a piece of cheese jan 30, 2014

  

I want no part in this rat race

even if there's a piece of cheese

 to be had

I keep thinking about the old adage

about not being able to handle the heat

I'm already struggling to get out of the kitchen

 before I get burned

she's not to blame

though she may well be one of the cooks

 stiring up this political witches brew

that sends me elsewhere

will she get the job they are trying

to find for her

 how will it be different this time

from the job she had up north

I am past caring about what she gets

 from whom even though I hope

she ends up on the good side

of The ledger we measure our lives with

I'm long past caring who she is with

 though I hope she doesn't it hurt

 or used while she seeks to exploit

 whatever opportunity she is presented with

we are all in the rat race to survive

 even if the slice of cheese we get is very small

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Blistering heat July 9, 2025

  

Blistering heat making it difficult to walk a block, hot enough, they claim, to fry an egg on the sidewalk, which I might try if I have a hankering for an egg, though in truth, I am hotter on the inside than without, like a lobster, boiling in my own broth, seeking some relieve in the cool of a dark room here I might let my imagination play, this need to vibrate, even at my age, stirred up like old coals, from memories long out of date, the same face floating before me in this dim room, more spirit than real, I merely pretend it is what it is, long enough for relief to come, this hear, unmeasurable inside or out, blistering even as it spurts out here between my fingers.

 

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A change of mind May 18, 2014

  

  she says she's change her mind, wants him back when she’s never taken anybody back in the past, she having to choose between who she is and what he wants her to be, resisting, needing to hold on to who she is, at the risk of his slipping away, and she chose, regretted it, and changed her mind, too later since he needs to keep the picket fence, two car garage and the one and a half kids statistics claims his life style requires.

This is not here kind of life and she knows it, and yet – this was so good  (whatever it was) that she’s willing to make an exception, reconsider his offer, only she might still not know what that offer is, how much she has to surrender if she agrees, an unconditional surrender to which she needs to submit herself when the alternative is always as unbearable, the silence of the night, the all too clinging bedsheets, the urgency of waking and wonder why fate fated her to be alone.

 

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It still buzzes in my head April 6, 2025

 

It buzzes in my head like a mosquito nagging and persistent if not loud these thoughts I thought I had shed yet come again dragging behind the same old baggage the remembrances of tragedy I do not wish to recall the buzz in my head as if carrying from someone other than myself, and as hard as a try n—stuffing palms against my head – I can’t make the buzzing cease, so, I endure them, remember the moments to which they allude, from another life time, when I was someone different from who I am now, or so I think, always there to remind me of how little I have really changed, this bussing, in my hears, this is howl in my head, not always there, note very day, but often, when I wake, when at that think line between sleep and consciousness, they roar back to life, lost later in the hubbub of the waking world’s racket, there later to return that moment when the real world relinquishes me back to my dreams.

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How do we survive the vacuum? Oct. 28, 2012

  

It is not supposed to feel like this the vacuum I can't fill the emptiness beyond all proportion to her leaving and I look around at the other faces surrounding this table for our Tuesday morning religious ritual from which we are supposed to find absolution rarely do, won't again in the absence and the table regardless of how many faces they install into take her place the whole affair perplexes me feelings I am not supposed to feel a loss I can't even properly mourn since nobody in fact has passed away

what is it that we do now, how do we all go on since an important piece of this Rubik's Cube has vanished and we lack the last color block to make the whole cube whole again how is it that I feel this way how exactly am I supposed to feel when the silver bowl on the roulette wheel spelling once too many times comes up on 0 or 00 more often than not with no way to make up for the that that's this is not supposed to feel like this this vacuum that sucks the life out of me here in her absence

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Salt lemon and a shot April 4, 2015

  

the salt I taste on the tip of my tongue is not from her, I only pretend it is, salt, lemon, a shot, drunk again on her, on the salt and lemon and shot I still dream I drink from her cup, the juice is semi sweet as is the shot I take to get over her, the salt and the lemon hiding the bitterness I should not feel, a bitterness long past yet not the in the inebriation, the salt the lemon the shot, filling me up when I can't get her, the soul churned up on that sultry afternoon, the naked sunlight spreading across the bed sheets, we stirring it all up. the scent, and that lemon twist I kiss, then the shot, the mist, in the twilight, I peer through, then the salt, the lemon and then one more shot of her

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what you wish for 2014

 

be careful about what you wish for

the old adage says you might get it

and be sorry

and if you lose it you're sorrier still

and still ache to have what

you almost had

 because it is so precious

 not just the closeness

or the tenderness

but the deeper intimacy

 the intensity of something

 so potent it leaves you empty

when it is gone

the lingering of a feeling

you can't recover from

worse don't want to recover from

 her look, her sound, her taste

all part of something that stretches

out beyond the five senses

she being the one being you know

 you'll never encounter again

 and those who lose her

who struggle over the loss

 realize just how special it was

when those who don't pine

who give it no second thought

 don't know what they're missing

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