cool cats warm pizza
in-alley dining tonight
covid dinner out

Not even the sun
reflected fully in the river's course.
Bit and spark,
it fought to frame
this solitary ray.

November never meant much to me before last year.
Shorter days, sure. Knit sweaters and a holiday or two.
But last November brought beginning to an end we didn't see coming.
A reminder that goodbyes are never guaranteed.
Last sentences aren’t always the final word on a relationship.
And holy moments exist in the darkest of places.

November never meant much to me before last year.
The night we knew you were leaving, I bought a holiday cactus
with small pink blooms from a misty shopside on my walk home.
Its blooms came back last week, brave in their abundance.
It’ll celebrate a year alive soon.
Your newest great-grand will celebrate seven months.

November never meant much to me before last year.
Each month since has brought joy
and loss and wonder that still feels shared.
The rains are coming back this week.
The mists returning and you, having never truly left,
give this November a chance to mean much and more again.

My words are mirages
of satisfaction
when thoughts desert me.

26 blocks from my new home, the world ends in a celebration of cliffs and waves and the glory of new edges. Tucked behind a marvel of architecture is a place I'll come to when the desire to seek meets with the need to hide.

The world's largest camera.

Behind saloon doors, costing less than a cup of coffee at the cafe above, the world's end waits to be observed. Admired. Held at a distance.

I want to share it with you. This near and dear distance. Revel in its focus. Become the unseen eye, serene in the water's tumult.

Did you ever see it?

Are you seeing it now?

on a cool autumn night as the world changed,
she took a moment
to savor what her hands held.
The lamps were too far away
and above from her chosen perch
to give color to the lawn
as she pressed her palms
deeper on the exhale
into the slick, uneven tresses around her.
Offshoots and roots
braided into thick plaits along
the hill’s dark cheek,
holding its form,
brushing its peak,
framing the earthen face.
If anything living
has earned the name lock,
it's surely a runner of grass.

On a none-too-distant shore
bobbed the sun
moored like unvoiced hope
waiting for its chance to swim.

blindly finding honey locusts
still blessedly bred with thorns.

climbing to new heights
just to keep a proper distance.

appreciating the red of a leaf
stuck low to damp cement
as higher winds chap your own chin red.

pressing a flower in the fold
of a note not sent
giving each another chance at purpose.

[This is the start
to another goodbye letter
that—if I ever actually finish—
I’ll certainly never send.

I haven’t stopped believing
that my heart
beats in rhythm
to the echo of yours
and every lover before.

That the places I leave
stay with me
hanging like a beech leaf in winter
yellow and holding
after a new bud forms.

So, yes, this may be a resignation
or the start of the means to another end.
But even when I couldn’t love you
you still let me have a friend.]

Dear California…

Several successive puddles
of cuddles
followed Susannah that day.

"Oh, dear Susannah!
It's hot in Havana.
But it's chilly right next to the Bay."

To the near puddles
Susie kindly rebuttals,
"What a silly true thing to say!

If the weather was wetter,
could you carry a sweater?
For tomorrow's much worse than today!"

Reality is vanquished
by the utter darkness.
The world is constantly
shifting--a pendulum
swinging across the sky.

But with no evidence,
this phenomenon can't claim you.
It remains obstinately
theoretical and the fugue
triumphs.

Only landing
can prove you ever
took off.

We are all matter 
particles and dust
echoed in objects existing distances
we're still learning to fathom away.

So take comfort, darling.
There is as much light inside of you as there is without.

But what of fault, dear Brutus?
If it is within us,
does it remain so in our stars?
Or are they, indeed, made of that sterner stuff?

Pardon me, while I pull
The stomach from my throat,
Take a look across the sea
And realize that it’s a moat

That I dug
And I filled
And I fed.

Now I sit upon the shore
Brittle tree among the reeds
And I wonder how I came to this,
Locked in sand up to my knees

I wonder if I’ll grow in this
And I wonder if I’ll leave
And all the while I’m wondering
The winds begin to seize

On joins and bends and brave young growth
And pull it from my form
Cast down across the waters storming
Unceasing til I’m shorn.

I gaze with straining vertebrae
Atlas’ burden at my neck
Upon my whorls and twisted limbs
Interrupted in reflect

As calming winds bolster
Such debris across the moat
I feel unburdened in acknowledging
Only strong wood floats.

Forgiveness smells
like the first drops of rain
hitting hot cement.

Could it feel like steam released
when warm words pour
from cooler lips?

On the precipice of something great
they stood--or, rather,
sat--weaving hopes
into their palms and throwing shadows
just to find the ground.
Whatever they never were
fell from the soles
of their swinging feet and clattered
as it struck
the sides of history.

For a moment,
they let the madness
of memories
overwhelm their senses.
They could've gone so astray.
They could've been so static.
A half-written screenplay.
A near-forgotten attic.

But they had escaped
the ever-churning wheel,
the silicon bubble of this reality,
and burst brusquely and permanently
into possibility.

And they were exhausted.

So the rainbow-chasing was left
for another day.
A fervently promised tomorrow.
For tonight
they collapsed side-by-side
back into the present darkness.

Most likely to joke
Most likely to balk
Most likely to start
a bar-fight.

Most likely to laugh
Most likely to pass
Most likely to
hold you high.

Most likely to croon
Most likely to croak
Most likely to hear
your heart.

Most likely to hinder
Most likely to leave
Most likely to
run too far.

Did you hear what I said?
So often/not yet.
But you responded all the same.
It seemed a better method
than to ignore and regret it.
What could've been if I'd known your name?
There's a chance you'll see me
another day. And we'll be
engaged in the new-old game
of predicting/amending.
We're better off listening.
But the thought of it's really quite lame.

She once loved a boy.
With him, every moment was a movie.
And when he held her, it felt like home.

But that home was not built
on stable ground.

Swept up in fierce winds,
Dorothy darling.
Kansas couldn't be farther.

I wonder about the man with roses
if he still get kisses at the parade.

And I wonder about the boy with best intentions
and the plans that he mislaid.

On a separate coast from each of them
I put carnations in a spare green vase.

I could paint such wonders for the next three years
or leave my hopes in a remembered place.

Curled like an ampersand
around a telephone
that never rings in time
with the words that sing in her ears,
She waits again.

Her hands and lips
cold-blooded mercenaries
that ****** what she can’t quite hold
with silence and questions.
with ellipses and time.

So she pushes again
seeking definition.

But finding the horizon has never been so hard.
Her vision so thoroughly blurred.
And the sunsets force her closer to a Something
she can’t quite believe in.

So she pulls what she knows
into herself,
rolls into a familiar shape and waits
for a phone that has always been ringing,
A voice she isn’t ready
to hear.

the redhead
with matching pants
practiced violin beneath the bridge

moments away

behind the museum
the amphitheatre hummed
with the song of birds

at some point, not so terribly long ago,
you liked dangerously strong coffee,
sleepytime tea before bed,
and me.

snapped fingers from a wrist
bent behind your back
while the funk worked its way
to your feet.

tattooed a state
you hadn't known
in a decade on your thigh
because it was where you were from.

laughed like an alarm clock
sounding in a dream
from nowhere, jarring,
and instantly recognizable.

and tucked my hand
into your elbow's crook
to chafe my chilly fingers
while you walked me home.

to be frank,
I know nearly nothing about you today.
but we'll always have
those little things.

tides pull greens through blues
perpetual sunsetting
at the golden gate

“What’s the common denominator?”

A simply posed question bubbling from friendly lips. Mathematic in phrasing and hinting at an even-keeled logic, a levelness she wasn’t sure a present heart could possess. But then, isn’t cause always clearer when witnessed from effect?

What was the common denominator of her past partners? Her coterie of used-to-bes? Off-the-cuff, she had said she admired their noses. But hours later, as she lay on the carpet--though the bed was long-cleared of her friends and their coats--she remembered how she felt ever-so-slightly uncontrolled each time. A fall in the most achingly obvious of ways, stopped only by the catch in her throat.

Who was the first? The start of the be? The introduction to was?

It seemed an occurrence out of time, but then they all did in a way. A warm flannel-peaked castle on a dark November afternoon. Two future lieges playing at world-building. A sudden mash of lips--a marriage of nations--soundtracked by muffled mutant turtles. Then the bliss of childhood returned. That bliss bordered and bound her for thirteen years, routinely perforated by pop culture and muted midnight movies. After fourteen, it shattered. Broken like the night sky during a meteor shower.

Her lips still remembered--in lonely moments--the hook of his teeth catching her before she realized she had fallen. She didn’t know him then, but she didn’t claim to. His middle name was enough, mumbled as his head bowed and her eyes crossed trying to hold his smiling gaze in her sight. A secret to share. The first of many, she hoped…
Far too many, she now knew.

But that’s the problem with falling, isn’t it? Too often, you mistake it for flight.

I'm a coffee ***;
you're in the mood for tea.

we had
for so long
this night-time
parking-lot
shouldn't-we-regret-this
love.

these days
we've got
a coffee ***
keep it hot
are-you-going-to-drink-that
love?

Lovebirds gravitate to the same perch
beneath the well-feathered branches
of old cypresses (cypressi?)
that too many years ago
were uprooted and planted
on this side of the hill.

Up the now-mirrored steps
two bodies lean
from a spot you'd swear
is halfway between
the waters you wander through
and the oceans you wonder for.

Measured to the centimeter,
a ruler still won't tell you
the toll these trips take
on the limbs sprouting up from the sand
grounding down to the land
reaching out only to end in another empty hand.

But still the lovebirds pause here
in the man-made wonder
that may as well be a wayside inn
for all the shelter it gives
to those on the journey
with only one end.

I was your antithesis
when your fragrant flagrance was
brash.

Here’s to the days
when getting out of bed
is a game of Russian roulette.
When the you that exists
above the sink
seems the more realistic
of the two.

When your pen is filled
with disappearing ink and
your face is covered
in quick-drying lead paint.
When the salt that shakes
from every orifice
coats your failing tongue,  
and you’re more likely
to bust your ***
than a move.

Here’s to those days—
let them be few and far between!
But if you crack that paint
and see the words before they fade,
you find all your possibilities.

Here’s to those self-same days
when you discover yourself.