Keeper of time
Has lost his mind.
He no longer ticks.
He sighs.
He questions.
He swears a little.
Does he know who he is?
Not precisely.
I tell him he's a law, a sage, a determiner.
He's even the reason
I get up in the morning.
He says he'll get back to me.
When? I ask.
Ah, there's the rub...

I don’t smoke
Too many people I know have died due to it
Too many heartbreaks, too many mistakes.

But if I did
I’d light you on fire and breathe you in
Inhaling your smoky scent, like woodburning
Until my lungs were coated with your ashes.

No chance of lung cancer
But maybe a chance of obsession
A dangerous obsession
An unhealthy obsession.

And I’d watch the tips of you slowly burn
Until my fingers were in danger of blistering
And you could feel the heat from my face.

You are a dangerous habit.

February
  Cold short four weeks
      Slow part of the year
Yet, rent is faster.
Electric meter outside hums louder
It's wheels gaining momentum
And the dial a blur.
And they chose this month to honor your love.
    Valentine's  should be in June.
When the grass is long
Maintenance  needs done
And a old man can make a buck.
Trim a hedge.  Pick up broken bricks
At the newlyweds house being erected.
I'm in love.
The best love I have ever known.
The love I propose is endless.
I want to buy her things and be her gentleman that sends bouquets and boxes of chocolates and rings with sparkling diamonds necklaces and fine linens and silk sheets.
I find myself drunk and forlorn and hopeless.
Until,
In my mind I see her face.
And I melt and feel warm
I say her name,  over and over.
DiAnne, you are my everything.
I love you like no one before.
And I profess
My love forever.
Will you be my Valentine?

O, speak, Torment! I shall lament no more; no more of this uncertainty in which I have been thrown in, no more of this game in which my Virtues always win, in which I always surrender to the tenderness and reproach of the Lady. I, too, wish to speak my mind up. For I love thee not like a cat loves a mouse, like a dandy dragoon Captain loves a Cossack woman. But I love thee like a young man falling headlong in love, like the Priest loves his God, a devotion only a man who had long been tormented by solitude and uncertainty could gather in his heart, like a dying man grasping for his last breath; but do tell me: dost thou despise me? O, this torment of uncertainty!