A Brief Sonata

Was what I thought it would be
Words escape me, brilliant fleeting things -
They carry me as fast as
You were that day, catching me,
Snatching the pipe from my hand,
Where were my friends, Bravado and High,
To cart me off to the next room?
They were hiding, under chairs,
Afraid of what they had seen;
A teenage rebel who had shamed her father
In his own place of worship.

I walked into my past tonight,
And it was the same as I thought
It would be, different, yet
So much the same, except for the walls -
They were painted a dark brown
That you would not have approved of.
They kept the office, the studios,
Bathrooms were untouched - the same stall
Where I caught Kerry pissing in the women's toilet,
He was too much in a hurry,
Toilet paper stuck to his Converse.
The same, down to the fucking tiles,
Right down to the payphone in the same spot,
They couldn't think of anything better, Dad,
They couldn't have made it any better if they tried.

The theatre was changed, only in the seats;
One clustered clump of a mess
So different than the kind middle aisle
From which I used to sit across from you
And mimic your every movement.
A girl, one of a million,
Took my ticket, and I remembered
Actors who were then idols,
Ushered in to see works performed
Directed by you.

If I could,
I would go back to where you began
Your dream of a theatre,
The reality of what was momumental for so many
Lives made better by what you did;
I would give you the choice, again,
To go or stay.
Either way, I would find a way
To make sure that they remember.

Drinking Deep

Drinking in deeply
No need to come up for air
You are like air to me
I breathe, drink, taste
All the same, it is
All you, it is;

Your wine runs down the corners of my smile,
Fills my lungs with that
Which is sweeter than any oxygen,
The scent of musky release
And I inhale all that I can,
Imbibe all that is your beauty
Sustained on all that is your spoken word
Licking the juice from my fingers
As I stare into feral eyes
As heated as my own.


"The whole body... imbibes delight through every pore"
-- Henry David Thoreau

Saturation Point

Whiskey isn’t an answer
But it’s a start.

Your embrace could drive a woman to drink.
Hot amber down the back of my throat
Trying to wash away the taste of you
Which always stays behind,
Like your scent on sheets
Laundry does no good,
It lingers, like your touch
Gentle bruises where only you and I can see.

Where, why, how –
Can’t make enough sense to finish the questions
They get caught in my throat with your name
And fragments of what to say to myself
In response to my physical reaction
To your close proximity.

But it’s far beyond physicality.
I hear you in my hips
Which buck to the sound of your name
I taste you on my lips
Which have contoured to your tongue
I feel you in my mind
The way you take me played over and over
I smell you on whatever you left behind
The indentation of your body slowly disappearing from the bed
I see you when I close my eyes
A saintly devil’s grin that has touched my soul,
And my heart,
Burning itself to memory.

I listen to an old delta bluesman
Crying through speakers,
Of the need for whiskey
To rid that woman from his mind;
But whiskey isn’t enough,
When the senses are saturated
By stronger stuff.

Sweet Spots

He spoke to me of love -

And I drift into the sound of vowels and consonants,
I see your lips move in my mind
And they repeat the word, the phrase
And it sounds so foreign
Yet it rings of the familiarity
Of an old favorite pair of jeans
Soft and worn well
The sweet spots rubbed just right
Where you can find them in the dark.

I respond to him in kind -

Repeating this phrase,
Three words that scare me
Yet are the most important three in existence
Strung together like notes
Of the hardest music to play correctly
So is the strength of such a phrase,
Yet it is more of a sigh, for I know
You are in dilemma
Throughts draped and scattered across
The floor of your mind
Like the remnants of a child's party
Left for the parents to pick up;
Your affection is gently felt
Yet it comes from a medium of existence
That I cannot share,
That you don't truly understand
And in that state comes desire
For what's on the other side of fences;
Perhaps my side's intriguing angle
Draws you near, but I fear soon
You will find the grass will grow too high,
The sun's shiny morning fingers on dew
Will become an irritation,
And the wood will look dull and lackluster,
Once the thrill of the new is gone.

But it is your affection,
A joyous thing that,
That has kept parts of me well-fed as of late;
And that is what it is;
Affection, pure, bright and beautiful
But nothing more -
Yet, nothing less
And thus seems to be so right.
The irony is not lost upon me
That a modern day Goldilocks
Has stumbled upon her greatest challenge yet.