the gift

The velvet ribboned box
Hiding hollow heart
Greeted me in a most demure way
Distracted I thought you a book
A book of which I already possess 5

But leapfrogging timelapsed conversations
Half a day away
Has me relishing my certain quietude
I knew it would come
The weightless feeling again
I can exist in this bubble
Suspended
It has all the air I require
I leave no footprints and I only occasionally
Snap photos
Some say be bold
When I am bold
I am prone to folly
So instead I hide
Hollow inside a festooned box
Three names imprinted upon me
Typewriters are objects for the nostalgic
I like the clickety clack
Clickety clack

But I am of a mind to purchase a fountain pen and a leather bound journal
I wonder would those inspire me more than the beribboned box inviting me to be filled?

I am a skilled rationer
Rationalizing is an art as well
But I am speaking of chocolates in buckets’ small supply
The only discipline I possess
I can make it last

But there are times I squander
I engorge to sad result
Though my slim-hipped form is still boyish in many ways

And like a stubborn boy
I will not give up my dream of you
The belief that you will never leave
Though you left long ago and sent me away
More times than I can remember
Like a child I lie badly
I remember every time
There were just more than I like to admit

In this you are more the boy
You forget what is least convenient to remember
I go out of my way to record
And perhaps this is precisely why I require a leather bound journal
A pen and a bottomless heart-shaped fountain 
Full of blackest blue
 

starlet

I reveal too much to be a mystery
There are scarce few rewards for humility
So I am packing my words in musty old trunks
And sparingly offering them in bite sized chunks
Let them eat petit four and have it too
I am learning what it is that I must do
You can't get to the top in comfortable shoes
Because sometimes I win but most times I lose
It has too much to do with knowing the who’s whose
So I dropped a name and I added a face
But the higher I climb I'm farther from grace
She waits at the lowest rung of the ladder
For my repentant return
Even though I have told her there is still so much
So much more I have to learn

beachcomber

Silent
I walk the shores of my waking
And spend quiet hours
Gathering bits and pieces of once beautiful things
That broke against my barriers in the moonlight

The rock that shattered
And the salt that polished
Have left only fragments
Glittering remains of great worlds and deeds
Ages old

I scoop them up
And spread them on the mantel
Where I hope they will remain
Until I return to them

On my next vacation

Some are lost but a few wait gathering dust
I blow them off and sneeze and sigh
Over my inability to understand what once they were

I carry them to a more scenic setting
With the hope of stirring memories of these
Now meaningless emotions
Their intensity fades under the brilliant scrutiny of the sun
And I know only that though their moment has passed
Still they remain

I pluck a silver strand from my temple
And string them together
The necklace with which I adorn myself
Is heavy

a sort of reconciling

You prepare your confession online
The only green patch left
There is life here
Stuffed into these vertices
With a razor-edge knife
You can scrape it out
From under the baseboards
Hide it in your cheek pouch
Before anyone notices
And slip quietly out of the box
And into the square
The host is meant to share

You marvel that the squirrels remain so fat
In all this snow!!!
You tried to feed them
But their palate is... selective
And fennel in snow is more suspicious
Than heiresses sunning themselves on the upper deck
But these aren't Riviera squirrels
They need heartier stuff to satisfy
The hunger that leads them to scrape electrical wire
Snow plow-like

And I need more than words
To satisfy

assasin

There are some whose words stir me:
Mark Helprin my unknowing mentor.
Solomon Grundy my unknown friend.

---
For your words
I still brave space
And find I am not disappointed
To arrive at the dissolution
Of your thoughts to paper
I gather them up
Reading the maps you've drawn
And prepare for myself the second coming
Unholstering my weapons
For once again, I am aware—
A shooting star
In its very failing
Its falleness, its falling
Is far more interesting
Than the brightest, most steadfast point of light
Ever will be
To the naked
Eye of the beholder

I am beholden!

overcome

Got a bit of a Coen Brothers feeling today.
Revisited and revised an old write.

---
I bought a gun,
A great big one,
To kill the monster beneath my bed.

"Oh! please come!
Let's have some fun!"
Is what the terrible beasty said.

But I was done
With the lying son,
And that's just what I said.

He tried to run
From my great big gun;
So I blew off his head.

(There are some
This may stun—
That I preferred the finality of lead.)

I destroyed all his forms
Till there were none
Then watched him as they bled.

But when it was done,
When I had overcome,
I found I missed the dreams he'd read.

And in the sun
I dropped the gun,
And a shroud about him spread.

Now all alone
I sit and mourn
That all my fears are dead.