found these old pics on g drive. the writing prompt was you're immortal. 55 words.

i had some fun dates when i was single. not many. but some, like this one. the streetlights were all disco balls, rotating in the sultry dusk. my date, a man who relieved me of  not one, but two kittens from a large litter borne by my last unfixed cat, was doing a side job for an out of town artist friend. he had to make sure all the disco balls were spinning, and if not, attempt to get them going again. we strolled  the river walk, along the new convention center, where a formal event was taking place.  i stumbled among late arrivals like a bewildered waif, gazing at the spinning mirrors' refractions on the sidewalks,car windows, a young woman's coiffed hair; noticed  the new trolley station installed across the street, exclaimed -let's take this out to ybor! i meant later,  but he was working. i may have embarrassed him, a low key guy who kept under everyone's radar.

in the rotunda, light swims in swarms over the marble and glass high above, like gnats pooling in patterns on the roadside, mornings on the way to work .i stand transfixed, recording the movement. bottled fire. the galaxies of pandora's cluster. caged infinity, revolving.

dreaming seeds

i thought it would be fearless, like sun. it's more diamond. facets of lives i've lead reflect into one another. i bounce off brightly blurred memories, settle in the middle. time is measured in lovers' deaths. centuries pass between one new taste and the next. i envy flowers, the joy of the sprout.

people passed by me as i stood against a wall of the portico transfixed, looking up. cotton skirt, sandals, sloppy shirt over a wifebeater, braless. some side-eyed me, some glanced up as well.  my date went about checking the globes and the spinning while i stayed in the the shelter until the last pink was gone from the sky. 

this was a different date, an entirely different man. we found this hallway and it feels immortal-the ghostly pattern the slanting sun light makes on the left, just before the turn. but i digress.

after we inspected aaalllll the spinning
 disco balls  and there were so many, all
 the streetlights around the convention center
 and the river walk around it even
 along a side path turning
 from the river, where looms an old
30's  era gate tower i'd only caught in glimpses
prior,  an un moving globe discovered!
so he resets the motor, takes out a retractable
grip, gives it a spin and we watch it for a while
and maybe we kiss i can't remember but we do
 have a smoke then he says so, you wanna
check out that trolley now?

how to read a poem

dive deep, hold your breath or wade
in gingerly, in case it's intemperate.

this is not a book to carry you
out of yourself to some deserted island.

the poem surrounds you, envelopes you, it
can buoy you   or pull you under.

sit in it for a while. let it sink into your skin
until you understand the story in the wrinkles.

3/5/3/3/7/5 you gotta beat for that?

shadorma
forming in my eye
your lips move
shadowbound
hidden definitions take
time to integrate.

bake a quiche
use time for tastes to
conjugate.
meditate
on nature's law-survival
of the fittest (rich)

ironic-
 pour a gin and tonic
perfection
in the sun
rising in the east, chronic
as a missing line

like cancer
cells on crack-of -dawn-
ings, crying
uncle please
 take me with you don't leave me
 in the light, alone.

arising
form displays sea life
 in a pink
 claw, floydish
maybe your girlfriend, boyish
time skews, all goyish

and jesus
lights your sky again
second time
arisen
you're caught with clothes in the midden
quite the emperor

quite a rogue
still i'm betting on
drinkable
bottles that
vanish in your mouth, solar
power in our house

turbine tech
to make things cleaner
leaner, dream
it greener
better service for a king
and all his minions

onions one
inside another,
layers, folds
sisters, brothers, let's hold hands
make one solid band

be saturn
in the summer time
live the pome
be the pome
caramelize or find no
home in the system.



quite

half moon again

sitting under a teaser sky
clouds fly overhead, cover
clover and incense of death
with fresh breath that will rain
somewhere else.  sunshine we have plenty
but no water since the last hurricane
rushed through in october.  april's
showers should drench
the beach-that-was-my-yard but
these clouds are on a mission east bound
the atlantic calls them home.
you and i spar politely, the elephant caged
for now. brush sullied tears threaten
but inhale, watch the surf form above.
you can't deal with all the anger, egg of a chicken scratch.
why do breakups always make better poetry?
no one wants to see those pda's you call love poems.
no one. not even her.























*






lately all the blacks and whites
have been divided between us.
the yesses, the nos are batted across the net
dexterously, dexterity changing with the moon.





















*



there could be freak storms in the mountains or floods
in the lower banks. i'll be on the road and oblivious
because i've cut all technology with a mute button
on the road and cruising. i think the georgia cornerstones
would be fun to see again, though repetition is a venal sin. 

never put two spaces after a period? so strange but i think i can handle it. i feel you back there trying to give me a heart attack but i can type all of this out of me.
the bed i bought which i call ours except when i am upset and rightfully claim  as mine is supportive but soft. if i sit in an ergonomic position and don't try to see exactly what i type it doesn't hurt too bad. my feet are flat on the floor. my posture is straight. i hae ontrol of the keys and i'm making you jealous. see i lost it there when i began to thin about you . i don't want to think about you. you always promise me so much but are so sorry when you don[t deliver.  nasty when you came home and found out that something you were promised, something you looked forward to  getting or sharing was not, well, to be true, you were not taken into account in the smoking of the joint . but there was more. just....not that flavor. it wasn't that good but it doesn't matter it's the principle of the thing. of course.  now you there are with your head covered up like a zombie boy who wants to be  cuddled and told there there baby it's all ok.

but it's not ok.   because i need to talk about it. you need to talk about it. all this anger coming out, the passive resistance, the dead thing under the house. i'm so happy you can sleep this off motherfucker. i understand all this anger coming at you from no where at all leaves you baffled and i can't even cry pms because hysterectomy.  it's the anger of all of it that closes you down. but it's not going to go away. i just get angrier and angrier. it builds up in tension, comes out in a foaming at the mouth reaction. the treating it like it's yours when it's convenient and like it's mine when it needs fixing.the kitchen, the bathroom, jake's room. you haven't changed that much except in the degree of stubbornness about perfection. you once told me you wear people out. i am beginning to think you take that as a challenge. 

when i met you , you contributed to the household chores and didn't seem to mind. i know you had more time then but now when i ask you to help you tell me you pay rent now and the kid room mate drags all kinds friends and dirt and the cats are not yours but still you clean up the catshit from the shower every morning and feed their meowing asses and take out the garbage and the recycles so what more do i want from you? there's no need to mop or sweep because someone else will always mess it up. that attitude also makes me angry. i believe i've told you that but you just shrug your shoulders and keep it. why not right? all the more justification to hoard stuff i guess. i mean honestly babe, wtf you're saving a panko bag? listen we don't live off the grid and i really really hope we won't survive the apocalypse that makes that bag valuable. but seriously, i pay rent too. i pay bills. are you a tenant or a partner? maybe that attitude contributes to why i feel like i'm being used. 

on the question of money, you are a spendthrift. i don't think i need to point any further than the nearest pile of dishes and  various unfinished projects lying around to prove my point.  you once told me you believed we could make a great team. we cannot even finish a bathroom project together, despite all the money both us have thrown at it. it's never the right time to talk about it, never the right time to do it. we cannot co ordinate our free time to even approach it anymore because of the emotional baggage tied to it. and now you tell me there's no sense going over it because you already KNOW all of this. so do i. i'm living it. i KNOW it intimately. i cannot comprehend why you are behaving this way. you can only say there is too much anger to talk to me about it. we need to find some alternatives or this is going to kill us. 

is this how people break up? always the little stupid shit that could have been avoided with the proper mind set? it makes me very sad. this anger, my anger towards you is rooted in the sense of disrespect i get from you. the housework attitude is just one example, the bathroom ad naseum.  we also have begun to contradict and question each other, is this a maturing relationship sign, will it make us stronger or will these behaviours break us up?  i don't intend to end up bloodied on the floor if this this thing is aborted. i want it medically incised. lol. maybe we can  take a pill of for that. 

of course, my intentions are my own road to hell. as yours are for you. the poet has no insight. the writer had to write this. the lover wants answers. the lover wants it all to be ok but she isn't strong enough to keep fighting this forever. in the war of attrition, you are the master.