Perfect pitch

he loves It

and he hates it

Matching golds, amber, auburn frosting on bleach blonde hair

framed in too soon sunset

“do you drink red wine?”

He asks, as she packs her canvas bag

He knows the answer but he wants to slow time

wants to watch

the crinkled questions that wraparound her eyes

To raise the pitch of her voice

To its high questioning bewilderment

He knows he’s stolen just a single more moment

fatigue and finer points of Day to day details

have chased chanced poetry

that they promised.

they have to stop and grab the only window in four months time

to deliver on the promise they made.

she fumbles for her ugly green plastic journal

A computer customer gave him in shear gratitude

It fits just write

Between thigh and thigh and thigh

They write the truth

Because Rachel says

That’s always poignant

He always begins to panic as the sun sets

Dreading the bakery graveyard shift

And long lonely looming night

he loves it

He loves the fact that he can see her face in real time

Instead of Facetime On his own porch framed by his nearly blue ford pickup

He hates it as she disappears behind tinted windows

Then pauses smiling.

Shoving her schoolmarm glasses back for the hundredth time

He wonders if the moon rising

Into vermillion and sage

can keep her from hearing his silent cry

stay stay

wrinkles form around dark curls

Rusty drops from the rain gutter Agree

As they all slide into a dull aching reality

it will be 12 and half hours

’til the warmth of breath

Besets another noon fading

from rose to wine colored glasses

gorp and dew for breakfast

I eat in bed
Gorp
Rice cakes
Sun Seeds, walnuts,  dates, figs
I drink my coffee
Slowly
For hours
Trying to wake up
Or go back to sleep

I spill it usually
while Texting you
The morning weather
The evening news

Come
Share my crumbled bits
My dampened sheets
Stay
Til
Day hurts our eyes
And you leap from the
Corner
Window
To the dewy grasses below

We are clumsy
Both of us
Still
We’ll dance in the last bit of
Moonlight

heart flake

On the bitter, barren and desolate plains

Of  North Dakota
There’s a tiny obscure delta

Called Heart Lake

I Feel for it
for longing
wandering in this  small/huge
empty place

I can hear it cry out

with me to whatever

gods might listen.
please let me feel
just one last time
before I grow too old
and the north winds rob me
of my vigor and will

let me once more
taste a first kiss
to feel the electric
first touch of
two distant fingers.
of two
shards of claymeeting
Their soils
Their souls.

reborn

I can no longer bear the endless sounds

Of alarms and sirenscreaming in my

Crowded brain.

Save me?
Save me.

Heart Lake

whispers sweetly

across an eon of geology

a gentle doxology

‘Save we.

Save we’.

pre-veil

in Our sorrow song

time

slides from minutes into decades

not enough tears can wash away

that trite adage

‘Time heals all wounds.’

you are as near now as then

I can touch your cheek

wipe the salt away

and say the meaningless

simple words

I meant to say

But I cannot take this pain away

Your reflection sweeps past behind me

I feel your breath

Come closer

I deny your death

My soul is a deep empty place

Your grasp has no release

a familiar aching hole

where words fail to express

only tears cleanse a slow soul

I stare at faces in public places

I close my eyes tight

And I see you

And I see you

Time slows and I quicken my pace.

I turn to watch the years flash by

And your shadow disappears

out past paths outlined in faint traces

Fate fools me

I can no longer find reality  or truth

I hear your voice, a loop, an old recording

I collapse against a stone pillar

I don’t care who sees me suffering there

A homeless child

Shaking fists at fated, faithless sky

It’s all the cry I have left in me

This is the last place

The last place I saw you touch

If I hold your fingerprints long enough

I can hope you back

Through the ethereal

Long enough to take all of you away

You are the murky clouds

That roil in the northeast

An imminent storm that

Never really strikes

I know you watch

From Nimbus

Each and every time

Before I drink of morning’s first cup.

 

Break through that veil of time

Space.

Just

Today

Just

One

real

Sign.

Be.

A stranger’s wink, shove, nod.

Bittersweet

I walk alone with you.

leather

my sister

has lived long without love

not feeling valued. shamed.

three divorces to cruelty

caused her to live in isolation.

she travels world over though,

unafraid of the transatlantic flight

nor of drinking murky Central American waters.

she loves the diversity of the world

and invites it into her home.

in an adult foreign exchange program

through aurora community college.

sometimes she is the Spanish learner

sometimes the English teacher.

he was a surprise.

a six week visitor

a professor from Colombia

who stayed an extra month.

he could not pull his dark skin from hers.

her own wild, dark, distant Inca eyes

and roaring laugh.

soft, she is even along the torn suede edges

turned rawhide.

love knows none and every language

as she screams into her new purse woven by Colombian peasants.

a gift, she murmurs, into its coarse face.

as she watches his plane leave denver.

she can scarcely whisper,

as she sobs into the phone to me.

never can she have him again.

never will she see.

she is  broken again.

sore, aching where the sinew tore from leather

Ulay Marina

Ulay and Marina

I web chat with you
And I’m selfish
My loud exuberance
Flairs the voice meter
Into the red zone

It’s the surprise of seeing

me

I stare at my reflection
Mirrored into yours
I never paid attention
To me
So I’m fascinated
With my own face
I didn’t know
I creased a deep gash
Running along my forehead.
Years of worry and running
To or from shelter.

I love to look into
My own blue, blue eyes
Once caked with mascara
Itching in eye
Shadow

My face so pale in fatigue
As night comes on

But I wonder most
At my lips always smeared
With lipsticks’ crimsons, scarlets, and ruby reds

Now sparkle
Just their own sweet song
Flowering buds of cerise
Louder and louder
Selfishly.
I remember to smile at you

We stare in silence for a full minute

a thousand thoughts pass between

Meter clicks to green
And the deep crease eases

migration

The migrating birds return

Just after daylight savings time

Changes

They begin to sing

Their love songs to each other

Crying out across the fences

Then softer

Near the window

Their breath along my neck

I beam to you satellite to starlight

If I could have just one wish

I would wish

To call you thusly

Across continents

And have you fly here to me

My eyes closed so tightly

Curtains drawn

Just one foggy Sunday morning

Pretending to sleep

But hearing your breath mix with mine

The coffee maker so close to the bed

We reach only for cream and sugar

We’d get biscuit crumbs in bed

Ignore the church bell chimes

Play scrabble and anagrams

Compete to name all the animals of the Amazon

Until the morning.

Wore away

And I drift back awake

Lady Dragon

My aloneness does not need a change of scenery.

I think about

You

today
And nothing else

The void that was before
You
How empty
The everything.
A Long squinting look
At the final years
Of my too quiet life
Pretending that
Quiet meant content

Now I replay a
Same endless hours scene
With the rain of you
Dried

Me playing
lying

Without

You
Interminable games
Of free cell
And solitaire

Every hour looking eastward
Wondering
How wide
The

Muddy
Mississip

The jealousy of the gods

Why do you suppose,
Oh Great Seer,
That a body
And a heart
Like mine,
And maybe yours.
Made for love,
Aching always for
The touch of skin
And the hopes
Of dreams colliding.
Are denied such things?

Oh how I would
Love to love.

But this stunted, wounded
Self. Won’t let it be so.

Reckon the gods
Would cry out in jealousy,
Send fire or brimed stone?

Should one find a love
So enveloping

I might forget to look
Skyward again,

Forever focused
Eyeward?

a single cell

though she promised and promised herself

when her life was empty of him,

she would not cry

or wish or long for him.
And she tries

her mind is all resolve, rationale, and logic.
But the awakened body
grieves and grieves
for the sensations of skin on skin
those only dared dream of,
never dared hope again.
So she turns to recriminations
and blame and hate

for cruel men long past

and her  foolish fistight angry body.

It’s a moment.

Then she remembers asking

for a simple gift. An hour. A hex broken.
So given.
Apparently versed by all the seers,

They that know,
saved her cell at the nunnery,

So that she might be alone.
To forget over and over.
Again.

by invitation only

It was impossibly
Good to see him
After all these years past.

Yet, I feigned anger.
pushed him aside
While I stared at his
Bruises.
Drank of his raggedly
Tired voice.

Should I not have
Shown forgiveness?
Joy, at the rare moment
I was given?
When he said,
” see you around.”
was it an invitation
or a warning?

Could I not have whispered
Some soft farewell?

Instead of the cliched
” not if I see you first.”
But I turned at the last
And saw his eyes in mine
And we spoke
Unspoken tomes
Of regrets and finalities.
It was so good to see him again.

Still sorrowing in my sleep,
I forgot. He rests under
The pines.
I covered my pillow over
My eyes, and tried to
Dream it all again.

midnight train

lying

mid

night lover

warm byourside

I hoped we could keep the night

from fading

this moring still dark

i’ll slide away before coffee

                          before you wake

5 am like a stranger

I’ll leave you behind

Im slipping away

you’re going to miss another sunrise

with me

5 am like a stranger

don’t hear morning sounding

or the dawn coming on.

5 am

dont hear me

let me go

let me go

strangers I forgot where we parted

or just drifted apart

we were yesterday

I’m slipping away

 

wake.

beg me to stay.

bleeding blue

That pang that I mistook for love

I awoke this morning with a warmth

That I mistook for love

By noon it took on the feel of a sharp

Pang

Nearly night

Fall

I felt so sharply that pain

That I mistook for love

I stepped astride my only faithful

Metal lover and rode to the sunset

To ease the pain away

I held hands with my only faithful

Mental lover and wrote the blues away.

fade

“Scars don’t heal. Wounds do.
What do scars do then? Fade I guess.” Kung Fu Panda 2

Once, I thought I could keep you
By pinning our mementos to my bulletin
Board
I tacked you up in bits
In hopes you’d
Show up to fill one more
Empty space.

There’ve times when I scarce
Could breathe. for the lack of
You lives in me
And I would wake in the night
To find you.
Missing.

You never promised.
You would.
One day
You just never came home.
One by one
Our bits of memory
scattered
From their appointed places.

Just one more
Wouldn’t hurt.

winter’s muffling hand

The music in winter lies

Deeply buried under alternating

Layers of brown and white

Reaching for the hopeful

Greening

Found in the weeds along my wheels

On this practice ride

And in a glimpse of your eyes

While my heart pulses close to yours

On a windy night

Lost

In a sun setting too soon

On a melody just begun.