am expose

Inside and out

Leaving me here

With only heavy sighs

And the winter mists

For comfort

Coming up for air

If I had gills

I could do this better,

Breathing water

in which I refuse

to drown

fins that might

spin me up

to places

where I might

find something

less liquid to

breathe

or a tail to flip

so I might sip

real air

the haze of this life

wiping clear

the horizon I have

grown accustomed

to seeing

as thick as sea water

and as hard to breathe

when I rush so hard

to catch a breath

I can’t ever hope to catch,

Too deep in this

To ever come up

For air