Only Once

He said,
it only happens once
in your life.
So be there.
Unlike the silence,
unbearable,
that was present
but never there
framed in white
and lace.
I was a child
filled with shyness
the remains
of dessert
still covered my face
and alone,
I was alone
Among my family’s arms.
I forget now
what I knew then,
that every day only happens
once.

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Friends Without Benefits

In the summer
there is a rush antithetical –
A disordered summoning
from somewhere Other.
A call to the wild.
A returning but a newness.

You are a friend waiting to take my life.
You show me how I am filled
with emptiness, like a vase.
You do it when I wake up,
when I am tired,
when I orgasm –
My face looks just like yours
at that critical moment.

By the time the fall hits
even decay looks pretty.
Even the rotting smell
of death is celebrated with
pumpkin pie and frivolity.
Come sit by me at the feast,
you have earned this privileged space.

But don’t take me yet.
Let me see another summer.

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Lost and Losing

The unlived life is not worth examining
and though it is better to have loved
it is better to have lived
than to never have felt pain
or the loneliness
that comes with having friends
and lovers like owls.
They leave when the sun is up
with work to be done
so that the sand and salt
of repetitive actions
grind through your turning cogs
of aching joints,
feverish skin,
and pounding headaches.
Plod along waiting for night,
the sun hardening your skin
to bronze. A trail,
your residue killing grass
and defining edges
of this winding path you made alone.
That is worth the living
if only for the night,
if only for the dreams,
if only for the blessed, blessed,
moment that the owl returns
shaking its own salt and dust
from its feathered back.

You were never alone child,
you just didn’t see everybody else.
So examine if you must,
love before you leave,
and cherish every broken piece
of life. I’ll help you put it back
together with some pieces
of me.

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Let It Be Now, Let It Be Now (For The Saint)

I stole something which I had plenty
and of much better quality.
Wickedness filled me.
I remember its feeling
being full
like a thanksgiving feast
of pear stuff birds
we made dance by
alternating their thigh bones
left and right.
I nevertheless felt forced to imagine
something physical occupying space
perhaps even growing
like aunt Sysaphus’ gut as she pushed
another meatball through infinite space
outside the world.
Perhaps today she will explode.
And the space remains evacuated
of anything physical.
The child of my self forms mashed
potato into his fancy in an enigma
as if in a mirror.
I thought of my sister’s dolls
the heads of which I removed
in an attempt to horrify.
It didn’t.
In surprising ways these thoughts
had a visceral effect

on me.

Now I am an adult
and my old loves, hold
me back. They tug my grament
of flesh. I still want
people to know I steal things,
things I don’t need,
but I steal to be social,
to claim purpose,
to snub even my inner voice
and in so doing
claim the freedom I am owed.

Yet still the voice continues:
Let it be now,
let it be now.

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Father’s Day

To give a life

 To give away life

 To give a way of Life.

Happy are those called to this life.

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