I fell in love with you in metaphors. Having never seen you, but reading every word you write.

The way you dangle your participles, naked and raw, yet still soft and round, then casually leave unfinished sentences as if to say, please, finish me as you will

You tempt with your soft parentheses, tightly wrapped around my waist, the words they squeeze rubbing up against the curves

Your similes, a sideways smile, like the cat, canary gone, pull me closer until your delicate punctuation is so warm, so wet, I can feel it pressed against me, you alliterate, such sweet surrender, so sublime, and I succumb

I want you now in rhyme, in verse, in prose, in  sweet haiku

     'where in so few words
you trace the shape of my heart
         and then (somehow) paint its hue'


I fell in love with all your metaphors, the way your sentence structure feels pressed hard against my body, devilishly running on so that I'll follow ,your undulating syllables, your firm round letters, your tight sweet semi-colon, that no common comma could replace.

Finish the music you're playing.
I'll wait.
I'll never get weary
of hearing the melodies
you and your fingers create.

Finish the canvas you're painting.
My heart
fills up with such pride
inside when I see
how much joy you put into your art.

Finish the poem you're writing.
It's time.
I long for a day when
the grey leaves your mind
and you hit on the perfect rhyme.

Finish the book you started.
It's worth
the pain you'll go through
to do what you love
and gift sweet conception with birth.

My coat is black
like the nights
I have long forgotten.

I left heaven
for the taverns.

I did my readings before daybreak
when the moon was far aloft,
but the nights got longer.

I kept putting things off
hoping I would discover a star
I knew was there.

Now I saw logs
and leave the leaves
where they fall.

Ancient wars and potatoes

It is the biggest potato farm in the world,
a giant field of tubers as far as eyes can see;
new potatoes boiled with a pat of butter; delicious, no need to slam in a lamb.  
Once a battlefield thousands of Russians and
Germans soldiers bled to death here the soil grew fertile,
absorbed all flesh only bones and uniform buttons left.
The soldiers didn’t die in vain, saved from old age debilities, Alzheimer,
renal diseases, hip replacement and triple bypass.
I found a rusty gun, a German Luger pistol it fell to pieces in my hand,
bullets inside still intact, owned by
an officer telling his men to die like Prussian heroes.  
Long furrows of edible tubers, made into fries, full of fat,
grandchildren of dead soldiers are obese and only fight virtual games.

Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.

The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)

Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That there's no trusting (trusting to luck)
Dates when the world's due to be burned;

That the future's no calamitous change
But a malingering of now,
Histories, towns, faces that no
Malice or accident much derange.

And though bomb be matched against bomb,
Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure --
Earth gone in an instant flare --
Did a lesser death come

Onto the white hospital bed
Where one, numb beyond her last of sense,
Closed her eyes on the world's evidence
And into pillows sunk her head.

Now that you're older
It's not about hair,
Consider the here and now;
There's no fooling with the passage of time,
Birthdays now greeted with whimpers and whines.
If you stay out til quarter to nine
You've missed your Red Rose pour.
Should we commit you,
Or simply omit you,
Man, you're sixty-four.
....................................................
­
We're getting older too,
But if the truth be told,
Never as old as you.

Now you can't frolic,
Or party til two,
You aches and pains own you.
Scan your body daily for foreign lumps,
By mid-afternoon you still haven't dumped.
Bladder in turmoil,
Kidneys are weak,
I could mention more:
All your joints creaking,
I think that's you leaking,
Man, you're sixty-four.
Always depend upon your diaper to conceal and not reveal
What you drank and ate.
We'll leave that with you.
And carry ID, Jake,
You'll forget you're you.

Make use of posties,
And Mary-Jo too,
What's old may now seem new;
Indicate precisely what you'll do and say,
Memory's surely slipping away.
You're still an alpha, thanks to ******,
Don't expect much more.
Should we just boot you,
Or simply just shoot you,
Man, you're sixty-four.


Seventy-four's at the door.
A thousand weeks til eighty-four.
At ninety-four get ten more....
In good health.