
Rainy days along the intercoastal
Long mornings lead to stressful nights
The last cold hours before Spring
Reading quickly by the escaping light
Rainy days along the intercoastal
Long mornings lead to stressful nights
The last cold hours before Spring
Reading quickly by the escaping light
I know you no longer read my words
But I’m still sending notes into the air
A simple handwritten melody of love
May they float away & one day you’ll be there
Evading their ongoing tragedies
Forty summers spent down in the dirt
Withstanding the weight of apocalypse
Emerging; though slightly less overt
Blast furnace of the afternoon sun
Dali walking barefoot on Tampa’s shores
Pale riders within unabsorbed light
Embracing purity through perception’s doors
The paint of our secret love notes
But can only be read through the keyhole
Shying away from all public renditions
Her passionate words left imprinted on my soul
Within doctrines of the former realms
Secular atonements when you cannot reap
Our distorted narratives no longer at the helm
Parched souls shudder when you cannot sleep
Notebooks wrapped in twine, lubricating my dreams
Thinly veiled entitlements, rushing to meet the golden hour
Misplaced refugees; tugging on our heart seams
Stomp on rose colored lenses/before the vine turns sour
Standing tall amidst populism, still reading banned books
Rejecting capitalism before you win a shopping spree
Your enemy’s dilemma might be worth a look
While upholding the realization of love’s prophesy
Embracing goblets of celebratory wine & errant notes
Time to return to glory; fire dance upon wooden boats
Taking time to reside in detail
Coaxing ghosts off the Sunshine Coast
A temper & a crooked smile
The truth when we needed it most
Knowing differences of our secrets
Diligent with passing the changes
I’m fluid in these manipulations
But for her I am, keeping me strange
Reading cracked-spine paperbacks
Wandering by; gently grabbing her waist
Creating space & sending archaic signals
Standing proud, knowing silence accustomed to taste
Reading the errant pages
Crumpling after each one is read
A gentle eye befallen the paper
Revising what each one has plead
Wastebasket- a lifetime away
Hoping it’s not the destiny of them all
Slowly, sacred thoughts form
Living in the weird space of my scrawl
Thought it to be an easy read
Yet the words were hard to digest
Meaning dancing slowly in my mind
Subtly creeping past the singular rest
Retracing lines to navigate ritual
Where do we reform elegant words
Removed from obvious transparency
Heaped among the notorious & absurd
But we can still be returned to normal
Reassembled without any scars of the war
Truth absolved of the fictions we wrote
Back to the pages I quietly implore
Rereading Orwell and taking notes
Not going to be ruled nor romanced
By an adolescent philosophy
Anyone’s faulty & retched political stance
We need to think for ourselves again
Too many left for dead it seems
Generation of choreographed absurdity
& gathering the news by sharing memes
But I have faith we can regain our promise
By exposing kindness & compassion instead
It is possible to lead by inspiration
Instead of ruling by threats & dread
***
and another thing;
a note to those in power
we need to rename political parties
CSPAN is the lamest way to spend an hour
But he never learned how to read a book
Or even the right words to steadily consume
Never expect anyone to be your savior
For intelligence, you gotta make the room
Elegant evenings; long gown shimmering
Cackling & racking back the slide
Uncomfortable theories in the moonlight
Recasting guilt on the day Jesus died
Some of us aren’t natural beauties
We must rely on intellectual fortitude
Ashamed to exist outside fantasy
Wishing for a more temperate latitude
Sweat pooling under our winks & grins
With anyone else, this would be a bummer
But I can’t get enough of your adventure
Basking in the pleasantries of a hot book summer
I’m sitting here morose
Reading pages & thumbing my nose
Bored by the status quo
Breaking off from the path we chose
I’m searching for a worthy woman
To take by the waist & forever dance
Who desires to explore love
& live by the seat of her underpants
I won’t judge you for your past
I don’t care how your body looks
Inward – we all contain equal souls
We can all absorb the beauty of books
Go read! Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Twain
Emerson, Rand, Tolstoy, Hemingway
Thoreau, Dostoyevsky, Neruda, Yeats
Great words are forever here to stay
It is solely up to you
To build up your literary wealth
But I will constantly judge you
For the contents of your bookshelf
The warmth of the First Coast has returned
But the ocean haze is beating out the sunshine
Sitting on the boardwalk, cold drink in my hand
My love reading me the pages of ‘Dandelion Wine’
Summer hasn’t arrived with its full force
In the breeze, the air cool, yet warm for March
Sideways glances, thinking of her last night
Her beauty mine to behold, her back perfectly arched
Watching children playing in the surf
These quiet beaches surrounded by thick mangroves
A wilderness of paradise’s perfect setting
Your whole life waiting for such an idyllic trove
Where there’s no concern for silly tan lines
The sunshine kissing our bodies like a magic wand
Getting lost, leaving unmentionables on the line
Removed from sight, her underbrush covered by palm fronds
It’s different once your cross into the sand
Slow your mind, pour a frozen drink & a slice of Key Lime
Colors, flavors & appetites are all enhanced down here
Mother Nature’s sun, precise remedy for the Wintertime
Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay
Reading dog eared love letters
Smelling of her French perfume
Longing to be with her again
Clinging to memories, I consume
The candlelight quietly fading
The only sound is my pen’s scratch
Scribbling missives & shanties
Acknowledged beauty, she’s quite the catch
Last season’s vintage with coffee stains
Spelling out what we might genuinely need
Hope we might outlive our transgressions
Errant dispatches; all the ones you forgot to read
Waking up before the sun
To quietly drink coffee & read
I have this worn & aging body
But a youthful intellect to feed
Take advantage of the still hours
Before the chaos of my daughters
Soon I’ll be tied up like Gulliver
& this coffee won’t get any hotter