Solitude

I sit alone in my car waiting
for my mother to be finished
in the dentist's office,
a few moments of
a very rare solitude,
captured at odd moments,
frequently a solitude in crowds-
grocery shopping is a zen meditation-
particularly standing in check-out lines.

It was last night I realized
how little alone time was mine.
Journeys in the car, daily, a moment to be seized.

And yet yesterday you called
from a rough surf beach, alone,
and wondered why we weren't on the beach more often.

I don't know.
Please come and get me.

But what do you tell
the other man with you,
not on the beach,
but in the store buying shells
for his creative output,
his shell art?

What do you tell
the other man who is me?
Why aren't we on the beach more often?

I don't know-
Why do I so often feel stranded
in cars,
in grocery lines,
the week-ends he is back in town
and the two of you go shopping
for shells,
he in a store,
you on a beach, alone,
calling me wanting to know
why aren't we on the beach more often?

I don't know.
Please come get me.

March 2010

Mercy Angel

He came to me with broken wings
looking for love and a healing.
I stripped his cares and underwear
So much of him was appealing.

And my senses were filled with love-
I felt his wings jagged edges,
This naked, lovely, earth bound dove
injured by unfulfilled pledges.

I wondered could I keep my word
and leave his embrace with honor.
His whispers asked me not to go-
I wanted to stay forever.

When he enveloped me and touched
my own wings in need of repair,
I showered with tears, healing much,
soaking his chest of dark, thick hair.

I closed my eyes and wished us whole
and heard him as he prayed the same.
His nakedness begged me to hold
him close, with joy were we inflamed.

He came to me with broken wings
looking for love and a healing.
Together now we fly and sing
the power of love's redeeming.

May 2010

Sad and Lonely

The woman who sweeps and
mops my mother's hospital room
floor is very sad.
So sad, she perhaps does not know
how audibly she sighs.
And why is she so sad?
I can not ask her,
As a rule, you don't ask strangers
why they are so sad.
Is she lonely?
Sad and lonely?
Or am I projecting feelings
I do not want to acknowledge
as I sit in my mother's hospital room?
But I am neither sad nor lonely.
Not since you came into my life.
But that is romantic nonsense,
isn't it?
As an existentialist I know
all of us are alone.
But I imagine my dying now
and your company
keeping me from feeling
Sad or lonely.
But if I am alone?
If I am the one
who kept you company instead-
Will I be sad and lonely
or eager to be reunited?
I indulge in romantic nonsense-
You more than anyone
know that about me.
Still,
the mopping woman of audible sighs
seems sad and lonely.

Discharge

We are waiting for the
physician to come and sign
off on discharging my mother
from the hospital.
Two days ago another
doctor drained an egg size
aneurysm that had ballooned
in a vein that fed blood
to her liver.
The square of blue sky
Out the window is obscured
by a large, brown
electrical box.
You can see the top of some pine trees distant.
It is a room with a view-
just not a great view.
Two days ago,
when you came with me
for one of several visits
You had commented on
The view,
So today as I look
out the window,
I think of you
and this improves the view
immensely.
There are people who will
have a discharge of another kind-
Not to home,
Well, to a larger home, perhaps.
My mother will be discharged
from this hospital to her home.
She will walk out of here.
The other ones, discharged
from their bodies,
They will fly from here.
All of us fly eventually-
Home? I hope.

February 2010

More Love

I have been writing poetry all morning,
Or I have been putting order to words
and some construct of thought
little rhyme, some reason.
The rhythm of my speech, a cadence
slightly loftier than usual.
Is it Poetry?
I say yes,
but can hear others
say no.
My mother sits up in bed
to catch her breath-
And I debate whether
I am a Poet or not.
I know all things die,
I do not know if death is final.
My father died.
My brother died.
My mother will die-
I know all things die
But I do not know
If death is final, an
end all where all ends.
At any moment there could be a code blue
and it will be announced
via an intercom
so everyone here will hear.
It will serve to remind us
that all things die-
But not everyone will listen.
I imagine I listen
as the Poet.
This puts some distance
between the mother
who sits up to get her breath
and the mother who will
no longer move.
But Poetry?
Who can say?
I know that another half-moon,
not exactly the same position-
But another half-moon will
rise in the sky,
Similar to the one that rose on
the night I first lay my hand on you
to feel your heart beating-
I know because last night
We stood outside and looked
at the moon as we spoke on our cell phones.
I remember this, sitting in my
mother's hospital room
and all is made bearable,
All is made bearable
by us being together-
Two Poets are better than none.
We know all things die-
So we talked about the moon
On the phone for more love, more light.

February 21, 2010

For J

When you came into my world
I knew your face
like my own in a mirror,
so familiar and yet
so strange.
When we embraced
I knew my arms
were meant to hold you.
I don't know what
we can do about the
People with cardboard
signs on the street corner
Usually at the on and off ramps
of an Expressway.
When we meet their eyes
what do they think of us?
Is Haiti fully recovered?
What star supernovaed last night?
When you shyly offered your kiss
was it wrong of me
to take it
and value it
Above everything else?
Should I have refused
the kiss, my joy
until none were hungry?
And yet,
More with you than anyone
am I certain that if we
can do anything
for the people with the cardboard signs
and for people hungry everywhere-
Now having met, embraced and
Kissed,
If we can do anything
more than ever
We will.

February 2010

For Christopher Isherwood

With all due respect
I am not a camera
And I am certain
in time your Guru
made you see this.
In time we are caught
and we are the photographer.
We know the tree
in the camera is
part of a forest.
Even more,
I am aware of the
Photographer being
on a planet,
in a galaxy.
I even sense
the Photographer
outside of time.
Yes, the complex
in the mirror
Still holds
the child I am always
And the corpse
I become.
With my eyes closed
Time is gone.
Yet I am here
in an inner space
that mirrors
the outer space
with the planet
and the galaxy.
The Universe
runs through me
Like Blake's etchings
All is an organic whole
And I and the All
are never separate
Even while,
or more so-
As I press
and take
a picture
of a tree.

February 2010

A Crayola Sunrise

A Crayola Box sunrise
and I am up to witness
and be dazzled.

Where are you?
you whom I also
witness and am
dazzled by.

The Aeon Clouds
heralded the light.
It was cold on my
bare feet.
How your warm breath
and kisses
are missed.

I know the glint
in your eyes
as you take
my foot
in your hand.

I know how
my own sex
reveals
how much
your love
fills me.

St. Valentine-
Be Mine.
My lover
Take all my kisses.
I give them
freely to you-
all for you.

A Crayola box sunrise
and I am up
as witness
and dazzled.

February 14, 2010

Afternoon with a Satyr

The room is dark with diffuse winter light
and filled with cold air.
The craving for heat, like violin music, a shivering
vibrato, the frantic rubbing of bow and string
is felt in the core.
The satyr is better
suited for the icy chill, his fur covered
cloven feet are some protection.
Yet his half man bared flesh, his chest,
Patterned charmingly, with soft curly hair that narrows
into a line and directs the eye to his sex
bending out of a thick bloom.

The tremble of trepidation can easily be
mistaken as the craving for heat.
Danger as much as libidinous excitement floods the body
and the held breath of fear is too similar to the pants of lust.
Both are read in the satyr's eyes, divinely demonic, intent and fixated on you.
You don't know what to do with your hands
and yet imagine them doing so many things.
But is this you or has the satyr's stare entranced you
and these images more his want than your need?
You want to sit, but wait for the satyr's move.
You want this to be his dance,
You are prepared, but not rehearsed.

But he is in no hurry and converses freely about love
songs of medieval troubadours.
And after all, is not it
a bit oxymoronic, a civilized satyr?
But it is as much
for the conversation that you come
than the Dionysian abandon when you come.
You open your eyes as the flying
exclamation points punctuates your chest
and just a maddeningly
the entire of Eliot's Prufrock,
another song, another troubadour,
rushes like a tsunami of what is and will not be.
The painting of the Satyr
is in your line of vision in the room dark with diffuse
winter light and filled with cold air.
The trembling trepidation and
the craving for heat id too close.
All of the experience is felt to
keep away the pain you will not feel.

January 5, 2010
o