caught in a meme rev 3

-love  as a three act play

 i could tell you
about my craigslist forays--
there's a  woman's looking
for a guy your age
to take care of, preferably
homeless with an addiction
she could feed,she loves
to cook--
but i clamp down
the urge to supply you
with different or a need
to question ownership of the mix
i smoke. you're off

to some well traveled city,in a mid rise suite
pasting together words in a way i envy
without malice and yes, there should be
a word for that, but
admire doesn't carry the requisite pain.
i skim your phrases, look for recollection
or remorse or something left
in all the letters between us.

i tend to flex my muscles at the wrong time,
arrive at the table after the candles
are extinguished, apologize
for the future.  again.

so when you arrive,late,i won't whine.
 i will interrogate
and rail a bit, piqued
by thorns of our shared sin.
but no whining.
when commfort food's on the table
even cold, i'll eat.


 ********(__)*******


late last season, we wondered if
we'd make it past those dim short days
into the wild winds of spring.you held
me-  apocryphal in declaration,
bristling with intention.

tornadoes pepper the midwest now
roads infused with glacier
 and flowers bloomed too early, drown.

still i see beginnings, i see
opportunity in mud and slick and  straw.
you see sky grayed over,wan sun
on lit tips of clouds you can barely
see but they sing of iced summer
with a lemon twist sipped
by a red-head whose emerald eyes make
impossibilities of your stuff of dreams.

how once you had that
you could never go back.
how once back
you thought deserve
was the same as to have.



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(__)oooooooooooooo



no wonder you couldn't sleep
on my bed's bare rubble,
stacks of cracks filled with slack lack
and mandible mornings,
disappointment dossiers on the dais.
let's compare notes.
fake the statistics till they tell us
what we want in three studies or less; let
elegance and simplicity trump  the complications
of a mandlebrot with broken syntax.

 the band's on its way. pinks
 peek from hazy blue eyes
closing on the coming dark.
 an orange cat's curled up in the sink,
been there all day,paws over his eyes.
ashes on the floor remind me i'm a writer.
you come in to talk,but i'm looking for
 the voice of my great-grandmother
to hop into this keyboard and hold my hand.