Still,
I don’t want to say another goodnight
To those dreams you sent on meandering flight
when your words gave my spirit new sight
even your memory sets me alight
Alas, I miss you, such awful fright
Abandoned again…Gone, your light
I, heart broken, sigh & say “good night”

Since your “Never” splattered red
death across the compositions painted
by my love into your dreams,
I will now rewrite forever
as me Alone riding on the sea

Sometimes mirror still, glassy
I drift through reflected aqua skies

Sometimes rough & wild
I am as the weathered driftwood
on those white-capped crests

Sometimes frigid, dark & dangerous
with icy raindrops driving;
they dot the green-black brew
with marks of silence broken

I will sketch a solo rider of the briny waters
Peaceful
through the ever-changing colors
of our textured seas
I will miss the dreams I thought were shared
I will miss…but I’ll be there
Alone upon the green-blue sea

Ah, but also for this Now
I have , of course, painted in
that brown-eyed boy paddling ahead
Another playing violin upon the shore
Music to remind there’s always more—
those children I adore

Yes, the boy & I,
we tasted rain the other day
Paddled to the border
Heard the music say
Our hearts align
while also set in such varied array

They are my “Now”,
&, I remain alone Someday
riding on the sea around the bay
and you remain forever far away
with hints of splattered red
death across those compositions dreamed
now seaweed tangled,
sunk beneath the bay
whose sunsets colour art of Acquiescence
I will paint again

I don’t speak lies
don’t exaggerate
__, when I say
I like your size
Yes! You feel great
Come on! I wanna play
Pressing deep inside
you satiate
Hold me close & stay
Always true
I miss you
Fill me with Someday

How could I resist
You’re the entire list!
I crave everything about you

This hunger eats away the midnight hour
Filling empty longing with fitful fantasies
Tongue curling around your strength
Licking your pulse, tasting salty masculinity
Fill me…years-long empty
Unfulfilled craving for your flavors
The taste of desire, the taste of obsessive attraction
The taste of bulging pleasures,
Tastes of you
I cannot pause this hunger-strike
Until you return to satisfy
I cannot sleep
As I salivate for you
Return
I’m famished for your breath
Let me kneel beneath your shower
and drink of you
let my starving fingers claw your groin
and draw you close
My every sense reaches for you
Feed me of your pleasure
Until I finally remember
The taste of satisfaction
I miss you
Fill my famished memories once again
Fill my reality with your rhythms
Press hard into my mouth, my throat
and more
Remember how I want you
More
Prowling for you, hunger devouring
Remember the feast
pounce upon my need
and feed

Tell me, what fuels your fire?
My passion, my desire,
my ******* fantasy,
is to be your fuel
to fan your flame
to know your molten core
melts

explode for me
though buried by the deep blue sea
mountain of my dreams & memories
rise, erupt
by my heat

Let me fuel your secret fantasy
Burn blue and white for me

How can you even imagine
Much less believe
that Any touch but yours, k
Tattooed in living color
Could ever
Touch forever
even now your absence
reigns tears in the shower

This need for only you
Is writing my next tattoo

How many more tears must I cry?
& Now Don’t You Know?
It’s only you!

I’m a confused sort of angry
Since you left my heart to empty
abandoned in the shadow of your silence
Absence
Yet again confounds my sensibility

I’m a confused sort of angry
with myself
for still not hating you
So contrary, irrational
how I want to know your words
how I desire still to see your smile
how I care

I’m a confused sort of angry
some moments wanting to evaporate
some moments sinking like a rock
sometimes seeping everywhere
flood waters breaking dams
swirling into
a confused sort of…

How are you doing?
It’s been a rocky evening here.
heat exhaustion hit

There, where you are now…
is it easing into being
a satisfactory home for you?
What do you like? What do you miss?

(I miss you! But this you knew)
My home wasn’t here today.
But my heart is too beaten
to try to say hi
when you’ve silently signaled
Another goodbye

I’m drowning too!
(You by change; I by stagnation…)
Either way, I guess this sea is too deep
for swimming So I’ll just sink

The more he speaks
the more I see
If he were me
There would no longer be
Even remnants of this “We”…

“Life is too short…”
he argues.
Thinks to sever
another connection
he deems harms
his…


I silently wonder
Am I next?
as he whittles away
more of the ME from me…

Either way, it’s not fair
how much of me lies there
in the discard pile
Shackled

I’m so tired of apologizing
for being myself

I DO think it’s true
(though regret muttering the words)
that the truest me
must be difficult for him to like
He preferred me
malleable

Is it so surprising
I dread the presence
of one who crushes my ME?

Yet still, it is I…
Swallowing so many words
that should reveal my truths
(they are not worth the conciliatory cost!)

I’m so tired of…

Silent
Aching
Gasping
Grasping
Grappling
Pressing heart & chest & lungs
Clenching in the guts
Every muscle weakened by the emptiness
Every nerve echoing the pain,
every rib drawn close in weeping,
cacophony of an arhythmic heart,
spasms of asphyxiating lungs
As the heart & soul weep bitter tears
Palpitations of The Missing…
Yet, the face remains impassive,
Secrets of the heart must remain
silent
though the heart weeps

How do you tell someone close
You don’t love them anymore?
How do you let them know
All the years that have gone before
Are too filled with hurtful words
Piercing you to your core
That several months of “trying”
could never even the score

How do you say after 20 plus years
What a weight their presence brings?
How do you trust them with your fears
when their presence a heaviness brings?

How do you break the bonds that bind
When they’ve broken the truest you?

Despair is the only fate I find…
To answer these questions, I haven’t a clue.

When you broke into the home of me
I said “I love you” and gave you the key
Later you thought to return it
as shards were cutting our feet
Return?! You did not see
It secured to your heart as roots of a tree.

Though now our feet have traversed
through many miles & spaces & lives
& our hearts have grown, are submersed
in a couple or four loves (or five?)
Those wounds now healed, with callouses grown. . .
Yet I think you still own the key to my home.

Those shards of glass knives
That sliced us apart
I swept into a furnace
Aflame in my heart
Once molten I shaped them
into fanciful art
Now hung on the walls
(mingling sweet with the ****)
of spaces held secret,
where memories restart.

Is there a chance
You’d ever unearth that key?
Do you even desire
To wander the halls of me?
I wish you would find it
Re-enter this door
Make me your home
and more. . .

Would you run through your night
Lock us inside
Together we’d hide
In the rooms of our minds
Together we’d hang
New art we would form
Together we’d wake
To a fresh beautiful morn.

Come, a new key we’ll cut
Find fantasies fresh
Build a shared house
for hearts long enmeshed.

None of it really matters
long enough
to tear my heart away…
I am
Always returning to you

All it takes is a thought,
A sense  of you
hearing you, seeing you…
everything evaporates
and you remain
i always come back to you

Will you come back to me?

I miss you
I love you
  
I could choose to converse
with various friends & acquaintances...
But it’s not them I crave to better know.
  
I’m so touched out!
children grabbing grasping,
pushing, pulling, dog-piling my body,
Unaware of where their bodies end
and mine begins...
Yet I crave that single touch
whose lightest brush
would send electric awareness
fluttering through my every nerve...
that single touch,
now farther than mere miles away.
  
My ears are worn with overlapping chatter
in competition for my listening attention
sounds bombard with needs... yet
that single voice that sings throughout my dreams
Is so long silent…deceased to me, I fear.
  
Friends and family repeatedly profess
Their deep true love for me.
(yes, those children hold my love!)
Yet, it is you to whom my heart returns
It is YOU from whom I seek heart-stopping reminders:
“I DO love you”
  
It's you I need
It’s you
always you

Phoenix in the Ashes?
That dirge to the heartbreak of loss,
“Ashes of Life” echoes in my mind of late:
“Love has gone and left me
And the days are all alike”
I
wallowing,
sunk in my sackcloth and ashes…

No flaming garb of vibrant red, instead shades of grey and black course coal
serve as my meager cloak & bed.
Those tongues of fire were so enchanting...
Now their bright blazing flames have died;
as smoke-filled skies remain to choke my breath–ashen
asphyxiation.
Amid charred lifeless trunks which
bely past vibrant verdant days
I wander awaiting years gone grey, a future
to further lay waste & topple the broken snags–to earth returned. . .
wait
a pause. . .
A glint of ruby red!
a single feather surviving?
molten scarlet letter “A” to lift from the ****?
witch who will not be burned up,
who cannot be consumed?
Has that resilient phoenix truly met a last cremation?
Or will her red wings yet arise renewed
Up from the “Ashes of Life”?

You are my waking thought,
my hopes and fears throughout the day.
You are assurance, peace… and loss.
You are my heartbeat and my breath,
my heartbreak and my tears.
You are each song that I hear or sing,
tunes of passion & love, of hurt, anger &
sorrow, of satisfaction, completion & joy.
You are the lift in my step,
my upturned smiling lips.
You are the glistening drops of missing pieces
hidden in my eyes. . .
You are their sparkle, too.
You’re the kiss of wind or wet dew on my cheek,
the crisp air of spring, scent of cherry blossoms,
the sweet taste of beloved memories
the sour sting of hope lost.
What more can I say?
You are the moments of each day
from my first consciousness on waking,
through the ticking seconds as they pass
and still seeking out my sleeping dreams.
Is it any wonder you are the flame
igniting my happiness?
& You are the absence collapsing
my aching heart? You
…my desired Someday
…always my Today

These strings of thought
are all knotted
I’m too hung up on you
the maze just dead-ends
nothing to lead back …
the more I try the more impossible
this mess
messy strings of thought
******* in seeking
hope?
I cannot sleep on this mess of knots
& cannots…
Would you? Could you untangle
these confused strings of thought?
They’re all the same color—
the color of you & me
in our memory

I wonder if you ever knew
the dreams you drew
into the palm of your hand
when first you drew my body close?
Those dreams they haunt
my silent screams eternally
as I long for you…
Desire taunts my heart tonight
as you have drawn away
to further stray
from these arms that reach to claim
(falsely claim) you as my Someday…
Though false these dreams,
they refuse to fade…
No, nothing can sway my mind
from thoughts of your palms
claiming my heart
grasping my waist
pulling me into your need…
Here pulsing a rhyme along this page
the beat of our music harnesses truth
(You still need me; I still love you)…

claim me, draw me, dream me

i wait

No one listens
to the girls, the women

Who will hear their stories?
Who will believe?
Who will care?

The counselor didn’t
“You were old enough to know”
Closest friends?
No, not really.
they’d rather find excuse,
minimize the wound…
The pastor?
he who possibly did even worse?
he who perceives in black & white
& also blames the victim?
(she was drunk?)
(her skirt—too short)
(she chose to be there)
(SEDUCTRESS!)
clearly not the zealous parents,
judgmental.
or the jealous other…he who claims ownership

& clearly not the voters

so I ask, WHO
Who will listen?
Who will hear?
Who will believe these stories dredged
from the depths of pain?

Those fears…nested in denial
their silence…
Those buried secrets
greedily devour heart & soul
while softly blooms faint hope
of a someday when
Enough who care
finally will believe…
…
No one listens
to the girls, the women
…
Believe Them!

god, how much I’ve missed you
ever since the start
more than you could ever know
I wish we weren’t apart
are there ways to demonstrate
how strong is this desire?
It’s only ever always you
who lights & fuels my fire
Desire years-long strong for you
who forever rules my heart
try as I might, still lost the fight
I can’t be where you are
someday I dream
You’ll return to me,
you who burns within my soul
Show me you still care for me
Your love will make me whole

I know you hold
So many aches inside your heart
I know you care
So deeply
You hold so many hearts
Close
Your heart is big
But no heart can hold the burdens
of the world
Yet you try
I know this of you
Please know, my heart holds yours
I care

I want to go back in time
I want you to be mine
& me to be only ever always yours
I want yours & mine to be ours
I want what cannot be
an alternate reality
as my now & my future
I want you to be in my life
More

My heart would race
Flip-flop
Stop
If you
Walked through that door
As if I were a teen again

don’t wanna make it weird…
but thanks for being real
I realize you don’t express feelings lightly

I won’t tell you “thank you”
Don’t wanna make it weird
Yet i am…thankful…
I treasure your trust
I treasure knowing you

What are the secrets
You promise yourself never
to reveal?
They are safe with me…
hmm, but would I be safe with them?
Perhaps that is the truer reason why
you hide the thoughts I wish you’d say.
Truthfully, I just miss you
in every way, every day…
I’d be your week of recovery
If only fates allowed…
Mmm, though we both know
I’d never be satisfied
With just a week
I still want a lifetime
even that would be too short a time
to know your touch
to touch your heart
to hold your heart in mine
to have all mine be yours
No, a week would never suffice
Still, it would be nice…
Famished here in this desert of nothing
I dream of an hour, or just mere minutes
in your presence.
I count my wealth in moments
spent immersed with you
(& your secrets)

I would make it home for you
I would BE Home for you
Not just “would be”
don’t you see?
I AM for you…
I want to be your
comfort, constant, safe, release
through the changes.
yes, I too fear change…
see? …our fears are held
warm in the palm of my hand
soft your skin, soft your lips
warm to the touch of my hand…
safe, home, calm, held,
Loved
Home
WE are home

Why
Why can’t it just be okay
why must I give excuse or explain
why does society not accept
that I just want to be alone?
Why does guilt weigh heavy
Why can’t…

I just want … alone

Is that so wrong?

Yet even now, at 10pm
guilt weighs heavy
as I rest
Alone

Airport billboard read:
“Someday is Any day”
“**** that” I say
My someday
is never
Whatever
I’m used to disappointment

When a vision dies
While the love that wrote it breathes eternal
The heart cries
Tears trickle down worn cheeks as sharpened ******
A sorrowful mourning

How can i reconcile Love and Loss?
What to do, Knowing how I must let go?
These tendrils of my need cling so tightly
‘round and through each essential part
of my life?
I understand why…
I just don’t know HOW
Did YOU find a way?

I donned those waxen wings of hope,
Sought to woo the sun…
Too late, too hot I learned
Iron weights alone the rip cord released
As wings melted with nothing to replace
& wax melded to my skin
I wept
Molten feathers trickling down my back
Seeping to my heart
Filled with greying lead
Oh, for lasting, lifting wings!
of titanium, stronger, lighter,
Elevating
To be as Neil Armstrong
In a rocket to the moon
safe landing assured

Oh that these life choices
might be enough to woo the moon
or Winged Mercury
Closer to the shining sun
Light and love
Rather now, as plummeting Icaria
I am a weeping candle,
flickering
faintly
failing
falling
forgotten

I thought I wandered into your tomorrows
the way you wandered into mine.
the opened gift revealed just sorrows
the kind surviving space & time.
I still wish that I could borrow
memories of yesteryear.
yet it matters not how far I go
I can’t seem to find you near.
now I think that you might be fighting
harsh histories of your own.
if only I could put in writing
assurances you are not alone.
I know not the right way to love you
cannot find how to be your friend.
regardless know these thoughts ring true
my care remains to the very end.
With much love always,

I’d rather message you…
Instead I told my friend
about the decrease in red signage in this area.
I’d rather tell you…
instead I texted him
about the coffee shop eves-dropping
leading me to learn a bit of trivia
(fact-checking a statement overheard
I found it to be only half true).

I realized this morning
from a cordial text exchange
with a casual acquaintance
(Siri mixed his name up with my son’s so I apologized for the accidental call)
that his conversation was more engaged
than those with you.
I mourn that you, once counted close,
share less than my son’s classmate’s father.
I realized THIS
Is why I fear sending you these thoughts…
Perhaps it’s not really friendship you wish to hold?
but what is it you DO hope to retain?
Is it memory, possibility,
a thread of connection (never to be strengthened)?
All I know for certain—
this sinking disappointment
of friendship unrequited.

I wish you’d share
the heart-truths of you
as do the other friends I choose
to hold Close.

Even though you cannot be
My today or my tomorrow
My soon or maybe Someday
Even if an Alternate Reality for us
would hold a vastly different You & Me
You are still & always will be
my Somebody
Even if I can’t be truly yours,
YOU ARE MY PERSON
You forever rule my heart.

Hopelessly fallen into the well of you
‘Til it matters not what the mind knows to be true
Thoughts & desires for more, ever more break through
Filling each sentient moment with cries for you

Love by no reason or logic
drives passion to trudge the vast desert
Still seeking your refreshing oasis
In some realm or time or place
Still seeking to match breath and pulse
In time with your heart and soul
Though futile the promise may be,
Still it remains as truth:
I DO and will always love you.

Is it like having another child?
As parents age, it might be…
Yet different, too.

With each year we’re further formed
More hardened in our ways
85 years stiffens more than joints
and loss is painful
whether a father, spouse, (lover?)
or mobility & independence
The loss of oneself is hardest
85 years of grit & drive won’t be broken
by a couple of falls & fractures

Maybe Benjamin Button had it better
since babies & elders both need aid anyway
or was it dementia with a different name?
She fears that most—
the loss of mind & memory
I relate (memories are treasures)
I’d add cancer to the list—
long drawn out pain,
increasing dependence…and loss

Sometimes mercy is allowed…
but that’s my thoughts
how I might deal with cancer,
not her (Christian) way…
Ironic my pro-choice response
“your body, your life, your choice”
respects her “pro-life” (and suffering) perspective,
facilitating independence
as I live with the fear she’ll fall again
spend an hour crawling for help again
suffer long & lonely again

Yes, it’s like having another child
my own Benjamin Button born
I must prepare a room
and my mind

Downhill spiral
Thoughts in mire roll
A mess
I confess
Obsess
Over the next
Is the ache
from a mistake?
Because I take?
or just the flu?
I’m missing you!
There’s no right
Submit? or fight?
Morning to night
Just wasting time
Asphyxiated mine
Broken rhyme
it all is wrong
an off-key song
Absence prolong
What this means?
splitting seams
Shattered dreams
it’s simple, plain
You’re on the brain
Through joy and pain
Time misses you
As I do, too

Love of my Longing, I will be all that your passion seeks
I hear your siren song wafting through the clouds
(Falling with a startling shiver
as icy raindrops on my parted lips)
In wavelengths I alone can know
Your beckon binds me with the softest silken bow
My willing heart is tied to you.
Dash me on the edges of your body.
Plunge me in the sea, down into your darkest depths
until I taste the salt of you.
Capture me, snare me in your trap.
Let me be your hidden pearl, your secret vice.
Surely you must know, since long ago
ensnared by you I am.
Phantom of the cliffs along the shore…
I, offering willing, then, now, and forevermore,
answer your siren call
Yes!

Ravish me!
In the shower, on the couch
Release the animal inside
Take me on the kitchen island
Open wide for your drive of passion
Bend me over in your office on the desk
Let me hear your grunts and groans of pleasure
I will rip you naked
Gaze with lust upon your natural core
Grasp my diamond heart with talons fierce
it will not bleed within your hold.
Take flight with me
We’ll leave troubles of the week behind
As we find exhilaration and release
In these our bonds of instinctual need
Scatter with me handfuls of seconds
vulnerable between us.
In dualities of pleasure
Take us to the perilous edge
Release the beast that longs to play
Let us lie in fields of green, in daisy lanes
rush panting hard through jungles deep
Submerse me in the raging seas of you in me
For just a moment of imagination
Let us be happy
Soaring as the hawks in flight,
diving with the dolphins.
Come be at peace with me & I will sleep
In your arms my missing heart will be forgotten
buried safe in your love.
Yes, take me, if only for the briefest moment
Take me, Love,
be mine
this frozen moment in time

I’ll be wishing for you there with me
As I’m dancing
(shadowed by awkwardly watching eyes)
This music belongs to dreams
That’s why I don’t want to share
(don’t want another there)
But it is what it is.
Just know, I’ll be (always am)
Missing you

You write the moments of my days
Wake me in the nights
Come to me in secret silences
with assurances unspoken
quieting my inner spirit
reaching in to touch my calm
unafraid to counter my tumultuous fires
with your peaceful deep dark skies

You are the crests and valleys
of my tsunamic passion
With abandon you dive deep
to hear my truest thoughts
You see the dark green depths of my inner seas
With eyes to pause and feast
Caring that I care

I love how you still love me
Yet with inner weeping I wonder:
Why does my dive into you
Strike upon a frozen river?
Never mind!
I’ll skate upon my dreams of you
until spring thaws return
(will warmth someday burn?)
Yes, I’ll skate with free abandon
along your icy river surface
knowing below is so much more—
currents of you to explore

Someday…yes, perhaps someday
I’ll dive in deep, find more of you
Maybe someday
our brackish waters again might swirl
Together
Our estuary tides finally rise & recede
Under the same bright moon
In this someday dream eternal

I desired you
Naked
Playfully tugged the towel
tucked around your waist
revealing to my hungry eyes
all of you
Too late I knew
at least for the briefest moment
annoyance crossed your face
I hope my eyes bespoke
the adoration in my heart
I hope you forgave that boundary crossed
I wanted to see you
Naked
I still do
Naked body
Naked soul
Every part of you
your naked whole
always I adore

I love my body
and I want you to love it too.
Always I have been selective
Guarded…but you…
I want you to touch, caress, hold
and love my body
as I love & hold your mind & heart & soul
Forever
I’ve saved the heart of me
for only you

Shine a light into my darkness
This chill needs your warmth,
A beacon of assurance
through this thick despondent fog
My heart, irrational, refuses to abandon hope  
The slightest candle flame
Promise that love might remain
Would spark a smile, fire my heart heat,
Settle me, empower me
wandering through the nighttime dreams
You fill the missing pieces with your peace
when I know your love beams on me,
when your love sign shines
I can see a way home.

Suffocated
I can’t breath
Held in his vice grip
Controlled

LET ME MAKE MY OWN DECISIONS!

bursting with repressed
ME-ness
I need to BE
(not controlled)