You and I will have our dreams together
See the world as pink and green together
Knowing that we’ll always be together
Feel the morning, rise upon us
Hold the feeling, all wet with dew.

You and I will spend our days together
Moving right on through the maze together
Playing games and making plays together
Happy endings, ever after
Like a story, we’ll spend our lives.

With time for holding you
And time for loving you
We’ll make our dreams come true
You and I.


Originally used as a song lyric in the show Marriage and Other Happenings in 1983

I look at the sea
As the sun shines down
And the glare stings my eyes
But as I watch
The sight comes clear
And all the ocean’s beauty
Comes alive

Here I sit
Seven stories up
Safe and warm inside
For the sea is cold now
And sometimes angry
But it will be warm and calm
Again this spring

So I look at the sea
As the sun shines down
And I dream of the spring
And when spring comes
I wish you here
To share the ocean’s beauty
With me

This is the 2nd of a set of three art songs for soprano and piano called Three Landscapes - the other two poems are by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Renaissance
The Enlightenment
The Baroque
The Romanesque
The Classical
The Neo-classical
The Romantics
The Avant-Garde
The Dark Ages
The Middle Ages
The Federalists
The Philanthropists
The Modernists
The Cubists
The Minimalists
The Impressionists
The Imperialists
The Rationalists
The Surrealists
The Transcendentalists
The Gilded Age
The Industrial Age
The Golden Age
The Space Age
The Age of Reason
The Age of Mediocrity

The stillness of the morning
A quiet time to think
Burning off the mist of darkness
And drying up the dew

Ev’ning shadows long forgotten
As golden rays appear
Casting off on a new day dawning
With incandescent light

Like fishermen in hip-boots
Trailing lures in streams
Teasing dreams to follow
The long forgotten embers
Of yesterday’s embrace

New shadows of awak’ning
With piercing crystal light
Leaving empty spaces
To be filled as time progresses
Toward another afternoon

The patches still in grayness
Soon to disappear
Ending off the day’s transition
As morning overtakes

The dawn of another journey
A day to be revealed
Moving on toward a day of brightness
Another day with you

I weighed the options.
Should I or shouldn’t I?
That is the question:
I’ve done it so many times before
And been rebuffed each time.
The answer should be clear;
I should be firm,
But each time I hesitate
And then relent.
Should I, this time,
Risk it again?
Why not?
Why yes?
I’ve stated the obvious;
Repeatedly and redundantly
And still I consider doing it.
It costs nothing
And if the result is the same
I’ve lost nothing.
But why, this time,
Do I seem more resolved against it?
Yes!
I’ll click the button
And submit the story.

Upper West Side apartments
A hidden agenda
Not so hidden
To the literati
And intelligentsia

Psychological
Societal studies
Family relationships
Real and dysfunctional

Phobias and foibles
Siblings and psychosis
Fantasies and follies
False or deferential

Dixieland or
Café society piano
Introspective or
Hyper-sensitive

Transcendental
Expressionism
Paradoxical
Acri­monial

Laughing and crying
Over spilled cocktails
While hiding at parties

Lifestyle studies
New York or foreign
Of the rich or famous
On the wrong side of the tracks

Happy or tragic
Sophoclean
Finding the truth
Through open eyes
Transfixed on sidewalks
Broken like pavement
Filled with potholes

Boiled like cabbage
Rolled into daydreams or
Nightmares
Finding the way
Home

The gentle breeze has just a hint of coolness to it,
Barely relieving the humidity even this early in the day.
The fetid air hangs heavy in the trees,
The residue of yesterday’s scorching thermometer.

Is there hope in that gentle breeze?
The first in a season of no seasons.
The land of mold, mildew and bug bites
Reveals itself as a season of perennial hot.

The man sips his coffee and picks up his pencil,
Trying to draw the outline of memories:
Golden days of autumn and snow white cliffs of winter
Where time moves onward in a perpetuum of days.

The man sits stagnant in a world of empty spaces;
A vacuum created like a tunnel through the reality of time.
Nothing ever changes; no one ever reaches for the golden ring of glory
Or the passion of fulfillment in the land of the living dead.