It's the smell. The smell of hundred-year-old
hardwood floors in this old school I recognize most,
floors grown thick and corpulent with untold layers
of pine-scented oil - floors darkened, smoothed
by the trample of children herded, then corralled
in dank stables down those long corridors. I also
remember the confinement I felt, pinned within
those stables, wanting nothing more than to run free,
with the wind of youth combing my untamed hair.

–

Early on, we passed this pebble between us,
each in turn
trying to avoid possessing it.
The pebble
is worn smooth,
each palming it off on the other,
refusing to
acknowledge it even exists
so we don't have to talk
to each other.

After all, it's a tiny pebble.
A pebble of non-communication, but tiny.
Nothing to it.

Over the years the pebble becomes
a stone, albeit a small one -
more conspicuous,
more awkward.
The words between
us grow sparse, and if we do speak,
the words are sharper,
more piercing as we attempt to disown
the stone.

But by now the stone is a boulder, massive,
like some squat, ugly beast it has come between us,
pushing us out of our lives, what was our home,
the dreams
we were going to share,
the dreams
we would once talk about.

--

Tonight's full moon,
flush with its brilliance
for one night a month,
casts perfect shadows
from imperfect people.

--

The dream haunts me
often, far too often, building
in intensity but is initially
disguised in absurdity and the
nonsense of a young man's lusts
with an old man's deficits.
This woman-like entity,
ill-defined at first but forming
voluptuously, emerges from
swelling curtains. She moves, more
levitates, toward my bed, buoyed
by what I don't know, but angelic-like
it would seem. Or perhaps
an Aphrodite reincarnate?

Oh this goddess, what pale
skin, as Parian marble, full bosomed,
jutting *******, ***** that
beckon, nearly drool, and pursed
red lips beaded with sweet
juice stolen from the wild cherry
tree beneath my window.
Far too much clarity for a simple
dream. But such a dream! And what
seething testosterone I feel!
I am become a hedonist, raging,
pulsing spermatozoa, renewed
of time and youthful energies.

Nerve into nerve we join, ecstacy
compounding ecstacy, bodies wantonly
impaling the other on this love bed
to the result that each cell of our
individualities melds. We are indistinct,
yes - as one, and any ****** impulse
between us is shared to the point of
utter exhaustion, depletion. I am
nearly drained of life, it would seem.

Then, as it always must,
the scene changes, Act II.
Inexplicably, shedding a ******
serpentine-like skin, she slings it away
and drops limply upon me - entirely
skeletal, dry cartilage, sinew, lifeless,
sexless, motionless. The horror
of a diabolical hollowness
stares through me, and I am
suspended, fully terrorized, in
this paralysis. So, this is
succumbing to the Succubus?
God, my dear God, that I should
never dream again!

--

Oh, the sadness in your beloved eyes, that
woeful turn from bright blue to grey, and
the callous years engraved across your face.
Dear God, but that I could reverse the slow,
methodical spin of earth and cruel time,
take us both back to when our passion
for each other burned hot and there was
no purpose in this world but our purpose.

--

twilight trees –
a flock of blackbirds
empties the shadows

--

morning mist
lifts from the forest
. . . a haiku rolls in


.

God, how I hate these reflections,
these abhorrent reflections,
not just the one in the mirror,

but the reflections of my life
clattering around in my brain.
I could shower, shave, slap a mask

over this aging face,
this wretched, etched face,
but what to do about regrets

for all those wasted years?
The *****, the drugs, the
remorse over lost relationships?

Time goes on, and didn't someone
once say that time heals?
Now there's a hell of a laugh!

It doesn't necessarily heal -
if you're not careful
it produces more to regret.

Regrets are compounded and
pain becomes razor-sharp, relentless
with the advance of time.

And I've got time on my hands -
its defilement won't wash off.
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall" . . .

or should it be "memory, memory"?
Is it absolutely necessary I go through
this ever time I stand before you?

--