The Word Goodbye

Around the time
When it's time to leave
We often find that word goodbye
Difficult to please
Lightly on your lap
Legs around your waist
Keeping you captive
Like a portrait in a picture frame
Tilt up your head
To expose a smug smile
And meet me halfway
For the longest kiss goodbye

A note:  1500 pageviews!  Pretty awesome, I must say.

14.9

My dear, I miss you

All of today, tomorrow

Till I can hold you

A prayer to the

Nighttime; please hold me warm and

Still until day breaks

Fix This, Doc

Outside reeks of cigarette smoke. 

All of it. 

The arthritic air and the black smudge trees

The fluctuating spaces between people

Walking hard and fast.

Snowflakes drop like fragments of ash

Tapped resolutely from the end of a Marlboro Red

Gusting in the cough of a tired wind.

Like the world is an ashtray with cigarette butt buildings

And in all our love and losing, we all are slowly dying

From cancer of the heart and lungs.

Finishing like Zusak

He's right, you know
When the final few lines jump to the last page
That last page, white like the gates of heaven
The worlds scrambling, tripping over each other
To be the first to be thrown down
Like the finishing planks of a bridge
All the while you are digging in your heels
Pulling back hard on the reigns, no, no
Slow down and savor like a roast Sunday afternoon
Like the last day of school
And the late hours on the eve of your birthday
Remember the crook of the hands on the clock
Remember the sounds and the taste in your mouth
What you are wearing, what clutter has gathered round
Sketch a picture, just quick, to preserve it forever
And when they ask by the thousands, how did it feel?
You can say, like each page was a single glass step
And I climbed every one to the peak of the sky
And as the last casualty words fell on the papery hillside
I looked down from the folds of a velvet blue night
And I was alone and on top of the world

14.6

The moon has not set all day
Mothlike he has swung in the sky
Lingered on the lashes of the mountains
Avoiding the reproach of the wrathful sun
And now that she has retired to her bed
He nestles in the clouds and settles down
Like a working man melting into armchair and hearth
Coffee in hand, paper blanket on lap
Bleary-eyed he watches the world in slumber
A pale shade of envy over their nocturnal peace

14.5

This is home, I think

Far from kith and kin

Beneath high ceilings that

Smell of new paint and plaster

With the promise of a busy tomorrow

Sick in my stomach

With strangers for whom I have cultivated

A tightknit tolerance and affection

This is home, I think in my crisp bed

This is home.

This is.

The Late Minutes

The late minutes belong to me

Marching by, haughty in their guiltiness

Dripping slow like water off stalactites

Muttering stiff apologies in mechanical tones

Stacking on themselves like firewood ready to burn

Those late minutes, they belong to me

And to the determined car

And to the mercurial music

And to the thought of you lying in bed

Arm behind your head, thoughts

Of me before your eyes