What would it be like to kiss you -
imagined man of whom no evidence exists
but yet this desire of mine persists and persists?

Would you want to kiss me -
for that mere fact
not as just another scene in just another act?

Will your heart race -
will the rhythm match mine
is there a chance I could have something so divine?

May this be nothing more than superfluous musing -
unlike Jonie I have seen neither one or the other of the sides
is there anything, anything at all, that can bridge those divides?

I want your love
I want your romance
I want to feel - just feel.

The winters here are quite cold. However, I am never as cold as I was in the winters of my youth. Ruth would spend whatever money she got from David on mind altering substances. Natalie and I would freeze during those winters when we were kids. When I think about it, I wish that I could only have made her a little bit warmer so she could have experienced what it might be to sit and drink hot chocolate and watch television on a Sunday evening in a house with heat.

Every now and then I will look out this window in my living room, the one that lets in the rare sunlight during these New England winters, and I watch the shimmering crystalline snowflakes drift from the heavens and I wonder if it is Natalie. Is it her telling me that she forgives me, or is she reminding me that I didn’t do enough back then. Of course, I know there wasn’t any more that I could have done. Like so many young parents I was just ill-equipped, though not exactly a parent.

Sometimes, on the anniversary of Natalie, I will go out in the snow and just walk around. Though I don’t have to, and though it might not be the best decision, I wander around and just let the cold freeze me. I cry sometimes, and the tears freeze to my face. I feel better after I come home from those outings, emotionally drained. Rufus doesn’t ask questions anymore. Even though he doesn’t understand completely why I need to do it, he gives me my space and has my hot cocoa and American Spirit waiting for me at the window in the living room. I will sit and listen to the plaintive and melancholy tones of the cello album that I have had for almost fifteen years. Natalie gave it to me just before. She had saved up her allowance to get it for me – an old record that was on sale at the thrift shop ‘round the corner from where we lived.

I will just sit there and watch those crystals fall from heaven. Rufus will eventually come in and check on me, kiss me on my forehead and hug me while I cry for a little while. Then I will shower in the hottest water I can stand and go to bed and put the memory out of my mind until the next year – I pretend that all of it is just a dream and that none of it really happened.

Should I follow the prescription?
The doctor says I should, but I will be sick though it is preemptive.
Does the doctor know my problem
or are my 15 minutes of office time up.

There isn't enough time left to talk and understand
from the model T to Lipton Tea,
all is most efficiently assembled for the masses
but each one alone is the individual of mass

quick and easy
in and out
fast and loose
unwearied service

Merchandise and wares
Goods and products
perks and plusses
nothing for something

HMO, PPO, POS, Total BS
No knowledge or too much?
Jaded jury of peers and
jeers thereof mockingly

The co-pay is higher
the treatment is less
let's go to Cuba
there we won't stress

Much
For this
Or that
no worries

Will I die of Lung Cancer
or be hit by a car
will i run in circles
pump me full of drugs

please please please
no please please
release release
me

No stories of your problems
leave them be when we are in together
focus on me as i on you
don't distress me

Send me the positive
show the respect
don't have an agenda
make me feel... just feel...

Go back to Brazil
stay in the East
leave me in the west
infected by my disease

Leave me
forget me
forsake me
hate me...

The doctor cannot give me the pre-pain pain killer
it is only administered post-pain and wrech
Woe unto me and to you in this lifetime
Forgive me, I know not what I do.

Each and every day we were
such a part of one another

Morning, mid-morning
Noon, afternoon
evening, night

Your smell, taste, the feel of you in my hands
in my mouth
so unforgettable

The colors and the shape
vibrant and voluptuous
foreign and native
newly acquainted and old friends

We coexisted for 10 years
living for life--
Everyday you sustained me

Then our relationship
an unfortunate statistic
like so many

My pride and my independence stripped away
making me slip into the cold co-dependence
a vacuum- only you, only me

Addiction, yes, you were my drug
it was to you, to my sorrow, to my self-pity
the addiction, the needle in my veins

Moderation was our past
My gluttony destroyed us
it destroyed me

The second 10 years- limbo
the horror plateaued
my dependence and my neuroses- the norm

The final 7
I loved you
I hated you

You allowed me to live
but you were killing me slowly
and I laid down, pupils dilated, and let you

Weeping, abounding sorrows
enrapturing anger, abounding fears
melancholy and despair

You were always there
watching me and partaking in the sin
overstaying your welcome

We shall no longer be intertwined
like the mating praying mantises
death not following such pleasure

No longer do you complete me
No longer shall I succumb to you
For now I am the one who survives- only I will have the control

Orange and magenta sky of dusk
caressing the blue of sorrow
though predestined and of no surprise.

Soft wisps of the reminiscent mists
flowering off the weeping branches
of the willow so strong.

though terse and coarse in every situation
with the rain, the mists, and the inevitable dew of the morning after-
closure consoles the soul.

We do not cease.
The mists and the dews salubrious
preserve us and carry us
to the next era of our history.

If I have to listen to one more person give me an excuse on why the have fucked something up I might have to grab Sally and help them in their ability to understand their tasks and do them correctly. The sheer idiocy of the people who permeate my life never ceases to amaze me. How do they make it in life, I often wonder, they are so god-damned stupid.

But the fact is that they lie, these people. I give specific directions and they do not follow them, then act surprised when I demand that my directions be followed. "Oh, I didn't understand that," or "that wasn't clear." No, it was clear, there is no simpler way to put it these directions. I would suggest that someone go and learn fucking English and quit wasting my fucking time. My ability to get things done would be so much more efficient and I could finish things and move on to something more important if these douche bags didn't act the fool.

Of course, I would like to know how I could do the minimum amount of work and stay employed and not have the stress that I do in my life now? I am very curious. How wonderful would life be if you were just allowed to do your job, wear a red sequenced sweater, and act like a complete idiot and people just deal with it.

Fuck, I hope that one day I can quit work or at least that it becomes more endurable. Fuck it!

A spotless mind is no option
if it was I would and find
that mythical sunshine

It would make me a zombie
but the fear does not deter me
not knowing me
is the me I want to be

promenading and strolling
will replace
climbing and traversing

To endure will become to enjoy

The simple abundance is not what I can touch
I can't feel it
The simple is all there but I fear it I need more
I am selfish and ungrateful

I can't help it
I hate myself for it

Solitary

Sometimes my heart seems to be crying out to me and begging me for something that it needs. But, I seem to need an interpreter to understand what my inner self is searching for. Often I sit in my room listening to acoustic music and I hear something deep within me yelling at me, but I don't know what it is trying to say to me.

Each emotion known to humankind seems to be this emulsion within me. Mostly, I don't know what it is that I am feeling. I think it is anger mixed with sadness, or I just feel that I need to cry. However, I taught myself long ago not to cry. My life has come down to the point where I don't know how how to cry anymore.

The only identifiable emotions I feel anymore are anger and annoyance. There is no love, excitement, joy, melancholy. Feeling angry and annoyed all of the time is extremely unhealthy, but everything bothers me. Going to the store and going to work, eating, not eating, bathing, going to the movies. My heart I believe is trying to tell me what to do, but I just can't understand.

Right now as i am sitting here and writing these words, I am listening to Benjamin Costello's "Rewind" and I think that I should cry, I am feeling an emotion in my heart that I just don't know. Despite all of these markers I just seem to have no response- it is like I am dead inside...

It is those people, you know the ones, those who know everything, who are the loudest, who are perfect and flawless, those are the people that give me gas, indigestion, and heartburn in addition to the many other ailments of my digestive system.

Although the wise of this world say that we surround ourselves with the people we need to be around subconsciously, I find that if this wisdom is actually the truth I should want to write to the committee requesting a change in my subconscious.

There are the ones who have to complete, then ones who have to be right, the ones who have to be better. On your team at work, there is that person who is undeniably of lesser mental capacity than a mentally challenged chimp. At the yoga class there is that one person who, because you are new, gives you lots of good advice and corrects your downward facing dog, as if it was something very important, like maintaining the thrust to weight ratio on an aircraft.

It is quite overwhelming to endure the antics of the diseased parasites that finagle their way into our lives. Sometimes, I think that my mind will melt if I have to pretend to care even the smallest bit about one of their problems. When I hear my co-worker talk about how she doesn't have enough work and I am swamped with the menial zipping of files, the thought of taking up my computer keyboard and beating them to death has occurred on occasion. However, because of the laws of the area, in which I habitate, forbid such behavior I have learned to smile and nod and to be complimentary to their ever indulgent and impertinent complaining.

There are times when those cockroaches of people in this world come into my personal bubble causing my eyebrows to ping, my lips to tighten, and my eyes to display the evil that dwells inside me. However, I still have my superego to keep me in check.

If it breaks down...
Let's hope it doesn't break down.

Withered rose petals
Dust the savage terrain
Of our former war-torn oneness.

Nuclear wind boils our skin,
And the imprints of kimonos
Become ever a mark of remembrance.

Desolate and radiated
Our souls emerge
No longer innocent
Yet still naive

In my life there was once an abundance of tears. My recollection of that time was the war of emotions. There was the offensive aspect- my mother and the defensive aspect- my aunt and grandmother. They were the defenders of their territory. They banned together to form an alliance in protection of a common enemy. My sister and I were the territory.

Although, most fights over territory between those engaged in the act of war are predicated in desire to obtain and to be in possession of more territory. This war was not one like that. The offensive was trying to give up its territory so that its subjects would no longer be its responsibility. The coalition's goal was to take the territory, of course, and to adopt its subjects as its own, but the war sprang up in the fact that the offensive wanted not to relinquish rights to its abandoned territory.

Those who made up the territory were so very clueless as to what this meant. For those subjects loved the government and with such and unwavering love were distraught over the abdication. Each clause in the treaty of their new lives was a cut, a bullet, a beating and a soul and self-demoralizing rapacious act that could never be uncommitted.

This annexation of territory was not without its uprisings and massacres. There was much to learn for the subjects of the abandoned territory- their place, mainly. Of course, there were resentments as there would be in any such circumstance.

Even when the country that had abandoned the subjects re-established its legitimacy, and did not make good on the promises that those subjects would be able to return to their homeland, the subjects, some more than others, wept bitter tears of sorrow.

During those years of the war tears flowed so that the deserts bloomed with lush vegetation and that life was sustained. However, one subject, who had endured the war, the abdication, the reestablishment of legitimacy, and the realization that his country never loved nor even liked him, but saw him as nothing not even a responsibility, did he strike out on his own breaking free from the country that adopted him. All of this, but for the sorrow and hatred, would never have existed- a new country.

Those tears that has so changed the face of Africa in the mind of that subject were no longer streaming in all directions from its source, no, those tears had disappeared, it would have seemed, they make now outward appearance. They are still present though in that soul, a scarred landscape of the life formerly known.

Even though there is a new country, a feeling of comfort, the subject still yearns for that homeland that turned him out in spite of it all. But, those tears will never cry across the barren fields of Africa again, they are the blood and the strength and the success that will further the new country.

Although, I have been