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I never thought we'd say goodbye in the fall

Leaves turning behind the backdrop of

An orange ball or that we'd say goodbye in 

Spring a strange imagining 

I never thought we'd come back together in

Winter although a body needs another's  warmth and care in the winter's tingling air

I always took for granted you'd be there in every season

I never thought we'd say goodbye at all in the 

Winter or the fall or in spring funny thing

Goodbye and all the Winter spring and fall    

 Ashley Told Me

Ashley told me to write again said my

poems were beautiful

I have the exact eleven words they're

in a text

Sometimes I write of beautiful things

and I have comtempt for my admirers 

who can't tell a good poem from a bad

one

and I Inevitably hate the ones they like 

kind of how I hate myself which is often

Ashley told me to write again but this

poem is ugly

Dreams

Dreams

Freud was a coke

addict and a nicotine

fiend I had a dream last

night of Heather

forty years ago she

lied about having cancer. Lots

of crazy dreams

these days

dead relatives my father makes

appearances

Was there ever a normal dream?

But what would Sigmund say? 

                                                           (May 2021)

\                                                

Fugacious

You know a Muse can be fugacious

run into them every so often 

nothing more or less

even to the point of forgetting them

And I have written about them before

You never remember some

others nonpareil

and there's never knowing which will be which 

(March 2021)

The wind is blowing autumnal, a tree in the distance green and gold

the color of my favorite football team who just won last night.

I'm sitting in one of those famous bookstores that begin with the letter B.

No, not that one the other one.

I wish I were in New England where the leaves turn early

and it seems we'll have an early autumn here, but you never know.

Solitude and lonely swallow beautiful in the fall.

c. 2000?

                                                          

 

For Ashley

The best four hours, thirty three minutes and

thirty three seconds

No hyperbole involved

although the chandelier morphed into

dancing skeletons

0 to 85 ain't bad just don't

hit a table but it looked like a chair

It is the smile that will get you hooked like a wino 

outside the liquor store at 9AM

Looking for the only late night eatery

after midnight

How can bare knuckled truth be this fun?

The nineteen eighties came gushing forth like an oil

well 

but wistful for another two hundred and seventy three minutes

 

I need a new muse just like an alcoholic needs booze

and Hitler needed the Jews

I need a new muse just like B.B. King needed the blues

and a garbage man needs refuse

I need a new muse just like a detective

needs new clues and a church needs pews

and a club needs members who will pay their dues

and if I get the muse I will drink some booze

with some Jews and sing the blues

knock over a garbage can and spill refuse as the detective

will gather up all the clues

walk into a church and sit in the pews

throw a dollar in the offering plate and pay my dues

 

It was supposed to be about John Cage but right off the bat it was a mispronounced 

waitress call me Angie and mongoloidal sperm incontinence

appetizer sure

various and sundry photographs no dessert

coffee for me

the pleasure of pain

 --------------------------------------

You should never get married she said--just have a girlfriend

just fishing cause she took a course in Psychology.

Or don't get divorced.  Telling me of other dates and men

still texting her.  Connecting dots.  I wanted to leave the second

we met because people never look like their pictures especially 

when it's only their torsos, but I stayed knowing we never would see

each other but she thinks it's only her I'm sure who wants no more

of it