Mykonos, 1969*

I met you on a tourist island
bright beneath the sun.
I met you back when we were both
in love with being young.
I danced with you in an empty bar
and looked into your eyes,
for that only moment you get in life,
I gazed into paradise.
We wandered on together.
We knew it wouldn't last.
Our lives were much too different,
no one escapes their past.
I walked with you on the sand dunes,
I walked with you in the rain,
I walked with you in that instant
before life dissolves into pain.
Where are all those bright days gone,
those days beside the sea,
when the mystery of your freckles
was mystery enough for me.
That was nearly fifty years ago,
but you know I love you still,
for your innocence and your courage,
at a distance, I always will.
You taught me love and beauty,
in a lovely, beautiful land,
I've never quite let go of that,
never quite let go of your hand.

Don't be so ******* yourself.
The holiest of mysteries
may be bafflingly simple.
What is redemption if not
rising from your bed
into the broken world
of human flesh and struggling
to imagine how to live
and what to say?
Isn't that wrestling with angels?
Isn't that staring down
that burning bush?
Isn't that calling the forbidden
name of G-d out loud?
To try it every way,
knowing clearly you may
never quite get it right,
but persisting in the challenge
each and every day?
Don't be so ******* yourself.
Redemption may be
only a morning away.

Waking to the sound
of pounding rain
is like hearing
death do a drum roll
before a hanging.
Nothing to do
but step onto
the trap door
and prepare yourself
for the drop.

Once I fought in a losing war,
I never asked what I was fighting for,
but now my warrior days are done,
I leave the battles to the young.
They will fly and they will die,
I’m content to watch  and sigh.
It seems that I am not so brave
as I approach the yawning grave.
It felt much easier to fly and die
when swooping from a youthful sky.
I took those chances, I made that bet,
but now it’s easier to forget.
My wars are over, my fight is done,
I leave the battles to the young.
They will fly and they will die,
but pray they ask the reason why.

It all began with a cry in the night,
a slap on the ***, a blast of bright light.
The world unfolded like a dying rose,
a palette of joys, a whisper of woes.
The years slipped by, they crawled so fast
until you found yourself old at last.
A man with a cat in a silent room,
who’d laughed at death and courted doom.
The piles of drugs, the nights of loss,
the laughter, the money and all the dross,
that led you to this lonely place,
this weary body, this sagging face;
the years spent longing for a rainbow sign,
the nights of lovers, the nights of wine.
And what can you do now it's come to this?
Keep hoping for the holy kiss
that might redeem your broken soul,
and make you wise, and make you whole.
You've left everything that you ever knew,
listening for trumpets that never blew.
Now life has come down to this lonely place
with mirrors of memories and that sagging face,
and no real hope that anything more
than the life you've lived remains in store.
Forget the future, it's fled at last,
your days run backwards toward the past,
until you let out a cry in the night
and accept the dying of the light.

I'm only a poet with only a song,
and sometimes I get it, and sometimes it's wrong.
I live in a box, a box made of pain.
It sits in a field at the end of a lane.
A house without windows, a house without heart.
It's hardly a castle, but I call it a start.
It sits in its loneliness, no cars pass it by,
it crouches in loneliness beneath a gray sky.
The world stops outside. I stay within,
with my words, my memories, my pride and my sin.
I remember you baby when you came to this place
with your cheap lingerie and your lust on your face.
I remember you baby how you gave me that look
that no lonely alchemist could find in a book.
That look that told me that you wanted it all,
that led us to gasp and to writhe and to fall.
Your fingers were fever, your tongue was a snake,
you drew me inside you, your fire made me shake.
But love burns out as it flares in the night.
We got most of it wrong, but some of it right.
And then you were gone and I was alone
with a heart that was broken into pebbles of stone.
Left in that box, that box made of pain,
that sits in the field at the end of the lane.
See I'm only a poet with only a song,
and sometimes I get it, but for you I was wrong.

Hey there stranger!

Tis round about middle night. Très misterioso. Sleep a forgotten memory.
I am writing this missive from hell. Don’t dismiss my missive. Don’t be so negative.
Even the ****** are upbeat sometimes.
I was taken aback too. The downhill happened before I knew it.
Think of life as rolling snowballs. Individually, not so bad.
It’s the avalanche that crushes you.
OK, some days are disasters: dim to the brink of extinction, darkness and silence unimpaired, inertia and void as never seen before.
But you can never tell. Downs have ups. My crushing depression was long ago replaced by mere unhappiness.  A weak weakness transformed into strong weakness. That’s progress.
I always fail, but every time I fail, I fail better. That’s improvement.
Add a little honey and the gall tastes fine. Drink up. Enjoy.
If you learn to suffer well, at least you are good at something.
So don’t worry. I am at the peak of the abyss. There is no bottom.
Dismally fine, I’ve never felt older. Words won’t do. Hush.
Nothing of uninterest left to say. Just wanted to reassure you.
All is as always. There’s no hope yet.
Soon the sun will rise over the nothing new world.
From the depths, I say hi.
Optimistically bleak,

Mike (or whatever sometimes speaks for him).