to stand naked before you,
and you before me,
unashamed,

to stand close but not touching,
close enough
to feel each others heat,

to stand motionless
with eyes fixing
each to each.

On a sepia afternoon,
we'll meet in a rented room,
I'll have cleared my schedule.
And you, my sole to do.

It doesn't matter how many times I face,
a blank page,
its the yet unfilled rind
that sours my stomach.
Some of these poems write themselves.
I can never tell how long they've been molding,
no doubt some for decades,
ruminating, aging like fine cellar cheese,
while other poems are curdles of the moment,
milked from the air.

There has to be a reason
that movies still script
actors lighting cigarettes.
Could it be that tobacco companies
payola directors?
Most likely not.
I think it's a bit like poetry,
where compression can **** a lot
into a little plot.
There's one thing I personally know,
that every time the handsome guy fires up ,
I recollect the Lucky Strikes, the Camels, the Gauloises
and the woman that inspired me to smoke.

You play cat and I play mouse,
or I play cat and you play mouse.
The fact is we're both naked on that hot tin roof.
The question is Baby, how do we get off?

When I went away to school,
I lived in a town with an upper and lower main street,
on one of the slanted connector streets
there was a storefront church
with a white cross sign above the shop
that said, "Jesus Saves".
Just beyond, and next door,
hung a lower sign reading "Green Stamps".
Not sure whether anyone else ever noticed,
but tickled me near death each time I saw it.
And I've been juxtaposing ever since.

His name was Earl,
but everyone in town called him "The bicycle man."
He was hip before hippies were tie dyed,
a  bohemian of sorts, a loner, a quiet man.
Lived out at the edge of town in a self made house,
some would call it a shack.
Ole Earl use to scare me a bit
with his gray beard, deep set gray eyes,
low deep voice and the clothes he weared,
But I learned a life lession from that man.
He said, looking up, "See these here spokes,"
pointing to the spinning wheel of my three geared bike,
"they's all got to be in off set tension or else the rim will be warped."
I've noticed over the years that rule applies to a lot more things than wheels.