Ladycat,
That L-word is like real dragsville.
But gauge this—my berg really swung
on your smile.
forever digs,
Daddy-O

Back in times
when tears painted light blue
the walls of childhood,
a million dreams were lost on youth.

From youth grows an uncertain fear
              known only to the young.
It was being young
not youth
that aged you.

It was the time and tears of childhood.
We sat,
    every conceivable memory
strewn out on the floor,
blood pushed to your fingertips.
You pressed up,
crossed-legged and eyes down,
that ever present something
pressed into your waist.
              A shield perhaps,
          or a wall.

When times between you become longer,
and your smile appears
          only when eyes close,
your days will become vaulted memories.
History should be left for historians—
unjudged accounts of hours wasted—
laughing at a straightman's foolishness,
or trying to keep an interested face
when stories become in time
                                        and space.
And instant excitement
sometimes lost all too quickly.
That is our history,
  and I am not a historian.
I am, in its stead,
    a believer of beliefs
  happy to see anyone
who sits still long enough
to let my thoughts escape out loud.

Your days were filled with questions—
                  overwrought quizzes,
          or exposes of thoughts
    better left unthought.

When I reread history,
I'll give your picture more colour.
And though I'll belate an apology,
I'll remember the stomach laughs I caused
                        and pretend
        that it was enough.
I'll chronicle moments you tried to go
but were stopped by quick attacks
        of attachment.
In a world where goodbye meant nothing,
                      we smiled,
                    laughed,
              and cried
bathed by noire lighting.
History will read lonely was motive—
          lonely and the night.
We existed after-hours.
Daytime was for reality,
          night brought dreams.
It was a time for you;
        it was a time for me.

History will remember the two people
            who shared that time.
I tried to make your life comfortable,
I tried to make you happy.
            I loved you.
    I believe I did.
I'll have to wait for a historian
to piece it all together.
Because,
    even though I remember it all,
  I don't have the gifts of a historian.

Every two years or so,
you crawl back into my life
saying you need my shoulder,
          my honesty,
            my gentleness.
Then curling up in my lap,
you release all the little hurts
you say you should brave yourself.

I sit,
    clenched-jawed,
      answering whys with yes,
  rocking you into a calm.
Satisfied, you stand up
                        and run away—
              skipping out,
  empty heart ready to be filled again.
I stand, heart full,
                half smiling,
        watching you disappear
    praying that two years
            will only hurry around again

Once,
all it took
was an old shoebox
wrapped in aluminum foil
and red construction paper
  held together with edible paste
      to insure a valentine.

Back then,
we were given thirty-or-so names
to say BE MY VALENTINE to.
              That was easy.
It was the year
that no knock came at the door
      and no valentines were left
                that was hard.
The years that followed
brought only age.

Now,
in a time too late for shoeboxes,
        accept pencil poetry,
              Rod McKuen,
    and pastel paintings
in place of roses and daisies
and all those long awaited
          cardboard valentines.

It took more
than pencil poetry
      and a single red rose
  in a bed of daisies
            to prove love,
it took time.
Now,
after the lead has faded,
and the roses have dried,
          love lives on...

I sat
knowing you were watching me
not moving to adjust or turn away.
Your perfumed fingertips
traced and retraced my smile.

It should have taken more than time
for you to tire of me.
Maybe we let things get too far.
Perhaps the mistake was not saying
    things that should have been said.
I miss you.
You gave this hour purpose—
    time was yours.
And in your time,
      time was mine.

I remember how you laughed at me—
and how you let me laugh at you.
I remember how you cried
as I tried to look into your eyes.
I remember how you compromised
                only for me.
I'm wondering,
do you really feel like you said,
or am I only what you needed
                        at the time?
Are you running,
      or just running away?
And are you running from me?

Wet snow fell
and grabbed at gutters
and hung on desperately
as the March sun rose
and warmed the earth.
The phone rang
and you said, tonight?
    I said, please.
Twenty-four hours after the moon
        laughed over the millpond,
you walked into my carpeted prison,
                    saw my despair
and ran to put your head on my shoulder.
I was calmed that night
and fell forever in love with you.
That night,
all I needed was someone/anyone.

In a dark brown polyester uniform,
hinting male cologne,
you reached out
and became someone/anyone.

I stayed up one night
to share the false dawn with you,
knowing that the lack of light
and the late June heat
would allow me to capture you
                      in rhyme.
I started a dozen songs
as you marveled at the morning
              you ignored before.
I watched you choke back tears
and swallow nighttime confessions,
          and I tried to write.
Occasional glances at real time
produced closed-eyed sighs
and a gravity controlled
shake of the head.

I remember every detail
of that morning
                  you,
          your eyes,
the morning colours
as they bounced off your face,
      and the hope you lost in time.
I filed away all your memories
    that one day I'll use in rhyme.

February brought with it
a certain need
and need perhaps to live beyond
      the still of cold,
  or maybe,
a need to simply survive twenty-eight days
So used to the snow I was,
even when the sun ate through
                    gray clouds,
I huddled under jacket
and turned heat up,
wasting another sunrise to sunset
without writing you a new poem,
or plucking out new jazz chords.

I sat cursing the cold
                and nursing a need.

I am no stranger to need.
We've shared summer and sunday alike
walking away unsatisfied but safe.
This February consumes me in need.
So when I push forward a simple present,
smile at me,
                  and afford intimacy.
I'm only fulfilling a need.
I give to you,
not only for you,
                    but for me.

If there is no god,
then whose face do I touch
when I reach up in bed?
And whose voice do I hear
when I call out,
      Am I loved?
And who turns their head
when I cry,
        I'm sorry.
But mostly,
who is behind your smile,
and who lets you cry,
and who let me find you?


I don't question you,
I only have questions about you.

Where were you
the day the sun destroyed my world,
when the moon hit the earth
                  and life ended?
Where were you when
even the music wouldn't start?
Were you running on some foreign beach,
or scratching some stranger's back?
Or were you marching past my eyes
    incognito and just out of reach?
I tried hard not to care.
You have a need to run,
        that I know.
It's just that...
  that day I needed you,
and when I fell,
            I just kept falling.
Even lonesome is more difficult
when you're waiting on familiar shadows.
Where were you the day I needed you?
                    For a time,
it didn't matter where.
All I know,
            is that it was away.

My words are merely victims
of guilt-inspired thoughts.
Where my mind cannot judge,
my words must be truth
                        or lies.
Remember all I said,
and the good I tried to cause.
Your happiness was as important to me
            as it seemed to be to you.
Maybe I was lost inside words.
Still of all the words I said
              before you went away,
keep me in your memory
        with the words I didn't say.

So this is the way
you say goodbye—
six weeks late
and through
an uninterested messenger.
I could have waited for the end,
I probably could have avoided it.
All I had to do was pretend
                you never left.
I could have
kept the memory of you intact.
I could have held the midnight smiles,
    and the way you fell into my lap,
        and the eye-to-eye play
            for a complete forever.

I could have always remembered
the star we picked out
of Andromedea's belt
        to claim as our own.
Or I could have kept the memory
of how you pressed your breath
            right through my lips.
I do remember the night I bled
              and needed your eyes.
And I remember the soft of your voice,
    and the warmth of your thighs.
I could have lived long on your memory.
But all I can remember,
    and all I see when I see you
is the chicken-shit way you said goodbye.

The autumn holiday,
you alone own,
was spent with the usual fanfare
              and without me.
I spent your November afternoon
      chasing that dream
that sometimes seems
  oh-so-far away.

I'll catch that dream one day,
  because you believe I will.
I know I promised emeralds,
but until I hold that dream,
you'll have to settle
          for emerald green.

In the hum of a summer rainstorm,
when thunder clapped and echoed,
and brave willows
  reached up tongue out,
I finally realized what you tried to say.
I always walked arms reach behind you,
lacking the confidence to catch up,
giving lifeblood as a need.

In the end,
as you disappeared,
    I walked back
        head down in the rain.
I looked into my empty hands
and heard you say,
    I would have given you everything,
  ...everything, except what you want.

We sat
face-to-face
looking at each other
not wanting to be the first
            to break the quiet—
  missing all the cues.
Earlier,
I must have talked
about your eyes for a forever;
          colouring your smile,
running my fingers through your hair.
Your slightly sloped shoulders
held my balance
and your back
  my beliefs.

For a time,
we had no need for words.
There in the silence
you lay back in my arms
as if I were a soft chair.
You fit so well,
as if I were made
only for you.

The sun yielded to the darkness,
first silence
          then light.
We were one then,
  one into a night.
You looked toward the valley
and as if you were alone,
you asked,
              Am I loved?
I meant to say,
    Look at me
    I am love
    and now
    I am you.
I didn't,
but you knew.
Because you turned,
caught me staring at you,
and gently,
      very gently,
  you kissed me.
We sat the whole of that night
face-to-face
with a slow quiet
deep inside every sound.

The sun goes down
each and every day,
most of the time
          unnoticed.
But I remember one day,
we were there,
and all that mattered was us.

Hand-in-hand,
we were farther away
than we had ever been;
  but unknowingly, 
      not going far enough.
The sun finally went down
and in the shadow
I lost your face.
I didn't see you walk away,
and when I did,
    I lost you forever.

...I thought you knew.
When I said I love you,
I meant forever.
Not just between shadows
        and sundays,
  or the calm
before smiles or tears.
I meant absolute.
I thought you knew.

You see,
after time itself has no meaning,
        and dreams are all but gone,
I'll hold your smile true,
remember the rough,
and love you for a forever
as we disappear into the false dawn.

I thought the sun would tire
    of limping across my sky,
or the stars all twinkle out
                            and die.
I thought that crickets would stop
keeping night time with their hind legs
or robins would stop singing all day.
I thought that rain
would never fall again
                  if you walked away.
I always thought that summer
    would stop following spring,
and I believed that the thunder
would stop following lightning.
And I thought that children
would stop laughing at clowns.

I believed that a sunday would go so slow
and that the green
would run from your eyes,
                  before you turned to go.

I honestly thought
that if I waited forever,
tomorrow would offer reward
for the pause.

I thought that I would die
  before you said goodbye.
But life continues at someone else's pace,
and I'm slowly running out of life.
So it's goodbye.
I wish I didn't love you so much.
              Goodbye,
                        I said.
        Goodbye.

Twenty-four hours
and five hundred miles away
lies a pseudo-restaurant
called The White Spot.
Serves me right asking
an ugly stranger at a bus stop
    for a good place to eat.
These little quick draw cafes
have become haven
for the lower middle class
who believes that a bourgeois night
includes ordering a dinner salad
from a sixteen year old minority girl
who lives on tips and hopes alone.
When you don't frequent these dumps you forget that some people enjoy them.
Amid loud noisy tables,
these people cut low grade meat
        with soiled table knives,
and yell at their children—
who probably eat like this at home.
I couldn't watch them desecrate food.
It wasn't a fair fight.

Clank clank,
stained white coffee cups
filled with hot Sanka
            and powdered cream,
spills into the saucer
and soaks into a dried toast
covered in grape jelly.

Meal complete,
the two quarter tip
brings out pride
in the diners
and a smile
to the minority waitress.

I'm not an elitist.
I was just angry at humanity.
And it was raining,
        and I was hungry,
and even I fit
into a little white spot.

Dressed down in the rain,
I walk through the bowels
of this city
      head up and sneer intact.
The street people hardly notice.
With broken english and liquor slurs,
they call out to corner girls
who brave the elements alone.
Talking trash sitting
on a warehouse landing
      is no kind of life;
yet millions do so—
not by choice,
      but by chance.
Walking down textured sidewalks,
by papier-m‰chŽ houses,
I hear a familiar language.
There but for the grace of god go I.

For a moment
I am one of the street people.
Standing on the corner
a black and white police car roars by
light clapping the night.
I lose myself
and I can't see colour.
The lights disappear
and this road goes on forever—
          I am alone.
The chill of the siren wakes me,
  the street light changes to green,
    and I find myself magnetically drawn
back to a little white spot.

Finally,
back in my element
white shirts and quiet ties,
death humour and polite laughter,
              cloth napkins,
and pretty, straight-toothed waitresses.
I'm only sorry I couldn't understand
              the Prussian waiter.
I'm sure he was witty, or charming.
How refreshing to be in company with strangers who know how to eat.
Quietly and reserved,
the room changes guard.
More strangers enter
with the same smile of complacency.
There are no sneers in this room,
only people who can afford to dream.

Dreaming is not class-oriented,
sometimes the lower you travel,
the harder that is to remember.
Struggle only gives weight to dreams.
    To some, it's only a burden.

For me,
I'll remain comfortable with manners.
Dreaming ends
when you're out of your element.

I swore to myself,
after Denver,
that I would never again
  be forced inside a little white spot
                  unarmed
        without a cache of dreams.

Denver shits water
    and pretends it's rain.
I wasn't fooled.
I could smell the nothing,
the empty kind of nowhere
that only this city sweats.
LA has that young smell,
New York the smell of fear,
Seattle smells heavy,
          and Vegas,
    well,
Vegas smells freshly changed
            and sanitized.
Denver has this smell of waste.
I might have been fooled
had it not been raining,
but it did and I conclude:
Denver is only a mile-high asshole.

To keep her alive,
she was put away in the dark.
Alone,
  without even a shadow to share with,
  she lost track of time.
Dreams left for tomorrow
were never ever realized,
realizing that in the dark
there is no tomorrow.

The past was before darkness,
not a moment ago.
                All the love,
          all the beauty,
    all the hope
seemed to ebb away.
Wrapped in green and yellow cellophane,
with opera gloves
              and a silver necklace,
  and deep in the dark...
                            she died.
What was once simple love
is now but a single dead rose
    and perfumed air.

A billion miles from Jerusalem,
    and a thousand years later,
we walk this earth
and celebrate a death.

In kentucky
        or kansas
  it's the same.
Children laughing
and parents pointing,
  and grandma and grandpa
recording it all on instamatic film.
There are gifts from a whimsical bunny—
    a story retold by mommy
with pastel die still on her hands.
New lace dresses
and shiny black shoes;
white ribbons tied in pulled-back hair,
          and plastic grass
  in way of jelly beans.

I'll spend today in mourning;
not for your god's son,
but for everyman's son.

In my way
I'll remain silent.
Because a billion miles away
and two thousand years ago,
I'll see the recountal of history.
On a wooden cross,
beneath a crown of thorns,
and held aloft by stakes
strategically placed
  in the wrist and feet,
time has frozen
the most ambitious staging
        of the greatest sin
  Man's inhumanity to man.

I like your type.
But it wasn't your
soul-deep eyes
that caught me.
Nor was it your always
tousled hair
or your almost smile
through thin discoloured lips.
And it wasn't
somebody's father's oversized shirt
        that I noticed.
They were important,
but what I noticed
was the little blue backpack
            you dragged around.
I had a little backpack once,
and if yours holds as many memories
                as mine did,
then it's no wonder you cradle it
                  as a child.
You know,
in looking back,
maybe your eyes did help a little.

Over the highway
and across from a small white cafe,
if you sit on the railing just right
                        and lean out,
      you can see the two bridges
at a right angle.
They look so small,
like a child's erector set.

The beauty is from a distance,
up close...
      it's just painted metal.
On this hill,
and at a distance,
I reinvent romance.

At peace,
with the bay winds pushing me upright,
I realize why Sausilito
is my favorite city.
It's from here
I capture the secret of San Francisco,
      and its beauty from a distance.

Maybe reality
is not a place
for me and my humour.

Humans,
they own no sense of perspective.
They cry at familiar deaths,
while laughing at the crippled boy
whose only sin is trying
to cross the street alone
without pity.
I pity more
the throngs who beg company
    to kill lonely.
I'm proud to be a spectator
in this human's race,
and when I'm funny,
I'm funny just for me.

It was sad
watching you behave alive;
  anger and laughter
      your sole emotions.
I see you as a runner;
so go on and run.
This April rain
will hide your tears.
Run now,
don't stand still
or others may see you as I do.

Alive?
                Maybe...
  but so sad.
Go and run,
it's dark now
the street lights reflect
        only rain.
Remember,
running's fine,
it's the stopping
that kills the dream.

All my life,
      I've wanted to write.
As if I've always needed something
                that wasn't real
to prove my own reality.
Now in looking back,
it seems that your memory
is what pushed me toward tomorrow.

You and your memory—
almost as unreal as my writing.

It's not that strange
to be writing naked
wearing nothing
but black sunglasses
in someone else's bed,
                          is it?

So even time couldn't kill the goddess.
Electric blonde hair
and red leather sandal heels,
a subway grating and fifty foot posters,
wanna-bes born years
    after the hotel suicide.
The legend grows and grows.
Even old black and whites
        are now coloured.
Twenty-five years and still the world calls you by your first name.
Maybe the sleeping poison
saved the legions
from witnessing
wrinkles eat away at her youth.
Maybe death
caged a legend at the moment precise.
Maybe in dying,
    she became immortal.
Where have you gone, Norma Jean?
Who killed you, Norma Jean?

It must have been difficult
living on our edge.
I wonder how many boys
waged war with their hands
with her on their minds?
My god,
she was even used in fantasy.

I remember you saying,
You can never feel the hurt I've felt.
But I do, I do each and every day.
The silver anniversary of a death,
she died and I remember.
Not that her death was important to me.
I remember
because it was so important to you.
                    Goodbye, Norma Jean,
                        goodbye I said.

Summer boiled
and hard bodies
  with hard hats
tore apart the blacktop
with the ease it takes most of us
    of us to peel a banana.
A woman walked the cordoned avenue
with bright yellow pumps,
          and a matching mini.
Across the street,
sitting on the wicked curb,
sat an weathered old black man.
He scratched his whitening beard
and tugged at the space
below his left hip.
His left leg,
left somewhere in his past,
      was reason for pity
as he begged.

I caught myself
scanning the woman's perfect thighs
and ignoring the beggar—
So did the hard hats.

Soon she was gone.
The yellow pumps carried her
into an air-conditioned brownstone,
and the hard hats returned
to chewing blacktop.
I drove to the next light.

Somewhere in an imperfect world,
a sun bakes,
a summer boiled,
and a black man begs.

Wayne was one man
who would begin a portrait in ink.
He left no room for mistakes.
A botched line or twisted angle
only made it that much more his work.

Wayne lived life
without a rough draft
and pointed out his own mistakes
as if he were proud of them.

He once told me,
      Anyone can be perfect,
      I have the confidence
                  to be real.
Yes, Wayne,
          I said,
      fondling my erasure.

Dante died
giving his name to another woman
but loving only Beatrice.
He spent a lifetime
in a divine comedy
suffering for every man
    but loving only one.
Imagine
loving at only a glance.
How his heart must have cried.
Imagine the temerity of professing love
and waiting for the echo of paper.
              Imagine
      giving a lifetime
to loving at an absolute...
                            Imagine.

Some thursday ago,
            Ilsa died,
  and the sun went down.
The next morning came with darkness,
as if Apollo himself
resigned without hope
and kept the sun hidden
          in the golden chariot.
I lived in the years since then
                in a half-light,
smiling when shadows afforded disguise,
fitting strangers in 1941;
ending up disappointed
when time travel ended with reality.

        To dream, you need hope.
        I lost more than thursday
        when Ilsa died.

Through years of night
I ran into that autumn friday
              in the dark.
I missed the eclipse;
smiled at your laughter,
and touched your face.
You laughed and put your head
            on my shoulder;
I stopped and witnessed a flash of day.
Then,
from behind a cardboard wall,
    deep in Flashbacks,
  you stepped out of the past.
Smiling from behind a black hat,
you caught my breath.
I froze.

There dressed in black and red,
innocence was renamed.
A beauty,
    trapped in years of memory,
          stepped out of my heart
and stared back at me.
On stage,
I fumbled with emotion.

The resurrection fulfilled,
and from over your shoulder,
      the sun rose to mid sky,
  following an eclipse by moments,
and witnessed Ilsa dream.

It evolved from a dead galaxy
that had spun away
leaving its only living relative
  to glow and throw light
        at unsuspecting planets.
One hundred seventy one
        light years ago,
it shot a burst of life at my earth.
On that one summer night,
waiting for you to never show,
I picked it as our star.

In Andromedea's belt,
glowing a faint brilliance,
Mirach sits waiting
    for forever to end its vigil
  on the universe.
Perhaps
in one hundred seventy one years,
it will witness the shining of tears,
and know that for a time,
  I existed because she did.

In a million million years,
after man has eroded himself away
and time is checked twice—
  (once at birth,
        then again at death),
I don't believe this world
will grow cold enough
to forget
the summer of the short socks.

That year,
March ended
with the skeleton
of a balsa wood kite
professing the horrors
of a high wire execution,
and the first rain
warm enough to walk head-up in.

The year came around,
and I swam in sunshine alone.

The world lived in hope then.
We lived as one.
Children were still only children,
and laughter echoed loudly
off eroding walls of the past.
It was a time
of bringing horror
into your living room
    via satellite
creating even more distance.
It was an optimistic time,
        a hollow time,
    a blinded time—
it was a season of dreams.
I fell into the trap,
walked in crowds,
and sang out loud.
I made a promise with tomorrow
to love only in absolute.

And I was robbed.

Rain fell infrequent
in the summer of short socks
always when I had no use for it.
The heat wasn't unbearable,
cooled off by nighttime dreams;
the days were just long enough.

Sundays lost its regal,
      and I lost you.
McKuen didn't write a new collection of poems,
      Sinatra didn't record new standards,
and Horton Foote didn't bore a new play.
It was a short-sighted season of dreams. 
I didn't write that book,
  and I wasn't thanked for the one I did.
I lost myself in fantasy,
      and began capitalizing God.
I didn't touch the shores of Greece,
    or balloon over the city at dusk.
I didn't learn any new jazz chords,
    nor did I perfect old ones.
I survived the summer of short socks
            simply with memories.

I did write a long ago promised letter
              to an old friend,
  and sent along this poem:
    My God,
    another summer has vanished
    and the only vivid memories
                    I own
    are of the things
            I wanted to do.
I injured myself (again) playing tennis, walked in front of a bruised chariot, and rediscovered guilt.
It was a long season
that I spent
waiting for you to never show;
  crumpling up reams of first lines.
Green became blue,
despair became my favorite word,
          and you ran away.

So for a forever,
after the sun explodes
into a petite nova,
and Andromedea spreads across
      the whole of the sky,
the world will hold special vespers
                  to this time.
It was a season of dreams,
a time of hope,
a period of change,
and a summer of short socks.

For a forever,
this time will belong
  to lonely and lover alike.
It will be a gift of memory.
And all that I will own to remember you
      are dozens of virgin poems,
    a broken diamond earring,
  and tear stains
    on a dirty black beret.

Literally translated,
l'cadeau ingenu means—
      a simple present.
I remember you
because of all your simple presents.

          Life is but...
little moments
of little moment
when the move forward in time
is compromised with memory.
I remember you
in those little moments.

Do you remember...?
You fill in the blanks.
I could spend both of our lifetimes
                remembering you,
        your little moments,
  and your simple presents.

There was that story I wrote you.
I spent all of one week inventing love
to give you in nicely edited typeset.
I remember how you took it in silence
and returned it tearstained.
That's why I write.

And of course,
there was the night after the millpond.
Suffice to say
you were there nursing my need,
  and I fell forever in love with you.

One day,
you wanted out of the reality you created.
You called me and cried.
I gave you the confidence to run
              from the flyboy
  and take the green-eyed baby home.

You sat on my lap
and kissed me so softly,
that the world itself slowed to watch.
I lived in your breath
and bathed in your tears.

For a time,
your life was mine.
In the corner
of one of your goodbye notes,
you told me to pick out a star
      to claim as our own.
As long as it blinked in the sky,
                  you told me,
  you would always be mine.
I reached into the belt of Andromedea
and stole Mirach.
It still shines,
            but you are gone.

Nothing could stir me more
than the strategically misspelled stories
              you composed.
Did I ever tell you
that you were my favorite author?

So many little moments
    and simple presents;
I thank you for all of them.

Remember Casablanca?
            I do...
I wish I didn't love you so much—
                  but I do.
I wish I could have said goodbye.
Alone might have been easier to accept.
But I'm glad you're happy,
      that's all I ever wanted.
Thank you for every breath
you shared with me.
It made my life a little gentler.

I'll own you in memory.
There we can live forever.

I owe you a forever.
So as a goodbye
I'll say thank you.
Know that I'll always remember you
        through those little moments,
          all the simple presents,
and millions of magic memories.
Goodbye.
                    Goodbye, I said.
          Goodbye...