She sits in
the truck, quietly
waiting for her
husband.
Spring's broken
promise.
25 degrees.
She thinks about the
robins, and their sweet
song.
She can almost see
the daffodils,
butter yellow.
She thinks of pancakes,
breakfast with the
family,
and all those caged
animals at the zoo,
with their poor,
tired, glazed eyes.

Alone in the woods on a late spring day.
Pensive, I passed time.
You were stopping wet that
April evening when the rains came.
Even after 10 years,
******* you was like unwrapping a present on
Christmas morn.  I was always
surprised, and never disappointed.  
I feel
anointed to find someone as
beautiful as you.
The touch of you and the taste
of you, is forever my heart's
sunrise and my dreams come true.  
Enraptured by your two
lips, I could sip on your nectar
forever, or until I'm alone in
the woods on
a late spring day.

If you can no longer bear life's clenched fist, it's random smashing of all your hope, dreams, desires, and passion,
be drunk.

Be drunk on wine, music, poetry by the pages, or, on the agelessness of the silky moss covered pond or the fog thick meadows.

If you would not feel time's ticking brutality, be drunk.
If all memory does is remind you of the losses, the deaths, the divorces, the regrets, the remorse over your high ideals and standards, and your much lower behavior, choices, and antics; when life seems anti-climactic, be drunk.

As loneliness becomes like a rotten tooth, hot flashing pain, and the stain on your heart and hands won't come out, be drunk.

Whether it be *****, poetry, nature or music, be full, filled, consumed.

Until the glare of this cruel world becomes a soft gentle blur, be drunk and entombed.

The under shell of
the tortoise looked
like a sunset.
Blasts of color:
orange, maroon, burnt sienna.
I caught them in
the garden at
sunrise, eating a
tomato or chewing into
a head of lettuce.
They always looked so
serious.

I was just a
sunburnt boy, with
cutoff jeans and a
straw hat.
I caught toads too.
But when they peed on me,
I let them go.
I loved that land.
Ponds and streams,
fishing and climbing trees.
oh,
sweet, green
youth.

I am dumb
with wonder, that I'm
not torn asunder, that my brain and body don't burst, under the
torment of the demon that lives in me.
He longs to be free, struggling clawing, scratching to be released, shrieking at me to write the words that reside inside.
I tried hard to drown him with ***** and Guinness Stout, but he learned to swim.

So once again, we toast the night alone by candlelight, as I read Sylvia Plath while he takes a bath in dark Irish beer. He knows that writing's fantastic, *******, electric, and we *** together as he whispers me sweet prose while doing the back float in a sea of Absolut.
I'm destitute, but he doesn't care, just as long as I share his seed that spills from my quill.
And so, I hear is shrill voice in the middle of the night, screaming, screeching, write *******,
write.

Life wears me out with its
twists and turns, and
hairpin curves.
I keep waiting for a
long, peaceful stretch
of highway, bathed in
the rising sun.
A golden wheatfield to
to the left, a moss covered
pond with dragonflies to
the right.
The road turns to gravel,
and climbs rapidly uphill.
There are signs along the
way that promise the world.
The road gradually turns
to dirt, and ultimately
disappears.

As a child, the 80 acres seemed like the whole world, with its ponds and streams and sunlit meadows.
It looked like Eden to my young eyes.
I chased the lambs and dragonflies, caught tortoises and toads.
The banks of the streams looked like cliffs to me, as I watched the suspended shadows of the bluegill in the water below.

With July's on broil, I found shade beneath a black locust tree, and tried to figure out, how I could use the thorns as fish hooks, to catch dinner for the night.
Evening set the sky on fire and the clouds were all a blaze.
Passion found me early, so much land, and nothing but time.

Then dusk turned gently into night and the summer Moon looked sad, like a giant porch light left on, for a lover that's never coming home.
As I lay in bed the cicadas buzz tucked me in, and from the pond came to bullfrog sad song, and I knew he was lonely like me.

Ever snorted *******?
I watched some partiers snort ******* last night,
in a dark, Manhattan nightclub corner celebration.
But I’ve never crossed that line. The white line.

When offered some, with unctuous camaraderie,
I shrugged and said, “No, sorry, I’m allergic.”
What are you supposed to say, “Crack is whack,”
or “I prefer my coke with *** and ice?”
The white line. I don’t cross the line.

It’s not the first time, of course, I saw more drugs
in high school than I have at Yale. I’ve mostly seen
“study drugs,” there, like provigil, adderall and alza (concerta).
Do they give students an advantage? I don’t know, maybe.
Call me a boxcut or a squarepants, but my parents are doctors,
and I just don’t cross those lines - those little white lines.