I'm jealous of the rain
It gets close to you
Closer than I ever will
It touches your skin
It combs your hair
It comes when you're sad
It stays when you're happy
I love you but you don't love me
So I say
I'm jealous of the rain

I hope someday soon
My heart will stop
Asking about you
For my eyes to see you
In the faces of strangers
And my limbs to untangle
From the ghost of yours
That left a long, long time ago
I hope my heart will one day
Be able to forgive me
For giving it away to someone
So reckless and beautiful
And that my body stops aching
For the scars you left
Are constant reminders
Of all that was lost
Once upon a first love

For Al, who left us, Nov. 22, 2014

With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.

Al,
You ask me when the words come:

With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,

Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for body restoration,
Transpositional for poetic creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.

Al, you ask me from where do the words come:

Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,

The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.

The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.

The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.

The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.

These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here, 
poem aborning!
Contract with this moment,
now satisfied!

Al,  what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.
__________
(this poem more than most,
for its birth celebrates
my loss, your loss,
which cannot be exonerated 8/7/18)


__________
written at 4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012

Greenport Harbor, N.Y.

I remember they once told me that
music is the best time capsule

It's where people keep their secrets and feelings;
of their insecurities, their mistakes, their sadness, their first cut,
and even the wounds and bruises that invisible to the eye

It's where people let their wildest dreams alive;
of the one they can never reach, the one that will never come back, the one that got away without proper farewell

It's where people store their most sacred memories;
of their first kisses, their first love, their first dance, their first bucket of roses, their first heartbreak

So they were right after all,

Music is dangerous, yet addicting; it can either tear you apart or put the pieces back altogether, it depends on what kind of ghosts living inside the interlude

Thus, be careful who you listen the music with
some melody is louder than the others

**

Today I played the music box you gave me on my seventeenth birthday
How odd it is to realize that music sometimes can be a time machine, how every strings and clinks bring me back to you—towards you

Who came?
Who spoke?

Da Bomb Obama
Worth two in the Bush

Who was *******?
Who’s fake news now?

(RIP JSM III)