We-dentity Crisis

Track 3

Low beats pound deep beneath our

                    skin so close under wrinkled sheets.

                    Sweat as heat penetrates our bodies,

pressed against each other, gripping,

                    unrelenting. Keep the rhythm of what

                    you’re giving to me. Please. Release the

hate you make me feel.  Least of all

                    I love you. Most of all I love you.

                    Shades of gray but I’m seeing red.

Your touch is more forgiving than any priest.

Gas Prices Skyrocket

He bluffed, “It’s the cheapest you’ll find a vintage sports car.”

She huffed, “It looks rather new for a vintage sports car.”

Love for the ages: soft, steady, slow, and sweet, or a

flame: fast, beautiful, and deadly, like a vintage sports car.

Pulling off her shirt she felt revealed, reviled, repulsive,

telling herself it’s not trashy if you do it in a vintage sports car.

Cherry red, blood red, red wood. Scattered under moonlight.

On the accident report they called it a vintage sports car.

Heaven forbid honesty! Hide your feelings, your secrets,

undercover. Like in the driveway, a vintage sports car.

Status symbols: a Rolex watch, a million bucks, a

yacht in the bay. Trade your wife for a vintage sports car.

The past thrown away, left to rot and not be remembered.

Left to decompose in a junkyard next to a vintage sports car.

Lost, lonely, loveless? Ditch the club, forget online dating.

One thing that can never leave you: A vintage sports car.

To escape your problems you must run far away.

My suggestion? Zero to sixty in a vintage sports car.

A gold-digging robbery! Get away with his money, his heart,

a license plate reading RAY-RAY on a vintage sports car.

Stuck in July

It hits me as I see your face

smiling bright from the photograph,

green eyes shining, blond hair

brushed perfectly to the side.

I resent you for giving up on me.

I always thought things

you would come back.

You and me, together, for better

or worse.

This is worse, but we are not together.

Did you forget that you are the love of my life?

I meant it when I said it then. I mean it now.

I see your smile and I feel

the love and I resent you

for giving up so soon.

I wanted so badly to be yours.

I thought you wanted me badly too.

I guess our want was not enough.

Some never learn.

Christmas eve past found the family on powdered hills,

toboggans dragged behind by stiff fingers.

I was the brave one, the first on my sled. The one who

never held the rope, even when my parents scolded,

told me it’s better to be safe than sorry.

I thought they were silly until I took a tumble,

my face slammed by the packed snow that had

seemed so soft just a moment ago.

I wish I knew how to listen.

I had the pleasure of modeling for my favorite photographer and best friend this weekend. She's amazing, and you should check her out!

My favorite model visited this past weekend. I got some of these stellar shots around St. Augustine

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Before our first date you bought me white lilies. I guessed you didn’t know the symbolism. But as the two of us become one for the who-knows-what time – you, deep inside me and I, clenched tight around you – I wonder if you did. Sometimes I feel as if we have become dead together. Your burning skin pressed against me, answering my need, no longer smells like cinnamon, only sweat. As your lips caress my collarbone, my breast, my navel you no longer taste strawberry, only salt. This four-story apartment building, box-shaped and bland, no longer is a stepping stone to a better life, but just another reminder of how our plans fell through. I remember the lilies as your hands squeeze my aching flesh, too warm for a corpse. The sun rises and the birds chirp and I convince myself that we are not yet dead. Even if that sun has long faded our yellow curtains. Even if we hardly speak. Even if you no longer call me liebe, though  we still make love. Even if your touch is the only thing I’m still living for.

The Boy That Never Was

There’s a candle in my window for

the boy who never was.

It flickers just as brightly as

the laughter in his eyes. The warmth

inside his heart is matched by nothing

but the flame, and the tiny drips

of melted wax, intricate as his mind.

The candle burns to mourn this boy,

the one I could have loved.

He may have lived - this boy, indeed.

But mine he never was.

Loitering

Smoke curls from the ashen tip

of a long-lit cigarette on a moonless night

The streetlamp light arcs through the rain

tiny diamonds disappearing to dust

He breathes out death, lungs burning

one more light will make it okay,

further from the end, another hour

for the pain to fade a little.

Smoke disappears like the rain in the

navy air, and yet the cool ice of her eyes

is all the more vivid in his empty mind.

Pop the Trunk

My life fits in the trunk of a civic

as i slide down this highway

miles pass with minutes

the separation of past and present

a stark reminder of reality

of time space and missed

opportunities it seems that

plans fall through and who’s

to say what comes but may today

be the way to tomorrow

yesterday says hello to memory

and so it goes as we toast to the old

and bring in the new it’s

true i am scared of the future

and you can’t pretend that you don’t

feel the same we all have our

boxes inside our trunks

no one can comprehend but us

so i drive my civic and

take my life from point a to point b

trying to tell myself that somehow

i’ll see where i’m going.