The winds of change swirl in my life, leaving new breath in my lungs. Is this me? Am I truly free from all your negativity?
My chest burns with something new, love?
Not for you, but for me.
I'm finally free.

Much like you
I feel pain
when I am wounded

I cry
when my heart
shatters quietly

I begin to doubt
when silence
lingers too long

And I light like fire
when I feel
seen by you

because, much like you,
I want to be truly loved
even if it’s the last thing I do.

You found it meandering


                                                    ­            I walked it alone.


You said the Phoenix rises


                                                         ­        I am stuck in the stone.



    A common bird —
      With two wings,
     now



                   Tinged



                       That same old color

of the rock burnt out

                   of absence

                                                      of­ nothing —




of silence.

i like to believe that everything happens for a reason.
not in a way that makes sense,
not in a way that makes anything okay.

i don’t believe it when bad things happen to other people.
but when they happen to me,
i need to.

i don’t ask for proof.
i just ask to get through it.

maybe it’s just a story i tell myself
so i don’t fall apart.

but some days,
that story
is all i’ve got.

us poets, often gaze the stars wishing for them to always love the moon.
thanking the sun, to kiss the sunflowers, what silly little loons

If you don’t work hard
you never earn

If you don’t make mistakes
you never learn

If you don’t fuel that fire
you never burn

If you don’t wait patiently
you’ll miss your turn

"These days
I'll sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten, my friend
Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them"
Jackson Browne

<>

these days,
you can come by tween
the mostly soft warming cracking of Dawn,
and the early born-ing of
the first peek of a full grown
but yet
sleepy sunrise,

you'll find me siting on a
asshard dock,
two seagulls staring at the
human interloper,
alone with the threads in my
hardened head,
beating time in casual rhyme,
because that's what poets do,
to warm up their
tongues & toes,
clear their eyes
and
sniffling nose,
their partly opened,
party closed,
throats, eyes and
give up, sacrifice
the longest list of little lies,
that makes (forces) us to get up  in the undimming earlies,
when it's just me, the gulls,
& the minnows poking around,

the fluke,
smarter but not wiser,
further out in deep water,
waiting to be caught

and
the cool blood barely flows,
until the rising orb warms
our fragility,
and we review the stories old,
that make us cold at night promising ourselves that
today you'll do that thing(s)
you've been putting off for years,

"Don't confront me with my failures"
Jackson pleads, but I concede,
thinking tell me them
one
mo' time,
make me unrighteous,
make me whole,
then take me,
holy displayed fully,

and the
first poem of the day,
will be my
confession total,
without reservation
and yet muse on
honor
something I thought I knew,
but needing a
closer examination
it might've been
dishonor
that was what
I was truly
knew
<>
Sunrise
July 5
'25
sitting on the dock
by the bay,
would I
lay down with a lie?

flux.
a word whose very sound connotes its meaning, a sloshing state of change

a liquid moment,
for we solids,
of bone and flesh,

though
we may be islands of stolidity,
entrenched, focused, organized,
when the surround sounds
of change are all about
you too are
fluxed

the serenity of splendid isolation
is not an impervious shell,
close eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth
these liquid times we abode,
inescapable from the roller coaster of
crashing storms of our
environment

try as I might,
cannot recede into a
white sealed envelipe,
cannot secede from
the froth of current events,
in the age of no distances,
and the rotational revolution of
but one lever,
a single beating wing
can disrupt the
the supply and communication
channels of our normative existential machinations

let me retreat unto my poetry trance,
but that choice
is currently unavailable

be wary of the calm of routine,
we live in a time of
the olympics of change,
and we cannot walk
on water,
nor tread forever

flux.

the liquidity curse of our
ever curving intersections

Friday night immodesty

theater on East 4th street @ 8:00pm,
so the girlie stuff commences on schedule
90 minuets a-priori and the medley music
(adele+amy+alicia+ pink bach for some zing)
a harbinger, a pioneer Greek heralding of
Friday night immodesty

the clothes laid out upon the bed, the shoes,
pumps selected and already on,
(always a puzzler to me,)
the subdued lower east side jewelry possibilities,
on the dresser drawer,
indifferently hoping for selection, but
casually beaming quietly,
like those kids waiting for interviews in the waiting room
of the college Admissions Dean’s office,
all with serious smiles
and tiny tearing eyes

aside:
helloooooo, I am in a poetry polo with my best jeans ready to go
2 hours before the curtain calls out,
hellooooooo

she sits at the makeup mirrored desk,
clad in only her underneath garments of varying utility,
when I sweep in imperially
and with one hand twist gentle her hair upwards,
betraying
her neck nape which is again
the sujet of a poem aborning

lips,
like a Greek lyre strings, pluck, the tiny hid hairs never seen,
her instant moans at the never fully expected motion poem,
beg more mercy but no quarter given despite repeated cries
of you’ll mess my makeup,
the best defense known to a lady!

god gave men two thumbs to lift up,
simultaneously stimulating,
slide down each of the thin black brasserie strap invitations,
upon each, a writ,
upon her flesh colored shoulders,
stating
“what was she thinking!”

my lips,
now polar explorers, those power (filled) poles side by side,
(east/west for the designer was a smart
bipolar guy-person);
the lips play silent night progressive jazz,
tinkling with higher noted keys,
nape to shoulders moving down to the back’s prefrontal lobe,
the small of her back, the body’s quivering,
a con-federate flag of surrender

her last defense swept aside, we drink honey and milk,
celebrate the week’s mellifluous finish with immodest touching,
the lower east side will belong tonite
to only the hipsters, the millennials,
as our hips are milling and  otherwise
pre-theater and post, occupado

some hours later, watching TV and eating delivered Chinese,
she laterally and literally arm punches my arm
intensely to mark her discontent,
still annoyed,
for I

1) messed up her makeup,
2) best blouse to the dry cleaner and
3) the tickets wasted, and worse,
hits me again!

after I laugh and giggle upon proffering
most modestly, most assuredly,
seconds of
onlylovepoetry

9.21am Saturday