poetry journal may 2012

 Vertigo (May 2012)

 

I get vertigo

Staring down at her face

Four story drop behind her,

A picture perfect moment

That is hardly perfect,

sent in the dead of night

to explain the pain

I’ve caused,

I ache to yank her back

But can’t.

She mistaking

A pull for a push,

Thinking I’m the one

Who wants her to fall

When I ache to keep; her safe,

Even if I’m to blame

For putting her there,

A fool doing a fool’s errand,

Unaware of the consequences

Until far too late,

Fearing that if she tumbles

She might take me with her

Over the edge

Into the abyss,

The deep darkness

That waits for both of us

To lose our grip.

 

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Poetry Journal Jan. 7, 2024

 

I won't tell you that I am immune, all these long years later I still react the same way as I did back then, this odd sensation that comes over me, sweeping me up as if in a dust storm 

Where I land is unpredictable as a honest roulette wheel, though i know now as I did them, I'm not destined to win, and must settle for admiring from afar.

This is the nature of the beat, the trap in which I find myself, unable to resist her in the same way a bear cannot resist honey, never destined to taste anything more than I have already, and my sticky paws come not from ingesting sweetness so much as a reaction to it, she always there, angelic, her voice ringing in my head, a siren's song with me strapped firmly to the stiff mast of my ship, if only to survive.

 2024 journal menu

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A face I can't forget Jan. 1, 2023

 

 Her face is the same face, especially the eyes, gateway to a soul I have seen too many times in too many dreams, that surrealistic landscape where reality melts around our knees, her face, the same face I flew to, a moth to a flame I can never resist and so, must always avoid, not because of who she is or what she does, but because of who I am and what I must never do, condemned to live life in an alternative reality which by necessity means excluding her, she, a dream I dreamt once and cannot cease to dream, untouchable, remote, wings folded behind her, I can only see the ever present eyes, looking now as they did then, flashing hints of endless possibilities.

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Good bye Ruby Tuesday Aug. 6, 2013

 

I sing songs about this day

During my long trek

Down hill to the office

Tuesday Morning,

Which is never sweet,

Seated at a table

Where she no longer sits,

Her lingering spirit there

I feel but cannot see

slipping Tuesday Afternoon,

 a Moody Blues tune

for the mood I feel

the memory of her hateful stare

long vanquished

morphed into something sweeter

the sweetness of dying flowers

the haze of what might have been,

 could never been,

never was,

pined over,

like a dull pain missed,

going home to Rolling Stones ,

Good Bye Ruby Tuesday,

The girl who cashed in her dreams

Before they slipped away,

Leaving the faint scent

Lingering in me

With each step I take,

And the vague ghostly memory

Seated at the table,

Or looking out the window

all gone, yet not gone.

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Breakfast of Champions April 2012

 

She hands me the bowl,

Her long fingers still stained

From slicing the contents,

A breakfast of champions

I think, as I settle

Side by side with her

On the couch,

Me feeling as I felt

Back at the diner,

Too nervous to eat,

Too attracted,

Feeling her heat

Her breath,

The intense scent

Of her perfume

I am a smoldering volcano,

Doing my best to keep

From erupting,

My fingers aching to touch

Places only my mind has been,

She too distant

On this painfully sunny day,

Sending me away,

Unsatisfied,

The way I must have

When I kissed her

And went away,

Going back down those long

Fights of stairs to the street

And the dazed walk,

Sober, but not sober,

Drunk on something other

Than wine,

Eggs and greens

A breakfast of champions

A tale told by an idiot

Or perhaps Dr. Seuss

My insides rumbling,

Empty,

But not from hunger.

 

 

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