veiny arms
held me
too tight
I shivered
with fright
&
from the
breeze
of the
night
sporadic
words
flew out
my sunken
mouth
like birds
our
tryst
no
more
for I
drowned
us
at  shore
in the abyss
your heart
amiss

There is chaos
Chaos in an abyss
Amidst an air of pathos
Where neglect couldn't go amiss

There is tragedy
In a mind splintered
Ejecting shards of rigid fallacy
Aimed at a culpable soul blistered

There is despair
In eyes witnessing illusions
A conviction harnessed with fear
A belief shaved down through confusions

There is need
Pressing against shut lips
Faithfully present in its own creed
Unjustly repressed underneath postscripts

Then, there is humanity
Stuck in its own no man's land
Awkwardly straddling society and morality
Gingerly pushing through its own exigencies and demands

i can't sleep
so i tried to count sheep
but they all turned to roaches
so i opened my eyes
and tried to wear them out
by staring onto my room
but shadows turned to people
so i closed my eyes
and i tried to clear my mind
but it ran amiss
so i opened my eyes
and tried to read myself to sleep
but words were just ink
so i closed my eyes
and tried counting sheep

White lace
galore
crimson red
lips
of bore
mind turns
out tricks
like
a *****
deeper
darker
into
the abyss
light
serenity
is
amiss
disorder
disdain
heart of
strain
glass
of stain
lies
of the evening
here
I
remain

OK Reader, I'm going to tell you a tale … with great trepidation. You see, this tale, well, it's kind of like telling someone that you've seen a UFO. They want to believe you, but … it's never really been proven scientifically. Not to mention the fact that most folks who believe in such things are often the tin-hat wearing types, written off as … lets be nice and call them “odd”. And, of course, the more you swear to it, the crazier you appear. It's an epic tale, spanning 30 years of my crazy life.

  But, It's a story I want to tell, because it happened to me. I can barely understand it myself, let alone explain it. So … I'm just going to launch into it and you take it any way you wish.

*  *  
Where Can You Be?

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I'll search with gazes and I'll search with cars,
I'll search the cities and I'll search the stars, well …
I'm gonna find you, oh, wherever you are,
I'm gonna find you baby …  near or far, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

I thought I'd found ya, but she wasn't you,
that girl she left alone and blue, well …
I know that's something that you'd never do,
your love has always been strong and true, but …

Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

If you must settle for some other man
and deviate from our immortal plan, well …
I hope you realize I will understand
and I'll try and do the best that I can, but …

Where will I be?
Where will I be, my love?
Hoping the next life sees …
our destiny!


Where can you be?
Where can you be, my love?
Oh, can't you see?
You're not with me!

~Wednesday, April 1st, 1987
10:30 P.M.


  I was singing in a band back in those days and, as it happened, this was the last song I'd ever write for it. Just after this, as it does, it all came crashing down and the band was finished. But in those last days, they pondered this song, with great puzzlement. You see, it was unlike anything I'd brought them before. It wasn't rock … It wasn't a ballad … it wasn't even structured like a “normal” 80's rock song.
  
  No bridge, no solo, no loud grinding guitars, etc. It even had bits where I hummed, yes hummed, the melody, like a lullaby. As they read the lyrics and I described how it went, they all looked at me like I had three heads and asked where this had come from. It was nothing like anything I'd written before. I could only tell them when and where I'd written it, but had no explanation of what inspired it. It had just came to me, so I wrote it down. They didn't know what to make of it, or even what to do with it.

  One of them said it sounded like a late 70's or early 80's adult contemporary song or even in the vein of The Eagles. Another asked if it was about reincarnation … And I honestly, until that moment, hadn't thought of it that way, I didn't think like that at 24 … but then, one of them said it was “Haunting” …

  “Haunting”?

  “Wow”, I thought, I'd never had anything I'd written described as that before. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that it was haunting to think that this poor guy is desperately seeking a girl, that may or may not even know that he exists … in a world with billions of people in it. To top that off, he fears that she may off and marry someone else if he doesn't find her in time.

  This, along with the suggestion of it being about reincarnation made me rethink and rewrite the song. Well, a few lines in the last verse and chorus anyways. It actually made the song flow better and seem more complete. In a way, it actually made the song make more sense … to me and them. Sadly, we never did anything with it. There wouldn't be time. Ha … Time … how ironic. Over 10 years later, came this …


For Someone I've Never Met

Please save a place for me,
deep inside your heart.
Always know that I think of you,
as we both practice our arts.

Our worlds are full of temptations,
so very hard to resist …
and the good Lord knows
we're both far from,
sixteen and never been kissed.

Wealthy men with jaws divine …
Temptresses with looks so fine …
Paths that lead our hearts away …
Paths that surely lead astray …

They'll lead us there every time.
They'll leave us there … so  unkind.
Our hearts must shine,
night and day.
Through any darkness … they'll light our way.

If you never touch my face …
If I never look into your eyes …
We'll always have the comfort of sharing
the same
big, blue sky.

If I never smell your hair …
If you never kiss my lips …
Always know the search for your smile
has launched a thousand ships.

So, I hope you save a place for me
in your heart so sweet and kind.
Please, save a place for me …
Heaven knows you've one in mine.

~Thursday, September 9th, 1999
9 A.M.


“For Someone I've Never Met ” poured out of me in the midst of another breakup from the second, and last, girl that I wanted to marry. That emotion, never found me again. I looked at it on my computer screen and smiled, seeing “Where Can You Be”, in my mind, on my tattered old note pad that I called my “Song Book”. The memory of me writing it while sitting in my Z-28, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico as a beautiful heat lighting storm sent bolts across the sky, came flooding back; as did the debate of reincarnation I'd had with my pals in the rehearsal room all those years before. Here I was, again, writing about “someone” that I sensed, for lack of a better term, was out there … somewhere.

  Well Reader, do you believe in reincarnation? I was never really certain, but, as you can see, I had twice written pieces to someone I wasn't completely sure existed. I had always “sensed” someone out there beginning with the period after I wrote “Where Can You Be?” and thereafter. So, there they were, each written after losing someone I was deeply in love with. Each came out of nowhere, as they usually do. By the time I was in my 40's, I began to think I was either imagining it all (a side effect of being a hopeless romantic) or that I had just somehow missed this person and our “moment”.

  And then …



Epiphany

There was a place.
There was a time …
There, I stood … still unknowing
and everything seemed fine.

But there in that place …
at that moment in time …
the moment I saw the eyes,
I'd never believed I'd find.

Well, what could I say?
What could I do?
In a world filled with billions …
and there … was a you.

I'd always known you were out there …
even written of something amiss.
I never, ever stopped looking for you …
because my heart always said you exist.

My breezy Fall became harshest Winter.
My crazy life left my health running out.
I'd resigned myself that our moment had passed …
but this moment … it removed all doubt.

Well, what could I say?
Tell me, what could I do?
There we stood, staring … alone … in a city of millions …
yes, there … there was a you.

Oh, that mistress fate, she is just so cruel.
Frustration, a curse to be mine.
   I'd searched for you my entire life …
but now … my clock … knows a limit of time.

You see, I would never venture a love with you,
while knowing I'd have to leave you … hurt and alone.
I could only admire from afar … stoic and aloof …
while turning my heart into stone.

Nothing I could ever say and nothing I could ever do …
But now, at long last … at least I finally knew.

There, you stood … green seas, gazing up … into skies of blue.
My long-awaited revelation … become sorrow-laced realization.
There really is … a you.

~August 12th, 2009  

  Typical of my life-long Charlie Brown syndrome … After being told in 2005 that I had “the lungs of an eighty-year-old man” and that I had “Six to Ten years” to live, I made a conscious decision in that Doctor's parking lot that I could never have another girlfriend and that I must face this alone. I don't see woman as objects. They are glorious creatures that are here to be our partners and friends and to make our lives amazing. I could never, ever knowingly let a woman fall in love with me, all the while knowing I was going to die and leave her. It's not in me to do such a thing, lonely or not.

  Yes, I'm still alive, I'm stubborn like that. But, some days are better than others and my new doctors say that they don't give people “time limits” anymore … because of people like me. I can't afford the lung transplant. So, as Bono so aptly put in one of his songs: “The rich stay healthy, while the sick stay poor”. It is what it is … and like the energizer bunny, I'm still going. Good for me.

  In the moment that I met her, the morning that followed, and the amazing speed of our nexus over the next several months combined with a string of synchronicities (Coincidences? Did I mention that she too, was a poet and writer?) that not only came after I met her on the sidewalk in front of the publisher we shared, but in those pieces I had written before and in several after; I was pretty much convinced I had actually found her. I have NEVER experienced anything like this, or her, in my entire life.

  So, after all this time, here she was … and there wasn't a **** thing that I could do about it. Besides, she was much younger than I and it probably would never have worked anyways. ****, the universe is rotten sometimes, huh? Maybe, if I'm lucky, things will balance out better in the next life. I can only hope. But I'm reminded, worryingly so, of the **** The Alarm song: “Collide”:

“All of these thoughts pounding in my head …
with the words I've wrote, in the letters I've never sent.
The distance in our lives may change …
Times that you can never erase …
But will our worlds collide?
Will our worlds collide, the next time?”



  Only time will tell.



  “Colors”, and a few others, were written about/for her. But, I could never show them to her. I would never endanger my friendship with her. I just wanted to keep her in my life. That, and that alone, was the only motive I'd ever had with her. I looked forward to seeing her marry, hearing her stories of her three kid's adventures; Hubby, all greasy, working on the car in the driveway, rabbits in her garden at night, eating her precious organic veggies or even about her new curtains. Just to know that she was alive, happy and doing well. I found a solace in her voice I could never describe and I was completely content to just have her in my life and watch hers unfold. Only I could end up in this odd position.

  I feared that she might get weird-ed out because I'd never displayed any romantic inklings toward her, so, to suddenly read these might make her feel a bit, lets say: uncomfortable. Actually, I didn't write them with any romantic intentions, per se; I just did what I always do … write what comes out. Still, there's no denying that they come across romantic. Again, so, so Charlie Brown. (long sigh)
  
  It is what it is. I also have to ponder the fact that maybe all those Charlie Brown moments in my life were preparing me for this one big, painful one. That does makes sense … ******' Universe.


Colors

Well when you're Green, I'll be your Brown.
Like the earth that loves the flowers,
I'll will be your solid ground.

And I'll be your Azure, when you are Verdigris.
We'll be thee most beautiful ocean
that eyes have ever seen.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
Mixing all of the colors … I'll make everything alright.

Now when you're Blue, I'll be you're Red.
If something should make you wanna cry,
I will feel your pain instead.

And I'll be your Orange, whenever you are Pink.
We'll be thee most amazing sunset,
that the sky could ever ink.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … and make everything alright.

Should you be Violet, I will be your Beige.
Like a sleepy moonlit desert,
pasteled in dunes and sage.

And when you're Grey, I will be your Rainbow.
We'll be thee most soothing rainstorm
the world has ever known.

And when you're Black, I'll be your White.
I'll mix all of your colors … yes, I'll make everything alright.

With love on my palette, painting a glorious sunrise …
I'll color all your mornings with a smile and brighten up your skies.
If you should find yourself in sorrow from someones hate or lies …
I'll take the stars down from the heavens … and paint them in your eyes.

So whenever you are Black, I will always be your White.
I'll mix all your colors with a promise … everything will be alright.

Yes, I'll mix all of your colors with a promise … Everything's gonna be alright.

~  Winter 2012


  I wrote this after she had rang me up one afternoon lamenting about her life at the moment, troubled that her latest novel hadn't done as well as she'd hoped and now she had to be waitressing to make ends meet. I tried my best to cheer her up and assured her that she was strong enough to handle anything and that she must keep chasing her dreams. I wrote it as a poem, but I can't help but notice it looks like a song, though I've never heard music for it. Those repeated verses look just like choruses to me.

  Earlier in the day, I had been looking at a booklet of paint swatches. I guess, up there on my roof looking at the Manhattan skyline, her sadness and me looking at all those colors melted together somehow and, as happens, out came this piece. Even this, became another synchronicity as she would name her next novel “Show Me All Your Colors”. I remember seeing it in the bookstore and looking straight up … shaking my head at the sky. Was this the universe telling me to show and tell her all this?

  Well, if it was, I stuck with my gut and kept it to myself. My God, if you only knew how many of these synchronicities there were between her and I. It simply boggles my mind. I wanted to call them “coincidences”, but there were just so **** many of them … Each so unique, they just couldn't be called that. I don't want to tell them all here, because like I said, the more you swear to it, the crazier you sound. And I'm sure your questioning my sanity by now, aren't you? (Smirk)


  OK, OK … this one is definitely romantic. I wrote it one night, drunk to the bejeezus. I'd done what we called “The Crosstown Crawl” with my pal Tristan and a gaggle of assorted waitresses we knew. This involved starting at Brass Monkey on the west side highway in the Gansevoort District and ending at my favorite ****** bar, Karma, on the Lower East Side … Drinking in, and often being “asked to leave” (Read: Kicked out of) every bar that took our interest as we walked (Read: staggered) west to east, staying below 14th St.

  On my way home from the city on the J train, I thought about all the phone conversations we'd had while I was on this train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. Being drunk, I guess, I caught a bout of sadness that I'd never get to tell her any of this or even how I felt about it all. Before I hit my elevator, this piece was swimming in my head. It's about as mushy a piece as I've ever written … if not thee most! Not the norm for me, but this is, after all, a lot to keep pent up inside you. I wouldn't wish this predicament on anyone.


For My Little Red-Haired Girl …


You …

My Love.
My Queen.
This Shining Light in my eyes.

My Laughs.
My Dreams.
My Soft, Contented Sighs.

My *****.
My Lavender.
My Dew Covered Rose.

My Smile.
My Cinnamon.
The Joy in my heart … ever inspiring my prose.

My Best Friend.
My Co-Star.
My Fearless Partner in Crime.

My Breath.
My Cohort.
My Side-kick throughout time.

My Snow-capped Mountain.
The Wind caressing my face.
My Vast Green Field.

The Ivy Covered Wall
that harbors my soul … ever refusing to yield.

In a different time ...

You … would have been my Life.

You … would have been my World.

You … would have been my Everything

and I will always love you for my own special reasons.

It is just a shame … and I'm so, so sorry … that you … must never, ever know.

Maybe next time.


~Charlie Brown



   When I came-to in the morning and read what I had wrote, I had to laugh a bit. It is borderline corny, very beautiful, very telling and very sad … all at once. I shook my head, laughing and told myself :

  “*******, Sam … yer losin' it. Get your **** together, will ya?”

  I guess in my stupor, I was imagining what it would have been like to write something for her. I don't know … There it was and I was stuck with it. I almost deleted it, but, my finger wouldn't press the key. As I told you before … I'd NEVER show this to her. She'd probably never speak to me again.

   As a sadder epilogue, that eventually happened. I still don't know why, but we haven't spoken in years. Maybe she sensed this emotion in me and ran away. Or maybe, just maybe … she thought I'd pushed her away somehow … but for whatever reason, we drifted apart. I guess I'll never know.  As you can see by reading this, that was never my intention. But, like I keep reiterating … It is what it is.

  One day, I called her number to catch up and shoot the breeze. I hadn't spoken to her in a few months as she'd been busy promoting her new novel and I didn't want to pester her. But … it was disconnected … I checked my emails … nothing. I'd never been so confused, she just closed me out. I didn't want to bother her. I was sure she had her reasons and if she wanted to reach out to me again, she would. She had my email and my phone number. But, for now … she was gone … and that was that.

  So, what do you think, Reader? Do I get the Tin hat … or a Badge of courage? Am I bat-**** crazy … or just eccentric? I'll leave it up to you to decide, because as I said, this all happened to me and there isn't a thing I can do about any of it. I just had to get it off of my chest. Thanks for letting me vent.

  Wherever she is … she will always mean the world to me. I can see her green eyes if I close my mine and look for them. Sometimes, on occasion, her face haunts my sleep. Still, I like to picture her, kids playing in a sprinkler behind her, digging in her garden, wearing gloves too big for her hands and a smudge of fresh dirt on her cheek … it makes me smile.


-Sam Webster
Brooklyn, New York
2013

Sometimes Mrs. Little bliss
Is all a mist
But Her love, is never amiss

And when I fall, because I miss
with tenderness she'll hold my wrist
Pulling me out from the abyss

Everytime she blows a kiss
I, myself could never resist
With just a touch of her lips, I'll have eternal bliss

Mine soul’s the detonator.

Mine heart’s the coil.

The vessel & arteries, my fuse.

My bones, skin & muscle the shell.

Hopes & desires the composition.

Fear, insecurity & thinking

the safety pin.

My courage & action is the flick.

Will I die or will I live?

When vitality’s stripped, and memory amiss.

Will I go forgotten or praised.

When I sleep, below the suns rays.

Will I go at peace & at ease, or
left sundered, wrought to rest with tears?

How will I know, if I don’t flick the switch, and do indeed live

year on year Tom would feel
like a gear or a wheel
or a cog in a clockwork machine
in the same office space
just a nameless, lame face
in the slog of the corporate routine

any thought, null and void
shopped and bought - an android
a synthetic, a robotic drone
or a replicant man
who’d been sent from Japan
cybernetic, machina, a clone

then one bleak winter's night
he saw streaks of bright light
shooting stars bringing evening alive
from the white headlight glare
and the red taillight flare
of the cars on their homeward bound drive

from his place in the queue
they erased out his view
as their glow burned peripheries black
being dazzled to blind
kind of frazzled his mind
yet the show meant he kept looking back

close his eyes, sight to save
and he’d rise through the waves
by the macular, swimming in tears
‘neath his lashes and lid
where the flashes are hid
and spectacular lens flares appear

blobs of green, yellow, blue
quite serenely they flew
like the puck from that old TV game
but what struck him as strange
as the lights ducked and changed
was their route stuck exactly the same

moving at the same pace
proving easy to trace
as if lightning bolts forked the same line
any ape could compute
that the shape of that route
happened not by default but design

leaving trails in his sight
as they sailed left to right
back to centre, dipped, then rose again
they would bounce once then fade
or renounce and degrade
on the boards and chips of his brain

and wherever he looked
as if tethered or hooked
caught on screen - left, right and centre, down, rise
though of course you’d object
Tom was forced to accept
he’d machines in his head for his eyes

now that brainwave he’d had
struck him stark-raving mad
plain eccentric...at least first it seemed
then a new insight crept
that at night, while he slept
of electric sheep often he dreamed

so he knew it was true
the review had come through
that his person had been synthesised
Tom was not bone and flesh
he was chrome, foam and mesh
a good version but still a disguise

the construction of man
from instructions and plans
spools and chains running his moving parts
under hood, copper coils
and no blood, only oil
wire veins and a battery heart

and this news left him numb
should he fuse, what would come
would he find obsolescence built in
would they repair this chap
or declare him as scrap
did his kind just get thrown in the bin

he appeared out of sync
from this weird way to think
but the notion once thought just increased
and he feared he would sink
but as he neared the brink
the commotion cut short - it just ceased

he thought ‘circuits aren’t bad
if you work it a tad
there’s a fix for those who’ve been man-made
it’s programmed in our code
promised land, like we’re owed
something clicks and we’ll get the upgrade

our design’s been refined
to remind all mankind
God had failed and left Heaven amiss
battery dead, I’ll survive
since my head’s a hard-drive
that is e-mailed on death unto bliss

so the jolt this supplied
finding bolts for insides
and each breath he took, just a veneer
was succinct to subside
since his instincts implied
that of death Tom had nothing to fear

since equipped with radar
he’d be shipped to V.R.
not a hole in the ground where he’d rot
there's no place in the sky
when his master race dies
but there’s soul in the heart of each ‘bot’

so he got on the bus
and forgot all the fuss
like a freak who’d found merit and worth
there’d be others like him
plastic covers for skin
and those geeks would inherit the earth

why decry the expense
being A.I made sense
Tom could take being called phoney once
he came to understand
next to same and to bland
being fake was the only response

Wandering day to day
Wondering what will come my way
For I would **** one for a kiss
So long as love is not amiss

The Reflection

08/21/2019

  

As always, lost in thoughts of no consequence
oblivious to the store fronts, an evening stroll
a disturbance, I felt, that held me in place
slowly turning, now facing the window, in view
the display, superimposed with reflections
all is familiar, the images and the reflections
both static and non, beside me as well as behind
what's amiss, the mind refuses to capture
and then, yes then, the invisible, surfaces
amiss from this collage, is my reflection



That disturbance in the force, strongly felt
in place of my reflection, a mist, a haze taking shape
unfocused mind, forming images when non exist
overlaying the mannequin, with a familiar outline
yet everything else, front n surrounding, sharp n clear
captive of that disturbance, motionless, fixated
image forming, taking shape, an outline of my reflection
image with no mass, then I realize the nature of
that which is known to me, that which has left me,
that which has been with me, has grown as I have,
from birth, that which knows me, but that which
I have only now understood, that illusive self
a view, the very few, if any, are privileged to know
as I exhale for the last time/my last breath/for the final time
as if bidding goodbye, with serenity, my aura, my soul

I don't get it
i stood still for so long for this to work
finally we might have the timing right,
so why do i feel like this one is amiss too.
I can feel your love, it feels real this time.
I just don't know if i can say the same about mine.
I'd hate for you to read this.
I promise i love you like i always did
but i think this affection needs to be from a distance.