I thought I needed your love
and hoped you needed mine.
I was delusional.
Greater by far to acknowledge desire,
and not to confuse wants with needs.

We all need strokes
but they come from within
and what is best to avoid
is the confusion
of the trigger for the bullet.

In a fast-food establishment
I sat before my plastic tray
of great hamburger,
crisp French fries
and quite delicious chocolate shake.

When all at once
I did espy
A pudding man, with pudding wife
and their two doughy children
stuffing their pudding faces.

Obesity, the modern scourge.
How did we encourage it,
I asked myself,
before the advent
of the fast-food chains?

Before the coming
of McDonald's and the KFC
how did we suffer
anorexia, bulimia, and diaphragm activity,
and so much mortal, morbid, disability?

And just to make sure
that we didn’t miss out
on these delicious fattening goodies,
they introduced the internet
and asked us to accept all cookies.

The love we share may have deep roots;
the branches of the love we share
may exceed the length of those roots;
my arms may stretch out and enfold you
as the branches of a tree
may embrace whatever they hold captive.

We may stand together as tall
as the depth of the roots of our love.
But the roots of our love may extend
beyond the length of its branches.

There are no grains
of golden sand
to be seen
upon this black and burning beach
where we once spent our honeymoon.
In Ostia.

The brutal sun,
so uncompassionate,
that desiccates our skin
and burns the unshod feet
that venture on that dirt-black sand
in Ostia.

Why should one choose
to indurate the body
in such an unappealing
coastal strip that serves
as beach to Romans who betake themselves
to Ostia.

Particularly since
It’ll cost ya.

At my age, friends become fewer,
and those that remain
are all the more venerated.

It is becoming harder and harder
to recall that time
when older people were revered.

As time passes, so do the elderly,
and the contemporaries
that are with us, slowly diminish.

There comes a time in life
when we become uncomfortably aware
that we are outliving our friends.

I feel I want to say please bide awhile,
do not desert me at a time
when there are so few of you left.

What is this discomfort that I feel
when I outlive a friend?
Surely the guilt should belong to the one leaving me?

If you ask me
what it is I search for,
I will be obliged to
answer: “The truth”.

If you should then ask me,
“What is the truth?”
I will be obliged to
answer “I have not yet found it.”

How will I know
when I have found it?
Will it be
self-evident?

I will discard
everything that is not the truth,
and what remains,
however unlikely,
will be the truth.

Or possibly
it will not be
the truth.

He was my only son.
I held him in my arms,
I dandled him on my knees,
I taught him all those things
his mother had ignored.

And there were gaps
of which I grew aware.
All that I wished for my son
was poured into my love for him,
And I was alive to failure
to provide much that was required.

But through the years of gain and loss,
of triumph and disaster both
unexpected and quite unexplained,
my pride grew seamlessly
as I always did my best
and was repaid in myriad ways.

And there has now evolved
a subtle but yet distinctive
alteration in our relationship:
a clearly visible but well-defined
role-reversal as he reveals
embarrassing concern for my well-being.

Apparently, I have now become
The child of my son.