Friday, April 4, 2025

Free bird November 13, 2014




 

I hold it up in both my hands
This trembling, feathered creature
I can identify only as a bird
Because it has wings,
Broken wings on which it
Cannot fly away,
But will the moment I mend them,
The way it must
Its soft touch lingering
On the tips of my fingers
And on my lips as I wish it well,
Aching to touch it again,
And again feels its softness
Against my calloused palms,
Feeling its warmth against
My warmth,
It breathing my breath
This precious moment
Caught in an instant
And release, this heart break,
This lasting gift that
Must be given away,
Real and unreal,
Previous, but not possessed,
A dream dreamed
But not forgotten,
A memory so vivid
It always seems real,
My wings broken like its are,
My heart throbbing
With the same need,
My gaze fixed upon it
As it sails into the sky,
A bird with wings
Then just a dot
Against the brightness

And then gone.

email to Al Sullivan

Thursday, April 3, 2025

The knight of night Sept 30, 2012

 


What is it that so attracts her thus if not a ring of gold on her finger or the fence that keeps the mowed lawn contained

does she love for the sake of love or is love simply not enough, and who would be the waking soul if she could have he wants, it all, the arm around her when she drifts to sleep still there when the morning light peeps in, and who would be the person invited, someone who is heart is so beknighted, the face that would not fade in time but remain as potent as to remind her how good a lover can be at last, as to compare with those of the past, that it is all so astounding that the face she sees at night is still around when the morning bells toll  and her gaze still fully adores, can she really find such a man, someone she can keep near at hand, that indeed would astound, if he could really be found

 


email to Al Sullivan

Melted metal September 15, 2014





It rumbles through you
Like a late night earthquake
The back beat ripping
Open this thin civilized veneer
To expose what we all are
Deep inside,
The tsunami rushing
Through out vein
To some primitive call
We thought we had
Long evolved from
We breathe deep breaths
And drink deep draughts
And still it comes on
A fire in the belly of a beast
We all become
the screech of loud guitar
Like a hot poker
Stirring up slumbering coals
Until we turn into melted metal
Aching for that moment
When inspiration makes us
Solid again,
This life gets into the blood
And then lays dormant
Even after all these years
All pretence at being
So prim and proper
Until the first note
Like the first light of dawn
And we crumble
To the rumble and shake
And we become what
We have always been,
Swept up and consumed
Inside and out,
The floor boards vibrating
Not from the bass drum,
But from something inside us
Pushing its way out.




email to Al Sullivan

Eyes as gateway to… Jan 11, 2015

  

I can escape her eyes, even in memory, like an open invitation to a party where I do not belong, eyes a gateway to more than just her soul, to the rest of her. to her slanted mouth I take an invitation to a kiss. she most likely doesn't mean. or to her perky breasts I ache to hold as I mount her, this dream is memory, all coming from that look, from her gaze, eyes that swallow me whole, making me want to get in on the other side to see what she sees when she looks at me, The uninvited guest to a party that is for anyone else but me, eyes clinging  to that residue of desire, maybe fear, always doubtful of my intentions, waiting and watching to see what I might do next


email to Al Sullivan

Asbury Park 9/13/14





Autumn falls on the boardwalk
With a gush of rain
Like a stage curtain coming down
On what was
To leave what will be
The creak of wood moans
Under my footstep
As I make my way passed
Madam Marie’s,
A slick, precarious trip
But no longer scalding
As it was
Not extinguished
But a mist rising
From each crack
Like steam
From a tea kettle
I feel the bubbling
Inside of me
Even as my brow drips
With the cool broth
Of this changing season
The vacancy of the place
Only making the urgency acute
Winter forces it all inward
Putting pressure
On this frail frame
That stumbles over
This sacred ground,
Aching even now to be
The savior that rises
From these streets,
From the spidery web
Of the ruined casino
To the crumbling art deco
Of the once and future theater
And back again
As rain washes over me
And through me
To the sound of the nearby sea



email to Al Sullivan

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Fits like a glove Jan 10, 2015

 


It fits like a glove only it is not a glove, and I use more than my fingers to fill it, drawn in, feeling each inch inside, like a glove that is not a glove, and I swell to fill it, and still feel the need to feel more, to fill it up with all of me, and all that I can get pumped out of me, the in and out of it, tight, tighter still, and deeper, a pain cure for a pain I feel each time, the need to release it, yet never too soon, edging in, teasing the tip before I can make it fit, like a glove that is not a glove, a place filled with more than just my fingers or my tongue, tight tighter still, drawing me in so deep I cannot get out, never want to ,going in and in more, feeling how tight it can get around me


email to Al Sullivan

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Zen September 13, 2014



 

I press the button
And hear the distant sound
Of machines and cables
bringing up or down
The cage I need
This vertical lift
We ride to and from
Destinations marked out
On no road maps
The elevation marked
on no altimeter
But rather inside my head
Where I leave marks
Of my own importance
The way my uncles did
In pencil on the dinning room
Door frame when I was small
To see how much I’d grown
Though now I am no taller
Yet still need to measure
How high I stand,
If I have lost stature
And how to get it back if I have
Who I am reflected
Not in any mirror
But on the faces of those I see
Through the small window
Of my cage
As I travel floor by floor,
My life measured
In the groan of cables
Above and below
When all I really want
Is to be where I am
At any given moment,
Free of the need to be
High or low,
Rich or poor,
Powerful or powerless,




email to Al Sullivan

Light and dark Nov 10, 2024

 


sharp sun light splits my world like a comic book mask, one side bright, the other side black, forcing me to choose what side I wish to reside in, when I can’t have both, scalding light, illuminating the path along this River but casts huge places into deep dark, no moderation here, not even the sore face of the water where the glints of sunlight is most intense, this path bringing me to the edge again, to the places full of memory, scorched out of my brain from too much glare, I follow along a trail I took  in less brittle days, my feet knowing where I've been even if I can no longer see it and must rely on my intuition to keep going and my memory of days when things were less divided. and those brief glimpses of Joy I recall and treasure, even if I can no longer see them

 


email to Al Sullivan

Full moon September 09, 2014





It is hot and wet
When I get there
A moving target
That closes in
Around me
And shifts
This way, then that,
Up and down
And sideways
Until I’m drunk
On the movement
As any sailor
Something stirring
In the depth of me
I’ve not quite
Felt before,
A rising to the tides
As if you were a full moon,
And I change
On your account
This hard and soft of it
Commingled
And always shifting
Like wind driven beach sand,
As if to cease moving
Is to cease to exist
With me wrapped up
In all that you are,
The need of it
Burning in us both
Making it impossible
To breathe for whole moments,
As I hold onto your sides
This ride, this rise and fall,
This ache and release,
All there is to think about
Or feel,
The perfect Zen moment
When time stops
But we cannot.




email to Al Sullivan

The real me Nov. 9, 2024

 



My shoes splash through mud left from a brief night time rain, sunlight glistening in each puddle as morning comes, and I rush off to places I'd rather not be, the endless ritual of routine that lacks meaning merely aids in survival, not of the fittest, just those who learn to comply, while inside as always, another shadow lurks, one that aches to break free too, violate something or someone, to find joy in being bad, the excess of who I am spilling out of me from every pore, the need to fill up all those holes and still have something left to do so again, the splash of my feet over muddy landscape, my shape perverted in the reflections of puddles disturbed by my passing, reflection of my real and distorted me, I keep locked up

 


email to Al Sullivan

Saturday, March 29, 2025

Brush fire September 04, 2014



Our fingers brush and something sparks
A device in me Tommy Edison barely imagined
Turbines turning with that first contact
And once begun unable to stop
I can barely move without feeling it poke me
From the inside out
So scalding I dare not touch it
Or expose it to air
Knowing that like phosphorous
It will explode into a flame I cannot contain
And barely kept quiet as I stagger around with it
A hobbling man with burning fingers
From a touch I never intended
But cannot take back,
I can’t even find the fuse that touch lit
Only hear its hissing inside my head
And sense its growth I cannot long handle,
Sitting or standing or stumbling around,
I can only suck at my finger tips
Like a child hoping to suck away the burn
Wishing I could taste something,
Wondering if the rumbling inside
Leads finally to something else.



email to Al Sullivan

Deluded Sept 29, 2012

 

She says she doesn't hate all men, just some, then looks at me, we both carrying the baggage of love that might never have been love, just the shadow moving across our eyes, unsubstantial, mistaken shape we can maybe see for what it is, dare we step out of this cave to see what real love looks like in the light of day, or will we wilt under its scalding pressures as it unveils us, reveals the illusion we foolishly mistook as real, do we prefer the darkness, this Shadow, knowing it for what it is, yet preferring it to what otherwise brings discomfort, to face reality, to bear the scolding light, we must shed what we assumed, does her hatred to some men mean she already stepped out into the brightness of a light I cannot bear to see, as I remain here, deluded

 


email to Al Sullivan

Milk and honey September 02, 2014



It is enough to fill you up,
I pour it all from the pitcher of milk
Into a glass filled half way with honey
I just don’t know when to top
To keep it from running over
And oozing down the sides.
I know don’t know if I can stop this
After having stoked this up
And caused it to flow,
You don’t stop a boulder
You set rolling down a hill
By running in front of it,
You just let it roll
Yet I feel run over by it anyway,
Feel each drip of milk
As it slips out the spout,
Wondering at what mixture it makes
When it makes with you
Do I stir it or let it settle?
Do I keep pumping it up?
And pour it in?
Should I ask you to taste it
To see if it tastes right?
And do I ask if anything else
Came come of this –
Some higher purpose
For all the energy we expend
The milkmaid and the milkman
Churching up this concoction
To make butter,
Or perhaps it is enough to church
Both letting the stone roll
Or the broth drip over
The edges.



email to Al Sullivan

Flowers without thorns May 4, 2014

 

Not all flowers come with thorns, not all draw blood if gripped too tightly, this though, among so many other mental rumblings, coming into my head as I wake from bed, stiff, excited, yet warmed by the warm air spring brings, the new season firmly rooted after more than a month of dismal rain, pain bringing with it pleasure, if we endure enough, the dead roses from the dead of winter, replaced in part with other pleasures, other flowers, other of hearts, flowers with which we might never part, I think, as ease from sleep into the welcome warmer world, sunlight with its ever cheerful mood and always bright outlook, streaming through the window as I wake, partake the days refreshment, the rituals of morning giving away to those of the afternoon, the scent of New birth sweet and in part yet dark too, as if the turf out of which spring springs, no thorns to prick our fingers on yet just  not pure joy


email to Al Sullivan

Friday, March 28, 2025

Laying it on thick (from My Little Book of E) ,August 31, 2014



I smear it on with both hands
Just for the excuse to lick it off
To feel the hard and soft of it,
To linger near the top
And delve into the bottom
To know it all with the best part of me
To taste what I touch,
To feel each inch of landscape
By having moved over it,
And I move slowly
As not to miss anything
Each flaw a treasure,
Each ripple a luxurious side trip
To fit with the tip or lip
As I move on,
There is always too much to
Take in all at once
Too many tiny places
To slip in and out of,
Too little time
to know as much as I should,
And like a road-weary tourist
I vow to explore this or that
On my next trip
Aching for the chance 
At least one more encounter,
Hoping beyond hope
That I have done enough
To deserve another lick
Smearing it all on so thick
I can’t possibly miss

My next try.

email to Al Sullivan

Needing someone to rub against Feb 16, 2025

 

Heavy rain falls on my Sunday laundry ritual like a deluge, inside and out, a deep chill rising up from my bones and I can't get warm from, needing to rub against somebody to generate fire, the way boy scouts do with twigs, though you can't get fire from wet wood or old matches, and so I huddle in this doorway and wait for the storm to pass, the flick of drops pecking at the rim of my hat, at my face, at my eyes, smearing the world, confusing me with images of what is or what I want to be, the rain against me, no umbrella or memory can protect me from, needing a body to rub against, to Kindle a fire I know his long dead, stir up with hope of heat, enduring the rain and the pain of memory long gone


email to Al Sullivan

Pointed shapes , September 18, 2014




The sudden chill
Brings out the best in you,
The pointed shapes
That haunts men’s dreams
even fully awake,
The nape of neck
The sudden fleck of wet
The lick that tips it all
Into so much more
And makes cripples
Of men like me
Who hobble on imaginary canes
We did not intend to create,
All too obvious
But not so easily contained,
When the chill air comes
We overheat, and seek
Just a little peek,
Or touch with the tips of fingers
We know will scald
Despite the cold,
Palms curled around
The whole of them,
While our minds plunge
Deep into places
We only dream
Of reaching



email to Al Sullivan

Paradise Jan 9, 2015


Paradise is not all it's cracked up to be, love making in the afternoon, cuddles at night

The in and out ritual that means more than in the front door, the dark of night alone, the wish for arms and lips and hips, missing when needed most, the locked door, the people the fright of who might knock at night when all others have fled to other homes, other arms, other lips and hips, sometimes Paradise is a vacuum, the silence that resides when all the voices cease, the peace we seek when we need more than the rant and rave of imagined love. sometimes Paradise is being free of the bonds, the promises, the deception, sometimes Paradise is being alone



email to Al Sullivan

Sunday, March 16, 2025

The salty haze of uncertainty August 29, 2014




I breathe the scent of salmon
As the net scrapes against my thigh
And I think of you
And the sea we all sale in
Waiting for the mesh to drop
The panic in the up-churned waves
The up and down and sideways
That leaves us perpetually confused
As to which way we have come
Or where we should go,
The tight ropes that bind us
And scrap our sin with a mixture
Of pain and pleasure,
The lost of the unknown
Mingled with the lack of free will,
The prickly coarse entwinement
Containing us as the moist fingers
Beats around us and over us,
And yet we somehow remain secure,
Wanting sure hands to haul us in,
A warm touch to rub those limbs
Where the ropes chafed
To ease the ache with bliss
And until we cannot tell
Which is which, nor care,
Only that we are no longer lost,
No longer drowned
In the salty haze of uncertainty.




email to Al Sullivan

that dark night in May May 3, 2014

 

 

I still kick myself for bringing card and candy to that bar -- that night when she took pity on me for my birthday but wanted to fuck the bartender instead of me, or perhaps an orgy with the German couple, when it was still odd man out, four is company, five is not allowed, that dark night in May when I got drunk on my own hormones instead of bottles of wine

 I still kick myself for not seeing it in advance, how unwelcome I was, how I ought not to have gone, let alone left early, abandoning her, even though she had already abandoned me

this idea we can fix things that are too broken to fix, no amount of magic able to bring the magic back

that night in May I can never forget but also will always regret. wishing I had seen it all coming

 


email to Al Sullivan