Musings Volume II

THE PRODIGY, THE PUPPY AND THE MUSE
My breath is held in sudden surprise.

It is her.

She is dressed in her dress.
I know her in this dress.

She is walking toward me,
Long red hair caressing the air
I can no longer taste.

She is not alone.

He is, I am to learn, a Prodigy.
And She, who has launched a thousand mumbled words,
Poorly disguised as my poetry,
smiles her smile at me,
her hand proudly in his hand.

I cannot help myself.
I pause, turn and watch my heartbreak walk down streets long ago buried
in the rubble of my life.

She seems happy.
But he did not look at me and was not smiling.

Was he angry? Jealous? Intense?
Did he not notice she had smiled and spoken to a foreigner?

Whatever. It is not my concern.
But it was good to think of her happy at last,
even as the ancient desire throbbed in me again.

But life is not what it seems.

How I was to know
he was only taking the puppy for a walk?

DAMN, IT’S COLD
Damn, it's cold.
Each step finds snow hard
and full of noise,
forgetting when it first fell
soft and white
across this same path I walk tonight.

And damn it's cold
and each look finds your face hard
and full of noise,
forgetting when it first fell
soft and white
across this same life I live tonight.

But I chose this path
and it is now mine to walk.
Eyes closed in thoughts of
when snow was new
and I deserved your kindness.

GIRL IN PAIN
I saw girl in pain today.
A long last sunny day on a broken Russian city street.
she sat on the old step
her face in her hands
her knees pulled tight against her
her long red hair cascaded
like a veil of mourning around her young body.
as she tried to become so small the
world and her heart could not find her.
I walked on by.
And wondered why I could not find the courage
to sit down too.
But I just kept walking.

I do that a lot.

EMPTINESS
I have no where to go.

I have nothing left to hide.

I have peeled back layers of my days,
only to find hardly anything left at all.

Just the raw echo of the man I used to be.

When you knew without looking
that I loved you.

SEARCH FOR POETRY
I stumble on my poetry
like a dark night on a Russian street.

It finds me, really, being led by my heart down roads only a fool would go without a map.

And so it does tonight.

There is no fool like an old fool I heard them mumble.
But it is a young fool I feel tonight
as I ponder
- what my life has yet to know
- where I have yet to breath
- what I have yet to feel

But far away, another stumbles on my poetry
but it brings heart pain so deep she can hardly remember
when I wrote them all for her.

MARY’S JAZZ
Jazz played cool
and I am only
afraid I have
waited too long
to hear it.,

Without your fingers
keeping time in mine,
why do they bother to play?

SO FAR TO GO
I cried for my sanity,
and moaned for those days when
my mind, in peace, lay safe
in your love.

Little did I know
how shallow was my heart
that I would hurt you in ways
you could hardly imagine.
Then, as you reeled in shock,
I blandly called it loneliness
even as your arms held open so long
for me,
dropped listless to your side.

But as I crest the hill to my
former self tied hard on your belay,
I find in stark relief the mountain
yet to climb.

That sanity and peace for which I cry?
An illusion born in the comforting fog
of our love.

I have so far to go.

NO MAS
No mas, he said.
And so it was.

No more craziness,
no more ravings,
no more emotional suicides.

He was happy.

And there were no more poems to write.