A Breakfast invitation April 2012

My book lies on her bed

Where my body should be

Smooth surface

Of blankets and sheets

As unruffled as an unruffled sea

With me Castaway

Turning my gaze away

Scared to death

This is an illusion

Or a pathetic wanderer

With parched lips

In an endless desert

Aching for a sip

Wishing too hard for it,

Book face down

With my face staring back,

My body already there,

But not hers

The two of us,

In this string of room

Doors and windows,

Stark sunlight

Instead of candle light,

Thoughts of romance

Lost

In this invitation to breakfast

 .

email to Al Sullivan

The nails in the coffin Aug. 28, 2013

 

Upside down, inside out,

we build coffins from trees like these,

 men who lobotomize ourselves with lust for power

 sometimes with the willing help of women,

 who we have not yet despoiled

and so remain innocent,

 naive, low-hanging fruit easily shaken loose,

their grip on their own lives lost,

while we come to hate women like this one,

who refuses to come down

or admit her view of our world as skewed,

 determined to cling to those branches

she hopes she can climb her way to fame,

 she defying us and our vision of the universe,

already wounded,

already having her faith in fairness shaken

as such an early age,

perhaps wiser for having gone through it,

 learned from it, grow with it,

and so she can have her own life

without nailing herself up in a coffin.

 

br>email to Al Sullivan

Two sides of the same coin April 2012

Too many doors

and inside

too many windows.

I knock, she lets me in.

I am a traveling salesman

She is the farmer’s wife,

And I’m looking to sell her more

Than just a vacuum cleaner

Her kitchen so tidy

I could eat breakfast

Off the floor

I’m a desperate dog,

Trying not to let my tongue

Hang out my mouth.

It shows anyway in my eyes

what I want

But one of two possibilities,

divergent outcomes,

what might be

what might never be

her piano

though silent

stirring up in my head

 all the songs

she sings

as if I have actually

ascended to

her seventh heaven

me thinking of her as angelic

though I know she is not

angles and demons

the two sides of the same coin.

email to Al Sullivan

Why the catbird sings April 2012

 She lays her life out

like a road map

we drink,

Not quite covering

The same landscape

We went over

During that walk

After the diner,

Filling in details

like a paint by numbers work of art

coloring in the spaces

she had only sketched.

She does most of the talking

I don’t know what to say,

Singer, actor, poet

Lola in Damned Yankees

(whatever Lola wants

Lola gets)

Dorothy in Wizard of Oz,

Arm in arm with men

Lacking brain, heart or courage,

The crooner from the Apollo,

The prize student of a teacher

Who loved her,

Almost as much as we do,

Dredging up The Police song

Young teacher etc,

She on the road to greatness

Even now, even here,

Even with me,

A catbird singing only briefly

In this cage,

looking to fly high,

with me,

here,

in this bar,

on this night,

clinging to her tailfeathers.

 

email to Al Sullivan

It's Deja Vu all over again. April 21, 2012

 

It's Deja Vu all over again.

This is not a Tuesday

And yet I’m here,

Thirsty for more than just

The drink she’s asked for,

Only she’s not yet

Ready for me,

A diligent work-a-bee

Scrambling to get

Her stuff done,

Frowning when she sees me

As if she can’t remember

Our arrangement

She is as distant as Mount Rushmore,

A professional fifth head of stone

So I wonder,

Maybe I got it all wrong,

Maybe I’m in the wrong place

Got the time or date

Or even the invitation itself

wrong

and so, I go back to my cubbyhole

a confused Harry Potter

without even an owl

for company,

Muggles all around me

Time ticking until

She ceases being stone,

Turning back to that warm body

In this strange cat and mouse game

Only I can’t figure out

Which of us is the cat

And which is the mouse.

email to Al Sullivan

Abandoned in her fairy castle April 20, 2012

She leaves me

A room full of strangers,

Even though I’m here

For her,

To hear her tell her tale

About how she makes her living

I am an abandoned child,

stranded in this castle, high school, stadium,

no hair to let down

for me to climb,

no trail of crumbs for me to follow,

she the fairy princess

that needs no rescue,

yet needs me here,

to document this moment,

or am I the court jester,

waiting for that moment

when I might entertain her?

email to Al Sullivan