Sometimes

An old love poem from the youthful heart of yesteryear (I rhymed a lot more in those days)...

Is my love ever questioned?
Or is there sometimes doubt?
I’m slow with words sometimes.
Sometimes they don’t come out.

My “love you’s” aren’t that loud.
And often not enough.
Hugs can weaken sometimes.
Sometimes time together’s tough.

Don’t judge me on that strength.
Look past a muttered line.
Don’t fault me unsaid verses,
Forgotten time to time.

Words are sometimes weaker
Than a pumping heart inside.
It’s certainly not for love’s sake
That love seems to sometimes hide.

Time with you is precious.
Not always apparently so.
My “thank you’s” need some practice.
My gratitude’s too slow.

I love you in my silence.
Uttered words are sometimes cheap.
My actions and my mouth
Can sometimes seem asleep.

But my heart is ever awake.
From there you’re never away.
That’s something to never doubt.
No matter what my words will say.

3.2003

To The Sea

This is a poem about the voice in the waves, calling from the horizon where the sun is setting. This is a poem about madness - madness and tragedy - which resides in every great sailor.

To the sea
Because it is infinite loneliness
Because it is made of the tears of the thousand broken hearts
Because it does not forgive
Because it will hate me for all the right reasons

To the sea
Because I can leave the land
And all that reminds me of everything I’ve lost

To the sea
Because screaming does nothing in those bottomless depths
Because drowning hurts – in sorrow as in water
Because melancholy ghosts walk along the waves and beckon me overboard
Because the price of my existence is really quite minimal there
And it is expected that one day I might not make it back

To the sea
Where everything is washed away
Where a sky of loose diamonds falls heavy on the water black like some old men
Where insanity tastes like salt
Where thoughts eventually die, or become numb, or become too loud to hear
Where the past is clearly astern afloat in the frothy wake of your passing shadow

To the sea
To the sea
To the sea I will go
Without fail
Because it will always have me

11.2010

In My Bedroom Lonely

Such strange things come out of lonely bedrooms, late at night, in the solitude of an empty house, a cold bed...

You stand there as cold as they come,
Life dripped dry from the corners of your blue lips,
A chin-high high dive act of mismatched abandon,
To pool like dried wax in the soft solar flare dimples of your bare tits.

You see me coming in the rain,
Old lady heavy drops bearing children in explosions on my shoulders,
Heaven’s beetle stallions riding down hard the muddy Earth,
Ping panging on the tin roof erases everything I ever told her.

I am now only moments away,
Flying down the long avenues from where perched my father first,
The taste of orange juice and spoiled vodka feral in his throat,
My hands covered in salty blood but still I could not let go.

You took your skirt off at dinner,
Told me to eat my way up your pale legs like that,
Your cheek stung my hand and your lips swelled,
And in all your glowing flesh you knew we could never go back.

4.28.10

Facing the Hunter

Sir George, Elliot, Bruce Lee and that boy from The Waterhorse have all had to face dragons in their day. I am no exception.

A dragon of blue scales and sharp horns

spoke to me saying,

"Why didn't we do what we could have done

and why do men hide their hearts?"

He belched fire of liquid heat and

swung his thorny tail,

his kingdom of pale rocks adorned with

the sweat of the earth shook,

a tremble in its bones.

My knees were overly large and cumbersome,

my chest too proud,

I swallowed the last ounce of taste in my mouth,

braced my battered limbs against a shield of

beaten metal and dried paint,

spoke,

"This is the very root of man's being and

so is the last place his courage allows him to look."

"Then I shall hunt him,

devour the ones he loves and

bury deep the bones of his children!"

Dragon, Dragon,

burden of my soul,

your lonely crimson eye the thing I fear,

that which is bright and looks far,

the memories of your evil my forefathers bore,

your mighty wings heavy with their blood,

your blood,

O' Dragon,

listen to my heart,

the pace of my skin so yellow under this heavy garment,

you bring me death,

death and the afterlife,

the shape of mine and all that is unsaid,

run you through,

run you through, Dragon,

O' Dragon.

When I threw the blade of my hard sword into his belly

it cut him like a cancer,

the dust of the cave floor raced before him

on the wave of his dying weight,

crashing mass of blue scales and sharp horns,

I said to him in the loss of my life,

"You shall live no more."

6.2007

The Final Sad Poem for Woodrow Lone

These days you can't butter the bread without thinking of ol' Woodrow and not coughing up a tear. May God have mercy on his poor, poor tender soul.

Woodrow Lone

Crept the night and filled

The empty cracks with dead men's thoughts

Only asking once for

What he got

Alone on a moonless shore where the washing

Of the waves burned in his skull

Like the wedding day

Her wedding day

Alone and no one came to the stilled sounds

Of the bells hands-distant from

An alter boy’s thin touch

Tingling in the ears of late risers

Left to slumber and forget why they hadn’t come.

Woodrow Lone

Came the darkness that

Recognized in his soul no starry home

Left standing for someone

To take his place

His pride washed coarsely from his cheeks

By foot printless sand owned

Fetus to the full tide

A line of grey bones on the

Waterfront marked here and there for

No one’s reward

To count pointless prospects

Conversations damned and dried deemed

Once to have happened a thousand times if not for her.

Woodrow Lone

So it is he danced forgotten steps leaving

Salty imprints to burn in

The rising ocean sun a glance beyond the water’s edge

He felt his shackles with the hands they bound

Tight the coral stung

A lash found favored flight with

A gull and the spray carried on a windy

Perspective backbone-glances he couldn’t grasp

Could only wait

The bells stilled and the waves rang holy holy truth

Trespassing his fading heart

He heard her name

So common a name that immediately he thought it was his.

12.05