My daytime is spent assessing damage control from the mayhem, force, and devastation of you.

You are my natural disaster and I can get no aid or relief.

How can I?

You are the frenetic funnel cloud that relentlessly appears out of nowhere on a serene summer day, the vortex that upends any resistance in its path.

And I am the isolated lover, somehow still  left standing,  locked in a constant struggle with the power of your nature.

The best I can hope for is to stem my erosion.

But then night comes and the whirling, swirling energy that surrounds you suddenly stops. 

Just like that, it ceases.

You are such a different phenomenon when you sleep – peaceful, ethereal – a body of motion finally at rest.

And  the glow of electrically-charged particles eases off your skin and enters the evening,  a sacred nightlight meant only for me.

And the echo of creation haunts your breath, thickening  the sound into metered respiration, a whisper of trust meant only for me.

You are my natural disaster and the eye of your whirlwind is worth any damage.

Copyright 2010

I hold my breath until the hallelujah moment with you is over.

How I have sinned and how I have been redeemed!

Funny how easily my faith in love can be renewed as long as you are the savior.

It is a morning ritual, this posting of the letters and watching the mystery of your name tattoo across my face.

I can barely sense the seam that separates us in the steam of the mirror.

And I know I have never witnessed that exact moment where you disappear and I am left with myself.

Copyright 2010

When my mother was dying, she was hooked up to an electrocardiogram to measure her heart’s journey.

I sat for hours watching her life’s story ebb and flow, a steady list of emotional measurements.

There is my victorious son, there my disappointing daughter. 

Here are my successes, there my failures.

And then the tale flatlined.

Now I am in the hospital room with you, watching the nurse set up your machine.

She whacks the side, frustrated by technology and its power.

I see lasered punctuation marks blip and bop all over the monitor:  question marks, commas, colons, exclamation points.

You are filled with enigma, plasma, and conundrum.

This is way too much passion and life for a single machine to measure or a solo heart to hold.

When the nurse leaves, satisfied with her skills, and you fall asleep, exhausted from your life, I remove the tentacles of the electrocardiogram off your body onto mine.

A single name, bold-faced and all in caps, scrolls straight across the screen.

What are my chances now, I wonder.

Copyright 2010

I hate you.

Don’t think I don’t see you there, in the back of my mind, looking all comfortable and relaxed in the recliner of my memory.

I hate you…

And the way you get the smoke from your fancy French cigarettes to curl up into the cursive of your name and waft over my dreams until I wake up with the nightsweats from the very smell of you.

Did I mention that I hate you?…

Especially when you jump up and give me that irritating thumb and forefinger on your forehead when I am on a date with yet another incomplete loser.

I think I hate that reminder the most.

I really should issue an emotional subpoena to evict you from my senses, kick you to the curb with your jammed-up boxes of good times and other useless  junk.

But instead I think I’ll just let you stay there, in the back of my mind, while I slowly bury you under the debris of yet another poem.

Copyright 2010

I am in a state of grace.

You cannot mock my shoes, judge my haircut, or indicate disdain when I gargle my words before speaking…all because I am in a constant state of grace.

No collective finger of shame can push me off balance or cause me to falter at the center, for I am in an amazing state of grace.

I have feasted on redemption cake for breakfast, followed by a farewell kiss from you.

My state of grace grows infinite.

As I put on my hat full of hallelujah, I pet salvation’s loyal head as he sleeps by the door, already anticipating my victorious return.

Full of cake, kiss, and charisma, I head on out, a born-again hero in an ordinary world.

Copyright 2010

Did you know that I loved you long before I knew you?

I used to feel your tentative tugs at the edges of my life, your placid attempts to somehow slip inside my heart.

But I was so transfixed by the fierce force of my own nature, that I smudged the fingerprints you placed on my heart and bit your name off the tip of my tongue.

My life became an infinite search for your phantom familiarity as I wandered like a pariah, mute to my own language, using just memory to question your name.

All I could remember was that I loved you long before I knew you…and that was enough when you finally found me.

When I am with you, I am glass, trapped in the vapor between solid and liquid.

Whisper to me and I transform from bottle to bowl.

Touch me and my transparency shatters.

I am your amorphous solid, defying science, dependent on love.

When I am with you, I am glass, an altered state of being…when I am with you.

Copyright 2010

I am rock, always rock – hard, dependable, keeper of history.

You are inconsistent.

Sometimes you are scissors, sharp and cutting.

Sometimes you are paper, translucent and enfolding.

Our past means little to you; it’s all about the pleasure of defeat.

We have played this game many times before but you have finally realized just how to win.

As long as you cover my intransgience with your volatility, I will always be your perfect loser.

Copyright 2010

He has twenty-three oranges stacked like a pyramid in a bowl on his counter, some citric Mayan temple to the sun god of fruit.

Outside of the produce section in the grocery store, I have never seen so many oranges displayed so proudly.

But what is he going to do with twenty-three oranges?

It will be painful if he consumes that many in the time it takes mold to form.  I know he doesn’t need penicillin that badly.

So, is it art?  Is it a party favor? Is it buy one get twenty-two free?

And then you come in, swiping off the eye of the pyramid, juggling three oranges as if all is right with the world.

I should never take life so seriously.  You think I would have learned this by now.

Copyright 2010