Trees I

Words come out

Affirmation. They send to you

Confirmation to the way,

Yet you know not my true play.

It’s enough for you to allow me

To walk beside you for hours,

Talk and drive and solve—

Not my heart’s dilemma—

Together in kindness with a smile,

Joke and laugh,

Eyes meeting in friendship

Without doubt—For you—

While I sit next to you

Sitting back on the porch

Hoping for, hating, enjoying

The moments of us staying in, staring at the pines.

Point of the Sea IV

What is it that lies before us

Just outside the finger’s contact

The reflection of light to an eye?

What is it in his face that I have to see again and again?

When you started liking photos

I liked yours back with equal intention

And urgency, until I saw the other

Tagged with you and yours.

Drawing back was all I could do.

What was beyond touch was left aside,

Afar, out of sight without attempting glance,

Beyond, without knowing where to look.

The kisses we had on the edge of the sea

Would be the Thirty-year anniversary that never came,

Your lips at the airport would be death’s separation,

An eternal departure where you never look back.

Housing VIII

Where am I?

I don’t know.

Am I trapped in an apartment, bound and gay?

Am I wandering the woods without compass, orientation?

Am I flying away quickly, never to know man’s kind more than I know myself?

Am I tilling the field, seeds thrust into, plowed?

Am I loading large bails of hay, tossing balls?

Or Am I lying on my couch, besotted and being sodomized?
That’s where I must be, hiding in a closet, passed out under the table, 
Vomiting out the window, sick to the stomach in bed, 
Desperate for life beyond the malaise of metaphors.