Oh and...

All of that shit you talk is only a symptom of your own self loathing. Get real. Get help.

Time means everything. Memory means nothing. What you say to me is more important than what you said to me.  What we say to each other is not what we mean to say to each other. What we think to say is what we could never even utter. What we regret is thinking about what we could not do. Everything that passes is because of time. Time means everything. Memory means nothing. The one thing I won't get wrong is your name. But your face has already faded.

I wonder...

Sometimes it really is just "Birds of a feather flock together." Especially with people who tend to travel in herds. I'm not that type. I'm a natural loner.

The Poets...

"I am of today and before," he said then, "but there is something in me that is of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and time to come. I have grown weary of the poets, the old and the new: superficial they all seem to me, and shallow seas. Their thoughts have not penetrated deeply enough; therefore their feelings did not touch bottom.

"Some lust and some boredom: that has so far been their best reflection. All their harp jingling is to me the breathing and flitting of ghosts; what have they ever known of the fervor of tones?

"Nor are they clean enough for me: they all muddy their waters to make them appear deep. And they like to pose as reconcilers: but mediators and mixers they remain for me, and half-and-half and unclean.

"Alas, I cast my net into their seas and wanted to catch good fish; but I always pulled up the head of some old god. THus the sea gave him who was hungry a stone. And they themselves may well have come from the sea. Certainly, pearls are found in them: they are that much more similar to hard shellfish. And instead of a soul I often found salted slime in them.

"From the sea they learned even its vanity: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks? Even before the ugliest buffalo it still spread out its tail, and never wearies of its lace fan of silver and silk. Sulky, the buffalo stars back, close to the sand in his soul, closer still to the thicket, closest of all to the swamp. What are beauty and sea and peacock's finery to him? This parable I offer the poets. Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks and a sea of vanity! The spirit of the poet craves spectators - even if only buffaloes.

"But I have grown weary of this spirit; and I foresee that it will grow weary of itself. I have already seen the poets changed, with their glances turned back on themselves. I saw ascetics of the spirit approach; they grew out of the poets."

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

At work

At work I am not amused. I use my spare time there for self-analyzing and according to my therapist this has helped me and I have improved. I don’t tell her that’s what I do at work, but I do tell her about my outlook, my life, my thoughts and my actions and she says it has improved. I have improved. Yes, yes people should improve and improving is a process. A process that initiates at a desk, in front of a computer, where there is nothing else to do. A process that is then practiced when life picks up and things start to happen.

When bad thoughts come, think of a dusty desert plane turned glittering gold at sunset or a green pond dotted with lily pads in bloom. When bad thoughts come think of glaciers slowly moving through a white-blue abyss or fallen flowers being blown through an orchard of peach trees.

Before you’re tempted to stick your foot in your mouth breathe three deep breaths and reflect. Think of the moon and glittering stars casting an irredescent glow on the sand and ocean. The ocean.

Always think of the oceans rhythmic hum, it’s turning tides, and salty taste. When I was young I kept a conch shell in my dresser. In it I could hear what sounded like the oceans waves beating against the sand; an old trick. Later I learned it was the sound of my heart, of the blood being pumped through my body, reverberated inside the shell. I liked that my heart sounded like the ocean, my pulse a current moving through me.

Lovers Quarrels

You sat by the window, your hair disheveled. You wouldn’t look at me.

- Now you know how it feels.

The silence rippled and shook.

- I can’t leave.
- Yes. You can. Now take care. Take good care.

One step, and then another. Out the door and slam.

I’ll take care. I’ll take fucking care. I’ll take fucking great care. Take, good, care. What are you, my grandmother? Who are you, the receptionist at my doctor’s office? Take good care?

Bullshit.

I kicked the snow outside. It wasn’t enough, so I kicked the curb. My toe pulsed.

I went to find something to eat. There was nothing else to do.

Pizza. I could afford it. I sat down with a steaming plain slice, eyes searching for red pepper flakes. It started snowing like crazy outside. The sky turned orange; snow illuminated by streetlights. I wished I were still upstairs with you.

That song you’re as cold as ice comes on the radio. I smiled.
You’re willing to sacrifice our love. Yeah. I nodded my head back and forth. Tapped my foot. A black man sitting adjacent from me stared with wrinkled brown eyes. He was eating his second chicken parmesean slice. A dribble of sauce made a line down his chin onto his Yankees shirt. I stared back with defiance until he shifted his glance.

That’s right. Don’t look at me. My eyes pulsed with my toe.

The song finished. The announcer came on and said: that’s right folks, we’re in for a blizzard tonight, so snuggle up by the fireside with some hot cocoa and get ready because this hour we got some great classic hits for you…
I stood up. A blizzard.
. . .
At your front door I felt sad. No. I felt desperate.

- There’s a blizzard tonight. I got caught in the snow. I was going to walk all the way to the subway and then this lady told me the trains are canceled and so, I don’t know. I don’t know if she was telling the truth because subways are never really canceled, but she sounded like she was telling the truth, so I-

No.

- Take fucking care? That’s all you’re going to say? Really?

Ugh, no.

- Hey, so, I hoped you would still be home and I just wanted to say, I don’t know, that we shouldn’t leave it like this. I want to come inside. It’s a blizzard.

Pathetic.

I sat down with my back to your door and put my face in my hands.
Part of me wished you would open the door and see how sad I was. Part of me dreaded that.
. . .
Being sad is so self-indulgent.
. . .
Being sad is the human condition.
. . .
Happy people are sheltered or diluted.
. . .
Happy people are unenlightened.
. . .
When I look at my face too close in your mirror, I want to scream and cry. It’s the lights in your bathroom. I hope you don’t see what I see.

The subway

Your sallow skin and metal eyes. Don’t look at me. You don’t look kind. All cold, with your three silver rings, one gold, and a crumby black leather jacket. Who is your sorry wife? Does she know you stare? Is she even still alive? Please, please don’t look at me. But you don’t hear. You listen to other things. You listen to the train, to the doors open and close, bing bing, but you don’t listen to me.

A man walks in with a cane and a woman. He stumbles breathless with a brown bag of change and a story. Homeless, cold, cancer and AIDS, we just want a place to sleep and a hot meal. Blindly he walks, his cane an antennae, searching, and his woman behind. A procession of suffering. . He shakes the bag of coins to the beat of their footsteps. The train stops again, the doors open and close, bing bing, and they’re gone. Maybe more luck later. Maybe more luck elsewhere. Maybe all the lucks run dry.

A middle-aged woman with short, cool-aide red hair shakes her head and purses her lips before sighing heavily through her nostrils. She looks sad, distraught. Perhaps she was reminded of her own decay when looking at the glazed eyes of the blind, dying, homeless man. I doubt it. Perhaps she is disturbed by her own callousness. Still, I doubt it. She is sighing in disappointment at the filth roaming the streets, human wastes, picking through her trash. Yes. She reaches in her bag and applies a brown-red lipstick using a little black compact mirror. The color does not compliment her hair.

The man across from me still stares but I suddenly feel an overwhelming sorrow for him. It all seems so sad. The people here, they’re waiting for something: something to end, something to start, they’re waiting to be found, they’re trying to escape. This city collects wanderers, offering them glimpses of what could’ve been, or to the hopeful and ambitious, what could be.

And then I stop. I’m being presumptuous. No, no, this man is just a pervert looking at me like a hungry dog. The doors open and I get out of the train. I hear him say “Bye sweetheart,” when I walk out. I look behind me and smile at him, through the windows of the closed doors of the departing train.

Fleeting romance

Fleeting romances.  They’re not for the sensitive type.  They’re not for the feeling type.  They’re not for the type whose imagination takes hold of the future like a hungry beast, gnawing at distant, dreamy notions of together, together, together. How many times have they thought: “We can lead this life, together, yes together, and it will be so much more beautiful that way”?  They see this even in the eyes of a stranger.  The possibility ignites and disappoints.  These dreamy types are swept away by the invisible currents of their own passion, only to soon be plopped down amidst a dessert of loneliness. Yearning for together, they always find the wrong one: the easy one, the fake one, the flirting one, the lying one, the tender one whose romance is painfully rehearsed.  They become weary from the in and out, the hello and goodbye, and with each perceived failure their imagination blossoms and decays.  Together, goodnight, good morning and never again.  Oh sensitive brooding souls.  How many times have they thought: “It just wasn’t meant to be.”  A line taught by movies, it should make you cringe.  Fortune has great plans for you, hold tight.  Next time, next one, next day.  You won’t be alone for long.

Doldrums

the ghost of my ambition fades

as I lean against a worn wicker chair,

feasting on mellow summer sky

holding nothing

but an empty glass

while the moonlight

casts porcelain shadows

on my loves face.

we gaze across the empty grid

with rusty eyes, and tired lips.

the city sways with all things sad,

you and me,

and ennui.

it’s quite a bore,

the nothingness

abundance brings.

my lovers voice drifts up to me:

“would you like another glass?”

A Journey Draft

1.
A whole does not exist
in matter or in form
For everything labeled as complete
has been mutilated and torn.
Each of us living
Has frowned
At our final fate
To know the world rejects our souls,
How easily
we are replaced.
This is the only completeness I know:
A halo of lives unborn.

Oh, farewell sweet dandelions
Who cannot
survive the storm.

2.
A spider weaving its web
Turned to me,
And sagaciously said:
"Blind hands
Will not know
Exactly what
they hold.
But
Continue, continue friend
Through this nights
Lugubrious end.
The sand beneath your feet
Hails the moons endless sleep.
And the waves
Will soon disappear
Have no fear.

Let us throw into the pyre,
The homes we knew, those distant names
The faces gone, and memories maimed,
With forgotten nodes
Of summer days, lazily strolled down
Odious lanes.
The map you once referred to
Leads only to one place:
Perdition, where all
Lays, dead
and inchoate."

3.
The bats
in their laughter
Seemed to say
"Lead me to light
on this sunless day."

Again and again we try,
Like visions inside a dream -
Spinning against decay

Weaving, flying - swept and slayed.

Yet still - forever on our way.

Strange Love

facing sawdust wind

we stand on red cement steps

above a frozen lawn,

spotted with the butts of old cigarettes.

silence - like a bridge over torrents

of thoughts unsaid.

the pines’ soft churning

lulls over my muted sigh.

smoke, stinging, lingers in our eyes.

a distant garbage truck heaves

through empty streets –

echoing motion of another

who does not sleep.

(briefly, i am soothed

by the largeness of night

cradling reticent earth

unsuspecting.)

“i didn’t do it,” you say.

your pallid face looks specter-gray.

(fools have faith in lamenting lies,

resounding like the strings of broken lyres

through telling eyes.)

silence – like a corpse

and then

a kiss, pendulous and halting,

gropes past hollow platitudes,

and rests gently on my cheek.

“i know you lie” i say,

glance manacled to the earth.

we turn and go inside.

(red and glowing in the lamplight

timid faith is nigh.

it lingers, persistent and unspoken,

in the dark forest of my lovers tired sigh.)

Love Poem

My soul tingles.
You are nothing.
My heart itches.
And I am lost.

Swan-like love
Sweet as dawn's nectar
Away from you
I walk.
Morning star ignited
Alone, sauntering into day.

Garbled in your wake.
Lips linger
Skin educed,
There's warmth
In memories shade.

Uncouth, embarrassed
Yet alive, awake.
In your absence
My soul adjourns,
I wait.

Return, my love, return
Lest you leave my soul opaque,
While simple thoughts of you
Surround me,
Blustered and ablaze.

Fire Poem

Fire, soft fire

languid sanguine glow,

listless smoke, familiar balm,

unanchored and adrift,

more sightly

than the hearthside

secure in iron sheaths --

you are roused by the gale.

Swollen, with florid glints,

you are thrust onto dallis grass,

you are whisked

through the leafy field

that heaves in the wind.

Will the pyre

bleed such effulgent gulps

cemented to brief phrases?

Fire Escape Poem

(ease seeps through

these slow nights,

spent lazily gazing

at smalls stars

glowing

above the fire escape)

it’s here i’ve come to know.

(the pines shake,

filled with hushed secrets

whispered in the dark)

we sit within it all,

eyes cast low

smoke lingering

on our lips -

and lingering still -

on our fingertips.

(the silence of the sky:

streams of soft milky ways

and nurseries of stars -

a silence gently broken

by your sigh)

a moment uncorrupted –

a moment felt

a thousand years ago.

(we look past gravel garages,

past windows of neighbors we

do not know,

past green hills and empty roads

and there, in the nothingness

we see life

refracting light)

and all the while

a slow moon sways with knowing.

(surely this feeling was felt

a thousand years ago)

in these nights we’ve found eternity;

it’s here i’ve come to know.

First draft of a poem

a drunkards cry

from the house downstairs.

a bellow, a wail -

a sound one makes

when demons prevail.

the moonlight is yellow

the shadows are scared.

he reaches for his glass

whispering:

"let this pass -

please -

let this pass"

but night brings strange

bedfellows,

the most unforgiving.

memories of moments

uncaptured

now lost.

a grown man,

an orphan,

with strange child-like eyes -

he stares into his glass

breathing heavy sighs.

an abyss, a void,

an endless eclipse,

"let this pass"

he mutters

as he sits

and he sips.