Every time she laughs...
Her beautiful infectious laugh...

A black rose
Breaks through
Ice in Antarctica

I wait
Watch
Mirror
You getting ready
Putting your pretty on
Hair
Purple lipstick
Dress
Sandals over tattooed feet
Ten
Twenty minutes
Waiting
Watching
what do you think?
No words
Walk over
Arm around waist
Dark clouds begin to form outside
Small of your back
Pull you closer to me
Breath on me
Your eyes are downward
Kiss you under your ear
Mixture of perfume & your hair
Lovely
Crackle from the SW
Day turns dark
Windows open
Lightning flashes across the room
Storm is here
Gentle drops at first
But it’s thick heavy drops
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,
,,,
Falling all about
Dress upon the floor
Hands upon hips
Teeth biting lips
And all that pretty
Over my body
Washing it away
***** & Clean
Springtime Thunderstorms

Sometime after 4am...
Her leg draped over mine
In the blue moonlight...
Candles out on the windowsill
I thought...
‘All that poetry was ******* worth it...’

New love isn't true love...
Remember that...
Give it some time...
To ******* all up...

She tells me I owe her a sea story
From my navy days...
Told her the barracuda one
Maybe I’ll tell her the Face Down
On the Deck one
Or the Smoked Hash in the Park
In Italy one
Had a guitar, 3 chords, and hash
Singing Bessa Mi Mucho to Italian
Teenagers...they loved it
I was the silly American
Or maybe the one where we got the scoop on the only ****** in that seaside town in Spain, then showed up and half the ship was there...
Or the Dunhill cigarettes of France
To go with the Stella Artois or Heineken that seemed to be prevalent everywhere.
Cause that’s what you do at 23
Drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and run a mile and a half in 12 minutes.
I could talk all day of the women of Israel...
Or all the times that I’d go to the stern of the ship
And it’d be just me and the seas
The Adriatic
The Aegean
The Mediterranean
Atlantic
Sometimes the hammerhead
The sea turtle
The midnight mermaids
Black Seas
Blue and Green
But you’ll hear all of them soon enough
Yeah I can be fun at parties cause I got a shitload of stories...
Put some coffee on...pour the wine...
You got any hash?

Some acknowledge it better than most...
The halfway point of your life
For some...
Achy bones
Tiredness
Memories
The fact they can remember 1978
Some will see their aging faces
Wrinkles in their hands
Some will hold onto their youth
Like a match light...holding onto it
Desperately...in their own futility

For some it’ll happen on a beautiful dawn
Tell themselves
‘It’s ok. I’ve made it this far’
Continue their journey

And some will watch their Youthful Ship
Pass the beaten wooden pirate
Frigate
Sometime during the night

If you gave me a bottle of cheap
Red wine
Every day
Put me in a one bedroom
Bungalow
Off of Hollywood & Western
In the late 70s
Give me an endless
Harem of women
Pay my bills
$2 six packs of beer

....I’d be able to write some epic **** too...

She waited for her sun
Shone so brightly
So beautiful
In the West
At her Brightest
Just before he rose

Sleepy eyes
‘There you are...’
She said to him
As he came over the horizon

‘Good morning’
‘Good night’
‘Hold me now...bring me your light...’

Full Moon Sunrise

My last day of work there I bought her a $7 cup of coffee, told her she was one of the most exquisite women I’ve ever laid eyes upon...then walked back to the front lines of the war I was having with myself...

Turn the key and the flood begins…
All were there to greet me
Happy to see me
Some would run
Wanting my embrace
Years pass
Different doors
Different keys
Different women
Things we owned
Things we shared
Some I loved
Some I used
Some would slap me if they had the chance
If I came walking through their door
And some…I hope
Would tell me they missed me so
Like the cold leftovers
In the fridge
Of this empty home…

The world is so sad without you in it…
I say to nothing
And receive nothing back

Easy to say
Harder to comprehend
Nothing can be worse than rejection

This is all your fault
Anyway

Thinking you can have it all
Only to throw it away
Not measuring the pain of a future staring into an empty wall and saying

‘The world is so sad without you in it…’

50 years from now...
Long after the chocolates have been trashed...
Long after the cards have been ripped in two...
Long after the forgotten sentiments attached, roses have withered...
Long after I have gone...
You’ll open up page 1
Of the words written just for you
The gift that stayed...
My Flowers That Never Died

You showed up on a hot day in June
Said you were in town
Looked into your eyes for the first time
The toothpaste had already been out for awhile
Couldn’t put it back in
Put up or shut up time
And it just clicked. There it was in some 7-11 parking lot off Havana St
I could tell how much you loved me
And how much I ruined it for us
I wrote a book and released it on June 21st
Sending pings out into the galaxy
Well dressed words that I’d hoped would act as a comet
Hoping you’d come back with them…

For 3 seconds in the morning when I wake up
You’re still alive
Then I do the math in my head
And you’re not

I can shoot pool like I’m 19
Bowl a 159 if I hav e to
Pitcher after pitcher
One two many mixed drink
$78 bar tab
Just to go home alone
And tell my self
‘I could’ve just got drunk here for $12..’