They make their entrance—
She in lipstick red, he in black,
A beacon and a shadow,
All eyes on them,
Where whispers collide
And lower boundaries break.

Jealousy blooms—
A ripened fruit, **** and swollen,
A secret bite beneath his skin,
An angry itch crawling inwards,
She, the *****, the sin, the blame—
A ***** temptation,
An addiction burned into the flesh.

Strangers move among them,
Faces of mirrors reflecting her shame,
Eyes refracting his rage,
Life stretches thin,
An LSD trip spiraling,
Searching for meaning
In symbols of truth
Without faith to anchor
The screaming void.

Why the waiting?
Why the blame?
She—
The failure to society’s equation,
They—
A fleeting beautiful façade,
Polaroid shots and pixelated likes,
A collage of nothing,
Of no regrets,
Of red smears on broken mirrors,
And the scent of smoke lingering
Long after the fire dies.

I woke up with
A sore back, and
stepped in cat
***** when my
feet hit the floor.
I turned on the
radio, and My Favorite
Things was playing,
the John Coltrane
version.
It reminds me of
rainy July nights.

I make some coffee,
And check the book sales.
Hey, I got a couple in
India, and the coffee tastes
right.

I take it as it comes.
Black and true, like
Steinbeck's bones.
Don’t forget about the
goings of mice and men.

When I was young the days seemed longer,
the weeks and months, even a year an eternity,
then the building decades seemed to melt away
like winters snows. Reminding us that life is
a brief and fleeting thing not to be taken for
granted.

Cat! ! Astroph! ! ! E

the cat
peed in
my Dad's hat

my Dad wasn't
particularly pleased
with that

he shouted: 'Oi! No! Oh! '
'Stop! '
'****...cat! '

the cat answered back
'Me? How?. . .
Spittttttt! Hissssssss! '

my Dad said:
'That's that!
that cat...

...has got
to go! '
we said: ' Noooooooooooo! '

the cat said:
'Exactly......
when ya gotta go ya gotta go! '

My Dad said:
'It's either that cat...
or me! '

*

we still have
the cat
now that Dad's gone

we still miss
Daddy
...sometimes

but mostly
we laugh
with the cat!

Watch me as I'm dreaming
shortened breath and fear
inside my head I'm screaming
since she left me lying here

I'm trying to recover
to become a man once more
poor broken hearted lover
feeling rotten to the core

Praying to the heavens
for redemption of my soul
I'm at sixes and at sevens
as I fall into a hole

Darkness is my traitor
yet I treat it as a friend
goodbye and see you later
I think I'm going round the bend

How many mountains must I climb
To catch a glimpse of sunrise.
How many boulders must I move
To clear a path to my doorway.
And how many rivers must I ford
To leave this gloom behind me.
ljm