If you like SF
My short stories book is free
Through 11/30

I keep it closed and locked,
In an imaginary, leather binding,
With its many pages compressed,
So that memories far apart
Are easier to retrieve,
Like scooping pearls
and shells on the sand.
There are stories of great adventure,
Tiny incidents like crystals
Shivering in the sun.
Lovers I knew in ancient times
Sleep among the pages
But come to life as I read,
My eyes caressing them as
My hands once did their skin.
Colors of eyes and hair remembered
Leap to paint the air around me:
Yellow sunlight and bodies moving,
Both electric and languid
In tangled sheets or long grass
After passion passed.
Some flashed like fireworks,
But others burned long and slow,
Not ready to love, nor to let go.
Smiles across a playing field,
Surprise midnight visits on holidays,
Costumed for Halloween with tiny stars
That shimmered on the stairs next morning,
Or inebriate feasts on the Fourth of July,
Tanned in the water and soothed at night.
There are short liaisons with friends
And long affairs, living with lovers,
Imagining it lasting forever
And battling the serious and inane.
Thinking everything will say the same.
And underlining all these times
Is the solidity of just one true love.

Finished November 14, 2021

The last time we spoke you told me
That you were reading a book called
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
and you also told me that you missed
Digging your fingers into my bedsheets
Or the naked skin of my back

And I remembered this today in the bookshop
When staring at me from the shelf was
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
in my right hand was selected poetry
By a filthy man called THE PLEASURES OF
THE ****** and I thought **** me
I haven’t thought of you in a while

Perhaps as a fleeting mention
Or the **** of a joke but Christ
Here I am thinking of you sitting on your bed
In the evenings, having come home
From studying books all day like
A smart ****** sitting on your bed and reading
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

So I picked up a copy to go with
My Bukowski and walked to the counter
In a sombre mood, because I’d thought of you
The last thing you ever bought me
Was Bukowski, you bought me
LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL and I read it
During my last stay in your arms
Cradling caressing and ******* like lovers

I walked out the bookshop
With two new books and a feeling
You get when you recall a fleeting memory
Coupled with **** me this is what happens
To my poetry when I read Charles Bukowski.
I wonder how you are, if you finished it
What did you think? And staring at
Text thrown up onto a screen I think
This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever written.

That book, it was a drop of my youth's ocean,
Without filter I recorded each emotion.
I may have left my older verses now,
But through my pen its flow is still in motion.

"What happened along the way?"
as she looked back to see
her lines crooked, her ink melted
and her pages torn apart
from the book that held her
together

my wife watches tik tok in bed
sounding like she is trying
to tune in a radio to someone's life
so many voices fading in and out
or maybe a spirit box with a message
from the other side

I'm with Johannes Gutenberg
some 570 years behind
the smell of the print as much
an enjoyment as the words inside
the book I am reading
about his life

we lie
a respectable distance between us
centuries apart

You picked me from the masses
Taken from the grasses
"I'll remember you forever"
So I'm stored between the covers
Pressed and crushed within the pages
Just like all the others
And over time, I am dried
No more tears left to cry.
I am just another leaflet
In your book of memories

you weren't even looking for it
yet you found the right book
liking it more than you expected
now you read like you owe it

for the lost time, maybe
questioning the timing
craving for more, you indulge
answering its questions

getting to know yourself more
you never thought,
how can a book connect,
and show your reflection

in many ways you couldn't imagine
of all the books you could choose
your favorite book owes it to you
for giving it an interest, a chance

for the attention
almost undivided
an ordinary book waiting
to touch even just for a single life

you flipped it open
patiently waited
carefully thought of it
and appreciated it

this book served its purpose
you could go back at it from time to time
it will be  right there lying around
you won't even need to look for it

you know where it is,
the pilot book, that made you read more
you would have discover a lot of books then
realize how unique and equally beautiful they are.