Something to regret April 26, 2025

  

I could have gone with her to the dance, but decided against it. Just why I think of this these days, I can’t say, maybe because I still feel guilt over it, as I have about other things, other women, in more recent times.

Her eyes were blue, not brown, her hair blond hair long, dripping down the back of the seat in study hall in Junior high, yet like the more recent addition, she was just too cool to be caught in public with the likes of me – me spending more time in the assistant principal’s office than in classroom, though because of her, I never missed study hall.

I still recall the look of disappointment on her face when I told her no, or later, how angry she looked when I showed up at the dance stag, and like the more recent version, never again speaking to me, no more flirtatious looks over her shoulder, and now, all these years later, I still do not understand why I did what I did, or what I said, when as with the more recent romance, all I wanted was to be with her.

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Rubbing it out of me May 26, 2015

 

I fill it up and hope it won’t burst, the irresistible urge I still feel but cannot appease, worst in the morning when I wake from dreams I only then realize ARE dreams, then again at night when I ought to know better, even if the ache for it is the same, both things putting a face to it, and being inspired by it, the need to go as far as I can, to satisfy all I can, before the illusion like a mirage fades, and I am left to my own resources, to rub it all out as hard and fast as I can before it fills up, and risks bursting, worst in the morning after it has had all night to build up inside of me.

 

 

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Prostate treatment Jan. 12, 2026

  

They tell me it helped people with prostate problems; so, I do it often and think of you.

It’s like riding a bicycle, they tell me, you never forget, or a car with a gear shift I grip harder than I have to when I go for a ride each night before sleep, in that limbo where I can see clearly see your face floating above me, as I treat my ailment, a balm to sooth all that makes me ache, slipping finally into dreams the moment sleep comes, this diet of self-satisfaction I believe will cure all that ails me, and it almost does, like sailing down this river of life in a row boat, both hands clutching the oars, and in the midst of it, when it comes over me like a fit, I wonder what I did before I had you to inspire it, stroking the cool water of this river with my oar tip, again and again, stirring up the froth that I think keeps me whole, a prostrate treatment done with you always in mind.

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Dream within a dream Dec. 28, 2012

  

Does she sleep long enough to dream, this dread of nightmare she’s expressed so many times dove the years, the locking and unlocking of doors, need to keep safe from real or imagined dangers, no high road, only the lowest of low, we dare not tread on too long, the end of the year making it all too real, too painful to dwell on, a nightmare from which we need to wake, yet when we wake, we still dream?

Do we trust sleep to hear us, or are we trapped in a never-ending cycle of fear, scared to close our eyes to sleep, terrified to wake up, this dream within a dream, with the realization we might never wake?

Do we sleep long enough to dream, to feel the dread of nightmare when all we want from life is love, and fear most what love can become, and if it was every anything more than mist in the morning, the need to fell less pain, this dream we dream with the hope when we wake we will feel hope still, how we might untangle ourselves from this chain reaction, wake up to find we are not awake at all, just dreaming a different dream we can never wake up from.

 

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Frozen in time Aug. 29, 2014

  

I stride through the narrow streets to where the water tower stands, a tower casting its long shadow over the Acme even in the dead of night, traffic thick on the street where you live, a steam of stream of headlights and resounding horns. I take refuge in the supermarket, the way my mentor once did, who himself imagined as I image his mentor did, striding down lonely aisles, although I think mostly of you, the poems I still treasure even when they are painful to read, fruit and vegetables over time coming to rot on the vine, while I crave fresh fruit from you, even when you have already moved on, down some other aisle, perhaps sampling things in the frozen aisle you know better than to eat, ice cream we both crave, or even meat too dangerous a fare you mostly avoid, both of us lost in the lost world, while I still crave the vegetables you once slice for me, viciously, deliberately, as if slicing pieces of me, while debating which aisle you should put me in. I hear my mentor’s mentor resounding in the poems you night, a treasure I still treasure even frozen in time.

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The scent of a woman May 25, 2015

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The scent, so pungent I can nearly taste it, swirls around me the closer I get, not perfume (though that, too), but the essence of what I want, need, must have for each inch I come, the drumbeat of my heart fueled on this smell. I am an old car driving on fumes, I breathe in, swallow, absorb though my skin, so potent I can’t stop myself from reacting, pumped up until I am so bloated I might soon explode, an odor I can’t stir up for myself when I take it in, all yours, all the time, an elixir that drives me insane, yet I can’t stop wanting it, making me ache to get ever closer, to smear it all over me, to spread you open so I can breathe nothing else.

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My Charlie Brown tree April 9, 2025

 

 

I call it my Charlie Brown tree, a frail collection of sticks that poke up in the corner of the yard, too skimpy to accumulate more than a few leaves even in the heat of summer, and yet, at this time of year, first to spout.

I dare not attach a Christmas ornament, for fear it will break a limb, not an old tree – having popped out at some point after our arrival here, yet not as sprite as spring chicken either, somehow managing to exist, reflecting my lack of impact on the wider world, just there, just surviving, just making its bit of green when the seasons change, knowledgeable enough to know what it is supposed to do, even later when the fall comes and it lets its leaves turn, a miniature version of the trees that soar high above in the neighboring yards, me and my tiny tree, somehow managing to carry on as we are expected, giving now too much, just enough.

 

 

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