somewhere between the
first date and the last date

Joni Mitchell,
she, me
  encapsulates

I'm remembering well,
pounding the dashboard of a red Jag,
laughable now, mocking this fool's need
for a middle age conceit,
his heart to restart,
reactivate

in enthusiastic lockstep with the voice of the
Joni,  the blonde goddess of his youth,
foot falling in love,
speeding along
at a
joyous sixty five,
in places where the signs said,
"thirty five to stay alive"

this aged Rip Van Winkle teenager,
in reverse osmosis of Big,
an old buck, come back to antlered life,
singing along to the CD disc
set on
backdate

I could drink case of you,
and still be on my feet

and he could

rediscovering the champagne taste
of a great first date,
feeling the heated blood and fevered mind,
symptoms of the pleasures of
anticipate

thinking she's the one
who will make him great,
happy greater, greater happy
than that one ever, ever,
he thought was roulette wheel possible,
landing on the red of hopeful
floodgate

months, days, minute minute moments
of the fated faded last date later,  
comes the
deflate

but then,
Joni singing comfort words,
reminding him that he would be,
wisely, sadly seeing, feeling,
both sides now, and yet again,
getting his mind back to
straight

I've looked at love that way,
but now it's just another show.
you leave 'em laughing when you go,
and if you care, don't let them know,
don't give yourself away

a grown man punk'd, blasted,
dumb and dumber, dumped,
a feeling sorry sad sack self,
until he reflates, drink another case,
onto yet another magical mystery first
date

pounding that dashboard once again,
believing it's not too late
that perfect roommate heart's to find and
captivate,
to attain, invade, acquaint and laughingly...

serenade

part of my job (a love poem)

<>


checking in & on you, part of my job, I explain,
need a status update, re and about what’s new,

on the flora and fauna studded moors, how’s the traffic in Mumbai,
have the Prince and Princess come to visit your nearby island,
how’s that pendant I sent hanging, still cracked, letting letters in,
the curfew imposition getting in the way of your poetry writing,
tell me what it is like to be a young man in Morocco, need your input,
do you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic,
while I hunker down in a bunker, forty story concrete stories on
a gra-nite island,
wondering how you pass your Sunday morning, in bed, in church, in your head,
seeing poem fireflies coming from the beach, how your language takes, enraptures,
captures my cellar pulses electrifying, I am yours unbidden and I forgiven & unfortunate,
swimming on the West Coast beaches, pools and eddies, rip tide currants & currents,
******* me into your world and the fun, the challenges of loving you from afar

do you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic,
locating your presence on the grid, illegally concocting our ionic physics connections
in ways you remain so unaware and me, dancing delighted on the edge between
blurting out how I feel about you, you, in France, and foreign lands, all over,
when you read this, do the hairs sudden tickle, sensing my presence, when grasping
you hand, kissing your neck, do you regain/retain consciousness of my affection,
plain hard and drawn to you, sans affectations, and we walk in contented silence
on country lanes, beach trails, crowded ***** megalopolis city stained small streets,
and now that you know that I feel so much desire to grasp you in my adoration hands,
will you accept that a man’s love who you have never seen can be so willful strong

that

you know that I love imagining being in love with you, so exotic, and the pleasure of it
grows stronger daily when you send me words that infect me with subtlety severe ****,
and now I go, the slipping and sliding into the land of having checked in on you,

where my job is to love you from afar


8:41AM Sunday March 15th twentyfolded twice

the crying want of you (first of the everlasting)

so many ways this loving emotion manifests,
for each, a salutation, unique, some sleek,
some solutions jagged, but when I cry out for the
inexplicable but perfectly understood want of you

an all encompassing recipe,
a gasp, a shriek, a celebration, a loss illimitable deepening,
a need perceived with a crucial cruelty, inexhaustible
noise barely human, but quintessentially exactly that

you who have needy for fearsomely loved, and been
fearsomely loved with equal measuring cups which
have no delimiting notion of linear boundaries of cup and quart,
only precise calculations of defined unlimited overflowing

even silence totality of crying out loudly screams of desperation,
noiseless, crept for the unadulterated, unadjusted purity of want,
a state well dreamt, but so rarely hail fellow well met, the
startling exertion of meeting yourself in another over the borderline

forgive the paucity of my word~children in expressing what
was designed and created to be inexhaustibly rare,
the crying want of you, the missing final jigsaw puzzle piece
of want and being wanted, to touch the immortal soul, the first of the

everlasting, united, unending and unendurable undefined want



8:10am 2-20-2020

from within the confessional

lovely questions, lovely quiet

them words, soap bubble-burst, in my mind’s eyes,
but no finger pointing, this the way to go, no,
here lies the poem, you need be writing,
here, buy the poem, release belief, be the relief

thinking past loving, glory, pain, depths plumbing,
farewells, opening gambits, unplanned strategy,
first move, drugged highs grand expectations
chase, hunt, capture, surrender, regroup, defeat

skip to only endings directly, where’s the fun in that,
no, lovely must be earned, only years later cannot
recall, name, why we separated, but each, her face,
cut, grooved, in the cells, how I stroked her skin, thrillingly

finger’s cells keep memories in cold storage, summoning
with great and minimal difficulty, reversal atmospheres,
breathing the air we shared, oh god, oh god, how,
could I have let the times escape, each lover lost, unforgiven

lovely interrogatories, each, a cup, half full of changelings,
the passions expended, losses unintended, greater fool,
the chameleon fooled only himself, each memory a blessing,
a curse, and when sleep darkens the eyelids, the tears pool

no peace I find, the wetness caresses both the closure,
and the retelling, drowns me  in measuring cups of
who I was, who I am, and demands do better, do it all
over again, only with lovely quiet, with tenderest kindness

and guilt clings, hope lingers but sleep arrives as I count
my sheep, repeating whispering of “do better, be better,
do better, do better, be better and better, and better still

5:08am
1/14/2020

for all the lost, everlasting lovers

~for mara~

why this morning does the emoting
cast me backwards to all my lost lovers,
imagined and real, yet lasting in crevices hidden,
that beckon, asking to be reclaimed,
recalling when our names combined, many meetings
of lips, kisses so old, decades, yet so well realized

that to see, taste them, is blink, easily accomplished

day beginning, with deep penetrating glances rearward,
unclear how this clarifies the muddled visions of what
the future dreams may contain, ah, love and pain,
love and pain, a tango tangled tandem, indeed,
one hopes the past is prologue, pro for lips sensitized logged,
those kisses past, kisses yet dreamt, those works-in-process

stir the body to rise from the couch, to stretch my arms

up/skyward, grab jeans, go the Persian immigrant on the corner,
for a bun and a black coffee, who wishes me a good new year,
stunned silent when embrace him with hands-full, for his wish for me
enables a gratitude overcoming that only strangers can give;
those lost lovers yet lasting, thank them too, wish them happy year,
winter warmth, comfort them in my crevices-kept, forever retained

Love you, miss you, never gone, never forgotten, ever first,
everlasting...


1/3/20
7:11am

~
the Nth culling
~
she gentled sleeps besides the imperfect poet,
who has wandered the hallways since four am,

retuning his returning

to their temple bed,
to cull, pluck, her each precious breathing sound,
source material for his
Nth
love poem

smirking at his own
Nth foolishness,
weeping tears at the consequences
of human interactions,
he wonders,

why does he worry,
searching to distinguish
between the black and white of life,
hunting for meaningful words

when all the while
he has the vein of her breathing to mine,
as if he were a
Ruth,
following behind
the harvest reapers,
culling a bounty of
dropped grains,
fallen unto him to
garner, imbibe and memorize

those Nth breaths,

that last but seconds,
but here memorialized for
his own
all time