You're away
tonight
but still I linger
waiting
and a whisper
a shooting star carries
'goodnight'
falling
into your eyes
from my fingertips
like the way
I fell
in love *(with you)

It was during a spring rain that
I finally understood my desperate
Obsession with poetry.
With writing.
With why I write.
It was in the silence,
In the drawn breath between the
Impact of the first raindrop and
The shattering of the second
That I remembered something
I had always known, but never
Given voice to.
I write, not only to put a piece
Of myself on paper,
Immortalization, in a way,
But because I was searching
For something. Searching for some
Forgotten and lost part of myself.
Thinking, maybe in the words I say
And the words I don't,
And the reasons in between,
I would find my missing piece.
The other half of my soul.

I like long walks on the beach,
Total enlightenment,
Licorice, and whisky
I am one with the universe
In tossing the old bocce ball
Through the long stretch of crab grass
Knocked the kingpin off its hinges
The horse shoe head landing in the dirt
A sign of the times, reducing earth and god
And us to
Everything

Scotch Plains, New Jersey
Scotch indeed! Or was it wine
That spilled over and into the street
Like rain rattling and trailing in residual little
Momentary lines through leaf and dirt and
Into the gutters gurgling and glistening and

Crying out to the long-dead lights,
“I am here! I am here now!”
The stars, they say, hear even the muffled
Screams of water and earth and man and
Time, even the mean tabby cat that glides along
The carpet in the twilight

We played horseshoes and bocce and sometimes chess
We watched old family tapes
And walked on the beach, and I hated licorice
Never had whisky

But **** me if it’s no different now
Between the times and signs and then
Sitting in the crab grass, drinking and dying and seeing and
Being and living and lying and I
Imagine the fine engraving
Left by a horse shoe head

One of the scariest things in life, is slowly watching yourself become a statistic without your consent.

Dearest,

you may be farther

but

my love will never falter.

i'll be waiting patiently

for you to come home to me.

you fell in love with his eyes,

and then his face.

you fell in love with his laugh,

and then the sound of his voice.

you fell in love with his quirk,

and then all of his flaws.

you fell in love with his present,

and then with his past as you knew more.

you fell in love with his brokenness,

and then his whole.

you fell in love with the idea of him,

and then with him.

(p)

Just beneath the road insensate,
in the little creek that crawls through town,
the rains brought him.
Iron-blue, patient, slender, high sits his head –
a lance, now raised – now half-tilt as he sights his prey – raised again
as a drifting leaf disrupts his aim.
Upstream he prowls, that his prey sees
him not.
He stalks with long, slow strides, his legs thin and
graceful not to disturb the quiet current of the water and
give himself away to senseless quarry. Few call him spindly,
I imagine. Not I.
By the shore, fish-bones, whole
but for the flesh,
sink into the mud.
A thoughtless dart, a flash, a writhing
beast falls still on his speartip.
What am I, then, that
he flies when I draw close?

you have my heart.

you have all of me.

forever, always.

-10 word story (p)