i love you,
fresh from
the shower.
glistening and wet,
smelling of aftershave.
"coolwater" by davidoff.  often aslo sandlewood,
goat soap, from the local
farmers markets.

i love you,
dressed up smart.
in a brook's brother's way
dress pants and shirt,
blue linen vest.
johnny walker silk bow tie,
untied is best. then your twist,
(not as original as you think)
converse skaties, no socks
and  bone bleached cuffs,
turned up.

i love you,
in your work gear.
just come home,
you smell of sweat.  
clean and healthy,
always wood shavings
caught up, in your
unruly shaggy hair.
cargo shorts and
t-shirts,
that have seen,
many days of worksite wear.
size elevens in your hands,
those big feet and freaky toes
bare, ******* in the air.

i love you,
in board shorts and rashie.
rushing into the surf,
hand in hand.
with the energetic bundle
of love,
to which we gave birth.

it is not as though,
clothes made this man,
but boyohboy, you, frame them well.

it s the heart, the chuckle
the hands, the philosphy,
the clever, erudite, caveman,
the downright,
man-dumb bloke.
that endears, your heart to
mine.

it is, that you really listen
and take the time,
to make me feel and be,
phenomenal, wise, sensual
and beautiful beside.

i love you,
best, in my bed.
moving slow and sure,
undressed, silk and velvet.
as we express,
the reality of our love
and whisper words,
well known,
and cry to heaven above.

i love you,
then, here, now and eons
on.
even after the worlds
memory of us,
is  nothing,
dust upon the breeze
our love,
will carry, forth
stardust on heaven's winds
and cries of our love and ecstasy
will birth worlds anew

"What's in the basket?", I asked her...
...she laughed nervously ~ slipped her head to the side. Her eyes looked up, ~ that's when I saw the moon.
I swear I saw the moon,
I pierced through to the moon to see more of the moon.
Moon
  Mesmer
     Motion
        Ocean
     Canyon
  Quiver
...oh How am I wondering Where I can to Find that something...
and just as I thought I had...it was  then I saw a star behind the moon.
I didn't know there was a star behind the moon?
I thought she must know... she has too, right?
Her giggling, widening eyes, coy suggestion, I might be right.
"Why do you always ask me those silly questions we both already know, anyways, Goof,".......she touched my arm as if for stability.  Tentatively, gazed up at me with a sideways look.
" I guess I always enjoy a quick trip to your outer space, I always seem to find something New."
".....so, anyways, What's in the basket?"

Instant Time Travel

my father died alone.
in a car by the side of a busy road.
a young couple,
returning from a day at the beach found him.
they thought he was asleep,
he had, had a massive stroke.

i went to his funeral.
as a stranger
and heard the eulogy,
of a man i barely knew.
we had been disparate
for over twenty years
and before that sporadic
at best.

i did not weep.

five weeks
and two days later after breakfast and feeding the cats.
i went to open the front door. to begin my days toil
my hand on the lock began to shake.

i broke,

i just broke.


and fell against the door in keening, sobbing, rending sorrow.
i slid headfirst down the white painted surface,
opening a cut against the doorbell.
collasped in on myself, huddled into a heaving heap,
pressed into the corner.

i cried pinktears.
all that day.

i stayed in that corner
staring, crying,
beyond thought,
beyond comfort.

ummovable.

beyond .. .

at that point in my life
i lived alone.
with the exception of my cats.
my misery, abject, so complete. so dark, so ink jetblack, so bereft of life, so remote from love so deep in repression, unlocked. so ferocious in attack, so outrageous in it's anger and sense of defeat had hold of me.

i had lost myself.

it is with pure hearted certainty.
i say these two furry little souls.
with plainitive crys of need and slinking warmth, curling heartbeats and insistent nudge of feline body.
saved my shattered, tattered, beaten soul that night.

i got up.
i fed my friends.
and then went to bed.
turned inward on myself
for two days more
this was my path.
bed.
cats fed.
toilet.
water.
bed.

i gave no thought to the outside.
to the phone calls,
doorknocks,
work,
family,
friends.

my apathy bordering catatonic.
i was locked in chains in stygian hell,
inside my head.

they broke the lock.
my two samaritan friends
and found me
a weeping shell.
guarded by two hissing cats. shocked beyond words,
they instigated help for me .

this was my descent into clinical depression

my acsent
back out of the bomb crater, triggered by my fathers death, was arduous and long.

two days heavy sedation.
two weeks close observation 3months at a sanitorium
years of medication.
months and months of dedicated therapy.( i still occasionally do therapy.)

crawling over jagged glass feelings
and rusted tin memories.
that would lock my jaw and break my back.
through slime and muck and crap.

i would crawl,
mentally, forward
and then fall away.
it was, excruitingly, painful.
but also,

redeeming and liberating,
to fight my way up,
back.
to open new doors.
to learn new ways
of thinking, seeing.

another 6 months,
a completed PhD
and an eventual move
of towns.
had me standing tall.

re-invented, restored more complete than before.

that is my history of depression

now eight years on:
i am no longer on medication.
(5years free weaned under Dr's supervision)
i met, married and had a child with the love of my life.
i have great career doing mostly what i love.

i am no hero, just a survivor.

i have a small ragged scar at my hairline,
a rememberance of less than betterdays.

i want no sympathy,
my life rocks.

i live life,
with love and gratitude,
in the forefront of my being,
each day an adventure.
some are blazingly good,
some mediocre
and some are bad.
but always,
tommorrow, is a chance of sunny.

i write this to encourage
those in the mental fight
with this disease.
to show that, there is a bright, enduring light.
beyond....

and to thank those,
who guided me toward,
it friends, family, doctors,
and furry ones.

you and i
my dear one
have seen
so many
things

have taken
steps both
back and forward

have laughed
and cried
in many places

you have heard
my heart race
and watched me
sleep.

you know all
my secrets
but still
mysterious
you hold
your origins
within
the blue
twinkle of your
eye.

when we first met
for me i was
enamoured
instantly, lustful
of your graceful
beauty.

i had to have you
spent my last coins
but you were mine.

your glass so dusky
blue
washed by a million
waves.
encased in silver
filgree  
and a oak tree motif
hand linked chain

you are my luck
my blue oak
bought almost  
thirty  years past
worn most every day

i feel naked undressed
vunerable
if you are not with me.

just a chunk of sea glass
to some
to me
loves repository.
holder of memory,
rememberance and hope

Closeness.*

Why must I retreat when I should be putting up a fight?
Always flight
Doesn't my body know the **** difference between danger and certain death?

when you're there i pine for you
like a stupid little intellectual
i theorize your face

make up stories about your eyelids
how they close like a hardcover book
sheltering your wisdom from the judge

you let it spill out to me
your ***** brine
tenderizing my leathery exterior
into broken down, cured meat
you freed me with your trust
i was savory, salty with your laughter on my tongue

you've been waiting for me
but i cannot come
if we are to ever be in the same room again, together
i would smother you and oppress you with
love, tainted by imaginary things
like the fable of us
like my contentment

like your hand in mine
                                         clasping surely,
                                                                ­     silently,
                                                                ­                                                    home

i have an ongoing
love affair
with words
that roll around your
mouth

luscious, langourous
lilliputitian letters

sensual syllables
slick- sliding off
the tongue

ecstatic explosions,
erupting, erogenously
exciting, eager exclaimations,
of enraptured exualtations

organic, original orientations
of teeth and tongue
producing oodles,
of apogeic anomolies

my affair
accomplishes much
for little

it is you see
just a not so secret love
of letter, line, jot and tittle.

a casting eye upon a word
and i am set rushing
down a path
reserved for those
with terms, descriptive,
and names.
that in themselves,
decry
wordlove.

lexicographers and bibliophiles
phoneologists, linguists, polygots,
jonguluers, wordsmiths scribes
poets.

all possess this
heartstringed
tangled knot,
spiderwebbed
feeling,
for words.
which, we then,
endevour to spin,
into inkstained beauty,
to ensare
ourselves ...and others.

we speak,
of love and living
and the love,
that endures, past life's giving.

we talk about,
loss and the cost
of bringing one
soul bright and
shining to another.

souls that intertwine
and grow together
into loves pasionate,
compassionate vine
.
we talk of cost
when one of the hybrid withers and dies.

we talk of love and lies,
one tells to empathise.
we talk,
we listen,
we cry and cry again.

we talk of what happens,
at and after the end.
we spill words
and salted water.
but still,
we know,
little to nothing,
except...

death, grief and mourning are the final scenes,
in this play, without a script. this sad, sorry improv, before, the epilogue and the exit to the next stages learning.

but we continue to speak,
we do not let silence reign.

because...
the thought of silence,
the thought of not being able to speak,
to share,
is simply
too....
unbearable.