In my dream the other night
Meteors where in flight
They streaked across my midnight sky
Like fireworks on the 4th of July
Forever screaming through space
Far above this sad human race
As I watched such beauty rain through the heavens
The nightingale's song did beckon

It brought my attention back to the ground
Horrified by what I found
Hairless apes that swung down from the trees
Are now on bended knees
I heard them praying to their Gods
They seemed to be at odds
I seen them on their bellies crawl
Look up to the sky in awe
For they feared his wrath
They feared his laugh
Praying to an unseen entity
When mother nature held the remedy

I turn my attention back to the star sprinkled sky
But even there thing's where starting to go awry
The sky was falling into the deepest darkest hole
A hole so greedy it refused to even let the light go
The world started to spin
The hairless apes screamed it was because of the other man's sin
Refusing to see sin belongs to each of them
Instead they just chartered
About the depravity of one another, none of it matter

Colors no one had ever seen swirled by
It was the most pleasing journey to the eye  
As I rode the earth into the void
Streaking into the blackness like an asteroid
Relishing the thought human nature would soon be destroyed

But I fell like a stone
Waking up in my bed alone
T.V. showing the morning news
Terrorist plotting against the Jews
Everyone hating on one another
Their religion is their cover, trying to use it to smother
Them apes are to blind to see
That thier imaginary entity
Is the original sin
Another reason for men to hate men

It was strange and didn't register as a serious request. She wanted to take care of me. Nothing ******. Just a meal here and there, maybe a little tidying up of the house.

She wanted me to talk. And that part, the talking, always felt transactional, a repayment of her cleaning and cooking. She didn't ask questions. Just nudged me on with emphatic nods in the living room, sitting six feet away from me in a stray office chair. She listened as if I were recounting a past life of her own.

I told her once I loved her little feet, especially in those heels. The next week she wore sneakers. She was older but not old, fifty or so. Two children a few years younger than myself.

She made a point of not staying past ten or drinking more than a single glass of wine.

I was always a little embarrassed by the state of the house. The ***** clothes strewn across the room indistinguishable from the clean. Earmarked novels, long novels, the kind you could bludgeon a person to death with, gathered dust on the coffee table, the desk, the kitchen counter. She touched them, fascinated by what secrets or sage advice might lay within, but she never read a page.

One night I realized I'd never said her name out loud. And she said, "That's impossible. Of course you have." But neither of us could think of a particular moment. And just when I was about to, she said, "Why break the streak?"

We grew more comfortable with one another. She wore less makeup and let her age show. She'd show up in sweatpants. Some nights we'd order Chinese and play that familiar game where every fortune is punctuated with "in bed." A stranger will change your life forever tomorrow in bed. Lies lead to great calamities in bed. So on.

We called them dates, our lunches in the break room, taken each day around 2 p.m. She would bring me leftovers from the night before, always making a point of saying something like, "My husband just couldn't finish it."

She brought baked ziti on a Wednesday last March. I told her it was the best I'd ever eaten as I forked it out of the tupperware container, the edges still hot from the microwave. She said she hadn't been intimate in two years.

"Is that possible?"

"It is."

*** didn't transpire immediately. We worked up to it.

I liked the way she directed me. I'd never experienced anything quite like it. She'd tell me to touch myself while she held me in her arms, she'd snag a handful of my hair, she'd dig her nails into my thigh, but her words were always beautiful, whispered, tender, spoken in the sacred and profane language of lovers.

I'd come and she'd make a comment about the quantity, comparing it to her husband's.

In the serene afterglow before we toweled ourselves off, I'd rest my head against her breast, and I'd say, "I could stay here forever."

"Every man I've ever slept with has said that."

"How many men have you slept with?"

"Has anyone ever liked the answer to that question?"

"I don't mind. We could compare data."

"Including you?"

"Including me."

"Two."

She crawled out of the bed and turned on some music, Neil Young, "A Man Needs a Maid."

"I always felt guilty for liking this song," I said.

"Me too," she said.

We drank coffee on the back porch before the sun came up. "There was a man," she said, "before I married. He was an artist, a painter. We were in college and I loved the deliberate way he spoke. He'd think, sometimes for a full minute, before he said anything. There was a softness in his voice that required you to pay closer attention to him. Your voice is not all that different."

The Department of Transportation began tearing down the houses in my neighborhood to make room for an additional two lanes of traffic. By October mine was the only house left on the block. The apocalypse in miniature. We'd drive by piles of brick and fencing and she'd begin to cry.

It was a particularly brutal winter, and she buried her car in mud and snow when she tried to back out of the yard on the day of her son's graduation. I offered to drive her.

"No, no, no no no."

We sat in the snow, our backs against her car. She leaned in and said, "Your cologne is new."

"Yes."

"You've cut your hair."

"Yes."

"Your shirt, it's actually ironed."

Silence for a beat.

"Who is she?"

It's almost June.
Still got a fire going.

I don't see myself as one of those
Scandinavian poets who write

Almost only about the weather
Without reason.

The weather is a woman.
As angry as she is breathtaking

Around here.
Turned on and scared,

We brace for impact before
Every forecast.

Will there be a summer at
All, or dull, lightless skies of

Unblue until the rain comes
Down solid again?

I dip my pen in warm memories.
Sad that they are mostly

From abroad, I surrender the idea
Of truth in poetry.

Well, we drink around fires.
Cling to the military standard long

Underwear we stole when we were
In.

See too much as potential
Firewood.

We notice that the sun never
Really sets these months,

But there's room for cold in
The light.

We pray for summer. Hoping
This year it falls

On a
Weekend.

The smell of a spring rain
settling on the earth
is the smell of life anew.

At the window, I sit with a book,
both cracked,
cooled by the alfresco air seeping through,
and tiny droplets glissando down the pane.

The pitter-patter of a soft rain
falling to the parched earth
is the sound of life replenished.

At the rain's offset, I leap from my chair,
exiting the front door,
to saunter through the lush green pastures
that linger outside the library's confines.

How green the trees appear, and the grass--
how rich the stalks of the trees,
their boughs with budding leaves quenched,
glistening in the sun.

I even enjoy the scent coming off the once arid pavement--
it is the smell of the earth,
freed from its impedance,
rising above the stifling asphalt.  

I smell the life that lingers beneath,
and the dull metallic tinfoil taste of the pavement
fills my open nostrils--

It is pleasant, though a little less so, than the ambrosial landscape.

I inhale ever so deeply,
relishing my favorite part of spring,
in the offset of a warm afternoon rain on a brisk day,
sauntering through the wood-laden trails on worn brick paths,

to the paved parking lot where my car awaits--
delineated in a filmy layer of mired pollen residue.
It needed a wash anyways.

The Day may come when you'll,
Think nothing of me.
The Ring will be left on the dresser,
it's drawers...
Empty.

On the kitchen table,
A letter labeled for your eyes only, explaining
A conversation with Sarah Bradford
and why you left me.

A lonely you makes a
Lonely we
And with every Nocturnal dawn and
Morning rain that you'll see.

You will remember
These words
You will
Remember me.

i am spiraling.
i am not well.
an early exit is calling me.