She was the
heavenly centerfold
in the magazine
of his imagination.
Taunting angel ****.
Too unreal to touch,
too real not to try.

  ~mce

I recognize
this ground
laced with stones
and poisoned barbs
hike barefoot here
unafraid

a barren desert
feels like home
when there is nothing
to be lost or gained

I have been here
many times before
stripped down naked
in the noonday sun
watching vultures
wheel and dive

as I dangle
twist and spin
ever the enabler
enabling

The wind wears your body;
I open the curtains of your being,
My touch wears your skin,
The spectre of your silhouette
Is a ghost of my desire:

We tear the night apart.

A breakdown? I don't know if I'd call it that. Something about that word connotes immediacy, precision, a kind of instantaneous loss of your mental faculties. No. This has been slow. Like two, three years slow. I'd welcome a breakdown. A breakdown would give me the chance to start over, to mend, to be a better ******* human being. This degradation, and, I know, I'm being repetitive here, this degradation is so slow it's almost intangible. It's so slow there's ample room for denial. I need one swift, irrefutable act of self-destruction. Don't do that. That little gesture, that go-on-just-bottom-out hand flip. You're not listening. I don't have the energy for that. I'm not reckless. Wanting and being are, in this case, mutually exclusive. You know where I am? Let me illustrate it for you. I say I love you to empty rooms. I say sweetheart, sweetie, et cetera for no other reason than habit being so strong.  I'm not beat up about her leaving. It happens. Sometimes two people just don't work, you know? But maybe I'm beat up. I haven't slept in the bed. I sleep on the couch like she used to. I buy her favorite wine—which I don't particularly enjoy—but I drink it. I drink it, I think, just to watch the bottle go empty. I drink the wine and I sleep on the couch hoping it summons the breakdown, some ******* finality. That's true. I've been many different people, but I've been the same one for far too long.

How I long
to unbutton you,
Lady, to slowly
peel off the layers
of your being
and feel you,
body and soul,
naked and true,
beneath my
exploring hands,
touching the core
of who you
really are,
there where
you are hidden
beneath it all.

I think, Lady,
you have
been buttoned
against the world
too, too long.

Open the inside
to the outside.

Take a chance.

A world at bay
is no world at all.

Nothing of value
can be learned
at a distance.

Direct my fingers;
they are willing
if you are.

Bare hands,
bare hearts,
bare bodies:

to open,
always better
than to close.

In spring, green along the river
amid ancestral foothills, we walk deer trails
wild in the woods of scented pine
of silver sycamores, silken barked
stark, they pale against bluest skies
their new leaves green and glistening
we are listening for songbirds, for a language without words
transfixed, through this portal, reborn in this world
warm winds speak sweet and susurrus of spring
melodious they sing, leaving far behind
the cold, the dead of winter.