When Summer arrives,
she extinguishes the rainstorm-
the blissful absence of which
not many will mourn.
I wish I was the sunshine of summer
that brings light to everyone's day
as opposed to the rain cloud
that gets in the sun's way.

At 20, it's adios to childhood.
By 30, you have played your youthful folly card.
At 40, you have ground it out to mid-field.
At 50, the bigger helping was dished out yesterday.
At 60, you enter the final stretch.
At 70, you finally get to play your wisdom chips.
At 80, most are surprised to see you.
After 90, Godot is waiting for you.

*November, 2015

Her kisses were moonshine
and bullets, three shots
to the heart, like a rose
on the canvas of morning,
like art, an eyelash on a poem
that always makes me pause,
three xs at the bottom of a page.

I was ten when
I got caught stealing
blue chalk from the pool hall.

My daddy wore me out
with a black leather belt.

He said *What'd I tell you
about writing sad poems
on the back of the stones
at the orphan's graveyard?

I like her black dress,
the way it pools at her feet.
How she walks to the bed,
spilling over my sheets.
I drown in the depth
of her eyes.

"does the sky look odd to you?"

"no; I've been waiting for the day that the clouds would finally part and be able to speak to him for me, for the day that I wouldn't have to fear that a storm would ruin my chance of a kiss, because now the tables have turned. the sky can scream and rain all the words I've never been able to say to his face and I can lean over and whisper 'we're through.'"

We fail
only to make
success
taste that much
sweeter.