No Sunset

So, what is real? It’s not these memories:
The halt, spasmodic assays of my past
Are pictures now, hung up in galleries,
Some early chapters, neither best nor last.

For love is not a happening. It is
A work of many choices, many deeds;
It is the touch that bears us through our grief,
The careful stitches to the heart that bleeds.

And you — you are the realest whom I’ve known:
A gentleness someway both fierce and strong,
And as the years have gone — and some have flown —
Love stronger grows the more that it grows long.

    There is no sunset I would rather see
    Than any with you still here next to me

Authenticity

The force that really moves the world
Is authenticity;
Though lots of time is spent on
Artificiality

Most days, we will get covered in
Real glory or real grime —
So don’t be inauthentic:
It’s a real waste of
Your time

8 Portraits, #7

Candy crush?

No, Trivia Crack.

Who are you playing?

Denise’s sister.

I didn’t know Denise had a sister.

She does, and she’s not very good at this game.
I’ve beaten her like fifty times in a row.

Why does she keep playing you if she keeps losing?

She says she’ll outlast me, that she has more stamina.

Now, I KNOW that’s not possible. Do you want me to tell her?

You get away from my phone.

Doesn’t the name “Trivia Crack” sound like a warning?
I mean “Crack” isn’t exactly known for its salutary effects.

“Salutary”? I’m glad I’m not playing you at this game.

Don’t make fun of my nerdy vocabulary…

Don’t make fun of my trivia crack addiction…

Morning Diary

It’s morning, and the air is warm
Beside these waters far and gray;
I really do not care that much
How fast I go, or just which way,
For all of this is strange to me,
Life’s normally so frantic —-
But I have hours now to taste
Beside the wide Atlantic.

My wife and I came here to stay
About a week, a little less,
To focus on each other, and
To ban quotidian duress,
But I’m an early wanderer
And she’s an early reader:
And so I separate so she
Can use this time to feed her,

And I can feed myself, as well,
With listening and writing,
Theses few short days of aimlessness
Without that bane, ‘deciding ‘.
No schedules, clocks or watches, here,
Just waxing and receding
And being glad I’m not at work
Attending one more meeting.

Though those are not that bad, most times.
But still, a change of scenery
Is welcome to the heart and eye
That’s part of the machinery
That makes up daily corporate life.
But you want to talk stressful?
My wife’s home with three kids most days,
And though she’s quite successful

At keeping most her sanity,
Kids one and three and five
Will make you wonder where you are
Or even still alive.
“I don’t know how you do it,”
Are words she often hears said:
And frankly, she deserves the beach
And all the time in bed

She wants and that we can afford.
We drove because it’s cheaper,
And got a nice off-season rate
(It’s normally much steeper)
We paid for this last year, in fact.
She hates to spend much money
On anything for her at all.
The whole thing’s kinda funny —

And yet that’s us. Imperfect, real,
With these few days to live the way we feel.

A Short History of Them

She was his favorite
Habit, maybe —
Hard to say

He was her surrogate
Plush toy, really —
Just for play

They thought they’d arrogate
Pleasures of the
Flesh and heart –

Left off, wondering
Why they both felt
So apart

Unrequited

So he loves her, but she does not love him;
A story countless through the ages told.
A type of madness now his mind infects,
Each day he tries to shake its baneful hold –

But wonders, what technique or set of words,
Or clothes, or gifts, might cause her heart to fill?
Then curses his obsession, for he knows:
She doesn’t love him, and
She never will

Torn Down

They’ve torn down a neighborhood swimming pool
In an older part of town,
There’s nothing left but s pile of dirt
With a few stray trucks around

And I think about kids, and the summertime,
And what all must go for cost —
But what is a thing that we never have
But another thing

We’ve lost


(Photo by me.)

7 Threnodies – 7

it’s such an ugly (cancer) word
i take you tuesday once again
a surgery another test
this can’t be real, this can’t be real
i’m dreaming aren’t i? aren’t you?
a nightmare vision somehow shared
this can’t be real. it isn’t real —
and you’ll be fine i think
i hope i pray —

such common things:
uncertainty and grief,
that weigh uncommon and way

past

belief