It seems like yesterday
I was young ,
an innocent sweet bride
embarked on my new life with my mate
but time has a way of moving quickly
and catching you unaware of the passing years
I wonder where all the years went
Now I only have
glimpses of how it was back then
and of all my hopes and dreams.
Here it is ... on summers day
It catches me by surprise
How did I get here so fast?
Where did the years go
and where did my youth go?
Met an old friend of mine...
looking tired, all old and grey
she brought the news of our retiring friends
some are dying on hospital beds
some are walking slowly in old folks home
some have gone senile and forgotten their way homes
I hugged my old best friend
told her to rest as much as she could
I am thinking now of how lucky I am
To complain of a few creaking bones of mine
I should feel ashamed!
Most people enter into this new season
of their life unprepared for all the aches and pains
and the loss of strength and ability
to go and do things that they wish they had done but never did!!
  I'm not sure how long I will last...
But through another winter.. spring and summer
I wish I could still live to breathe
I am not yet ready for the day
when my life is over on this earth...
yet to begin a new adventure of life...
in the hereafter.....

We who love, love real.
We who feel, feel deep.
It's just within us to do this.

We who hurt, hurt more.
For nothing is accomplished by doing it.
But some believes it.

Jealousy and envy never win.
They have more enemies as opposed to friends.

We who care, care forever.
It;s bedded within us.

A true lesson passed on to you.
And taught to us, from the day we was born.
It's just within us.

night after night, we text.
she goes first, and it's always
the same story:

'I'm committing suicide,' she'll write,
listing her various reasons for wanting to do so.
of course, I'll try to calm her down.
(it usually works, except when she falls asleep
with her sadness still intact).

she says she has it all figured out,
that she'll register her will online for $25
and pay the Europeans to come pick up
the body.

I can never tell what's real and what's not.
besides, she's very stubborn in her ways
and can't be argued with.

she also claims I'm the only person she's confessed to,
so I suppose that when the phone stops beeping
for a day or two, I'll be the first to know.

I just hope she leaves a note behind
for everyone else.





from Slinking Under The Electric Bulb (2012)

there was the application - six pages long,
plus union forms.  
holy fuck, I thought, it's been years.
but it was a decent gig, paid well,
and I was up to my head in debt,
so I hung with it.

the first two pages were easy enough -
name and address, position sought,
emergency contacts.
they didn't question competence
or drug and alcohol use either.
it seemed like a sure thing.

then they asked for references and work history.
aside from freelancing, the closest thing
I ever had to a job was pushing the stuff,
and I had lost my supplier's number
anyway.
of course, one thing I learned from all that
was how to lie through your teeth
and do it well,
which came in handy as I
jotted down several fake companies and used
the names and numbers of friends
to cover for me
in case they checked.

suddenly I was a former consultant,
manager, operator - I had years of experience
and made my way up.
looking around that office and seeing
all those blank faces, I knew I could
pull it off.

the last page was the best: a questionnaire
regarding goals and ethics.

my favorite part about coming to work?

the people.

what does customer service mean to me?

building clientele and seeing that
their needs are met.

what should I do when it's slow?

double check my work.

what word sums me up best?

reliable.

you never saw
such a good bullshitter
in action.

I signed the agreements,
handed it to the receptionist,
wished her a fine day and
walked out.

putting on my shades, I thought about
taking up acting
instead.








from Slinking Under The Electric Bulb (2012)

he makes his rounds down by the 59th Street Bridge:
one leg bends, the other stays straight.
you can't miss him, he's darker than night‒
pasty white lips, coffee cup jingling,
and a fresh clean suit to really catch your eye.

"shit, look at that guy!"
I've heard people say.

he's been at it for years,
rattling that damn cup once the light
turns yellow.
it must be working,
there's always a different suit.
throw in rush hour and bridge cleaning  
and you know it falls like rain.

but one day I saw him walking along 31st Street,
pacing, hustling, both knees bent.
he moved better than I did,
dress shoes and all.
I pulled up and honked:

"feeling good today, huh buddy?"

pasty lips kept it at full stride,
rounding the corner with
no shame in his step.

it wasn't long before I got stuck at that light again.
of course, out came the hobble and the sound of loose change.
I believe the lady in front even handed him a bill.
and when he finally made it over to me,
the only thing I could do was grin.

a guy like that, you just have to
let him go.








from Dizzied By Chance: Poems of a Fringe Existence (2013)

Damn, this could take a while. To put it bluntly,
I'm a 31 year-old woman with the libido of
a 16 year-old boy. A few of my fetishes are too
perverse to indulge outside the realms of fantasy.
The more tame ones are sub/dom interactions, both
inside and outside the bedroom. I like to be bound.
I enjoy being watched, but watching others also gets
me going. I usually get dressed and undressed in front
of my window each day, which almost takes up
the entire wall. Someone drank my urine once, while
another came simply from tickling my feet. I enjoyed that.
I like getting pissed on, choking, being bitten, and of course
biting back. Long hair, trains, The Chesapeake Bay Bridge,
tentacles, incest role play, horns and antlers, fat men,
Victorian women, spankings, flagellation, vampirism, eating
very ripe fruit, kidnapping. Corsets. I tight lace in the fall and
winter, when it's not too hot to wear a corset all day. That feeling
of being constricted, bound, and reformed is agonizing and
heavenly all at once. I would rather give head than receive. I would
rather obey than command. I like to be told what to wear
and how to act in public. Everyone would see what I'm doing and
what I'm wearing but only I (and he/she) would know why.
A secret hidden in plain sight. That right there gets me off
more than anything. Well, almost anything. Rim jobs and putting
my fingers in a guy is fine, but I have tried anal and didn't like it.

OK, your turn!







from Dizzied By Chance: Poems of a Fringe Existence (2013)

a stripper.
a girl without wings.

she reached for her phone and
sat up in bed
typing.

"dear journal," I said, "he shaves his balls and won't
let go of the bottle."

she laughed, then continued,
while I slumped over the sill
sucking that tit raw:

"read it to me when you're done."

"okay," she said.

it went on like this all day.
there were a thousand dancers in town
and I found the one who hadn't been
penetrated in two years.

"he says he gets ill if he doesn't have sex for five weeks.
am I just the five week girl?"

we were both so right,
yet so wrong.
but at least I got a free dance
out of it.

"listen," I said, "don't think I won't send your ass packing."

all you could hear was the tapping
of the keys.
she was hard at work, she had
her muse.
Diary of a Lonely Stripper,
she called it.

"you know, it's actually not the worst idea ever.
if only you could add a little wit to those entries..."

I stood up to take a piss,
but had another drink first.

"he's going to pee out the window," she said,
"and he doesn't like my writing."




from Dizzied By Chance: Poems of a Fringe Existence (2013)