some people are already dead
and don't feel the magic
of moonlight and a car and a 6 pack
music on the radio
and an arm around someone
you think you love
and sometimes when the moon is full
I can hear your footsteps
coming down the back porch steps
of your house
and the memories of you
come running to that moment
when our hearts were young
and if I am attentive
to these echoes from my heart
I can hold you in my arms
for the briefest of moments

"A" has all the men
40 and up
in love with her

"M" is most likely
a nun

"C" is in the CIA,
or the witness protection program
perhaps a quantum physicist

( you all know
the people
who who I'm talking about)

for all the forlorn
lovers,
who've been spurned,
I share the advice
my mom gave me
"you'll find someone else"
and so, please
don't write you are
*******
angry
or sad,
tell me you
want to ****
the son of a...*****
write about something
else...

(...you can never
go wrong
writing a poem
about
***

men,
make all the women
have big *****)

and for the paranoid poets
just because you are
paranoid
it doesn't mean that
people are not
following you, so,
BEWARE

we have a separate life
here
we exist on comments
we live
on the internet,

we:
the psychotic
the lonely,
lovers
and perverts
and dreamers,
some poets
some mystics
some saints,
most of us, tortured souls
trying to find solace
in the words we write,
and to leave a piece of us
and not fade away
like a shooting star
into the nothingness
of thin air

sunlight bends
as it passes through the water of the pond
and graceful and bright
are the blue and yellow flowers
that bloom above tree line
so beautiful
and i thought what a shame
no one is here to see the beauty
of the flower
but light bends as it passes through water
and sometimes something
can look one way
and can be something else

a stranger to seconds and hours and years
the simple flower,
Just Is.
(the musician's idea of love
perhaps)

and in the sky
shape shifting clouds,
teardrops making figure eights,
the hundreds of starlings
heading to crash into
the ground
pulling up at that last moment.

and a flower 
Just Is

so walk with me through splintered sunlight
on a sunday morning
my arm around you

attentive to the echoes of our hearts
and we'll be the starling
and the flower
for the briefest of moments

walk with me through splintered sunlight

"let's face it,"
the professor of filosophy
realized
during his doctorate dessertation,
"LOOK,
Thoreau
had
had enough of Waldon pond.
when asked, why did you leave Waldon Pond?
Thoreau shrugged and said,
"**** it."

The house has gone

that box that grew me wrong
is now
the storage for another's lot

and may the crate be good to them

Let them bring
it love and further, turn
the pile into a home,
to fold the walls around themselves
be welcome in their sanctuary.

God knows
the place deserves it..

but open doors
and windows first,
to set the spirits free,

For I wish you not
the likes of mine
that cowered
in its secrecy

what do you hear
little angel?

moans from the well of hope
scattered and beneath
the blocks of stone?

(but not for you,
sweet kitten)

so run past the iniquity of man
past the dead who dwell
in the hearts of the living
past compassion silenced

run
run
run

like the fire in your heart
past soldiers marching
run as if midnight and darkness
are your lover
run past the grinding of tank wheels
past misfortune

be not a sin offering
O, my angel

make your midnight run
and tell no one
of the sadness and sorrow
of Gaza

(shed no tears for mankind)

O, lost angel of Gaza

i sat in the rocking chair
in front of the window
expecting a long night.

"a broken nose and a broken heart,"
i whisper.

"and 2 black eyes,"
the moon tells me.

"she gives that smile,"
i tell the moon,
"i don't know
what it is
that little upturn
in the corners
of her mouth
no
maybe,
no
that isn't all of it,
a part,
maybe,
and her dark eyes
bright
like a streak of lightening
across a thunder clouded sky
beautiful and dangerous
and in a second,
gone and"

"funny,
what a man is willing
to die for, "interrupts the moon,
pauses
and then," love
is when the damsel
shoots
the werewolf
with a  silver bullet
holds his hairy paw
and looks into his
wolf eyes
and as the wolfman slowly
is turning human
the man
returns that love
you can see it in his blue eyes.
now,
that's, TRUE LOVE."

i put a cold can of beer
on a book of Neruda
love poems
a sacrilege
i know
so i kneel down
and pray
she will read this poem
i'm writing
and it will take her
to some
distant flowered field
but...

the poem never finished.
the letter never sent.
so i'm talking to the moon.