Did you ever really love me?
Did you love me when you asked?
Did you love me when you promised?
Did you love me when you held my hand?
Did you love me when you promised to marry me?
Did you love me when you left?
Did you love me when you came back?
Did you love me when you promised?
Did you love me when you held my hand?
Did you love me when you promised we'd be together forever?
Did you love me when you left?
Did you love me when you kissed her?
Did you love me when you came back?
Did you love me when you promised?
Did you love me when you stared at me?
Did you love me when you said I was precious?
Did you love me when you left?
Did you love me when you held her?
Did you love me when you promised her?
Did you love me when I left?

I'm starting to think you didn't love me at all

Water under
the bridge,

rolling
and
tumbling,

kissing
the river's
edge,

trees
bend
in a breeze.

A  lonesome
moon
calls out
to the stars
ignoring
their
true
light.

A *****
strikes
the earth,

over turning
a crawlers
night lunch.

A bottle
of ***
shared
by two

who steer
clear
of the fires
orangey
fingers.

Fingers
to fry
the catch
under
the
night's sky.

I stood there in the doorway, appreciating the paradox of time.
What seemed a moment that might never cease,
did not allow me to speak my hearts release.
All my lips could whisper was goodbye.

What else I might have said escapes me looking back.
As I rushed on through that doorway into the blurry night
and the tears I’d held at bay, began to cloud my sight.
Knowing this goodbye would probably be our last.

Something so final as goodbye.
Why did I have to leave you with that word?
Goodbye will be the last thing I wish you never heard.
It will be the first word to put you in my past

I gaze into my darkness,
after a whispered goodbye my heart has faltered
and I realize that forever more my sky is altered.
For when I said goodbye to you, one less star was my only reply.

I am not alone, but, will I ever escape loneliness?

over the fence
my neighbor asks me:
Where are you from?

My passport says
I’m Citizen,
I reply
It also records where I was born
but really, I’m from deep inside

Neighbor does not chat to me anymore
and seeing me on our walks
Neighbor nods warily
and crosses over to the other side

Could you be polite to people?
my wife admonishes me daily

But I’m puzzled
*Why don’t people want to know the truth?
I am, after all, from deep within
Aren't we all?

On the coast
In a pickup truck
We made a toast
To unfortunate luck

You traced my hips
Whispering my name
With those chalked lips
A shiver ran up my frame

You held me there
Where land kisses sea
On a blue sphere
You fell for me

a quatrain is not a tomb. it's an altar of cellulose and low merchants chanting.
we sell the individual curses of our seldom mirth. songs sting as they must -
for they must not !  if they will not hurt...
if they will not be beautiful, for the asking.
a poesy is a feast.
a revenant of our choosing, unless you had no choice.
i am the receptacle of This voice; and solve ridicule with ranting,
just because.
i fuzzy the logic to inspire the haggard hopes of our refrain; unrestrained.
remaining on vigil,
i mark the stars passing in a waking slumber -
with a fool's mask. and a talent's masking.
i am the urge.
how my mind works is my heart's domain.  a wrench in the parsley we hardly; i daily.
i parsnip the rube barbs of a bards assemblage.  i revisit Atlantis.  Polaroid pics -
with graining.  with irony
i photo
shop.

a quatrain is not a tomb, but a rarity,
as we say new the old things
that make us
we.
for i, for one
am one.
i continue
from no sum
and eventually
add up
to something
because -

why not ?

i used to love...
but now i grouse about it
i stammer in the wake of my oblivion and suffer bliss no more.
i'm grounded. you are far  too keen a villain.
you are dead last in haste
to revenge my unkempt village.
i hate your name
but praise it.
at least
i use
to.

now watch my heart unclaim it.