An awful crowd intrudes my solitude,
When memories rush while I brood,
But ere long pass on in sudden rush
And before I know they flood bank to bank.
I think of using bridge to go across,
But I find it far from easy---
The flood that overflows pushes me back,
And I never before knew that
A crowd of one can be so overwhelming.
… … … … …
Yet, as the waters settle,
And as I get used to the quiet,
Memories do seem like
The ash on an unguent stick
To be cleared now and then,
Or seem like essence eased out of a bottle,
The stick cannot light up my lamp,
Nor bottled fragrance stays forever,
And so do memories.
And I take solace in the fact
That memory’s like a crazy woman
Who hoards her tattered rags
And throws away her good raiment.
________________________
Musings | 04.09.2014/revised Sept 2026| memories, solitude, Free verse
Tune perdendosi purple evening ebbs decipher
Out blotted skies swaddle boats’ cosy slumber
Burst fish femme fins, her brave roe survivors
Immense installation certifies cosmic number
Koi silk sway exhales eggs painless, float lazy
Overlapping orange spheres, sunshine daisies
Tadpole transforms, one prince among spume
Ad interim mermaid melody, in dusk dissolves
Injection unguent jelly, elusive musical neume
Lavender everlasting, ripe ova reptilian evolve
10th February
Mermaid Quite Contrary
BF’s Girl
Man is identified by behavior.
I say man and she demands an
Accounting. The definitive correlative
Can not be spoken. The constant common
Can not be held in union. I must discourse
All caveats else no communion, no love.
What of it? I can stick a thermometer
Up her ass and she registers normal.
All biology, chemical registry, hormone
Therapy, cat scan technology yield
No abrasion any unguent could quench.
I say what harm I live and chose, too?
She speaks of a box she wasn’t raised in,
Impacts everything. A falling body accelerates
Jubilant of nearing home. Childproof or regret it.
There’s a streetlamp outside my bedroom window
A yellow halo suspended in the ebon night
An eerie glow like an alien moon
That seems slightly awry
Somewhat out of tune
In the black velvet of the night
A comforting constant
In the fabric of my young life
A reassuring buoy in the sea
Outside my window
An unguent…a balm
An island of comforting calm
An oasis…safe harbor
From the fear
And from the strife
It’s a constant that
Changes constantly
It’s demeanor dependent on
The time and the season
Given at times to light translucent
Paper thin…perhaps e’en thinner
And changing from bright to dim
At will and without rhyme or reason
At times I wake tossed
In nighttime sea lost
Hair wet with sweat, as is my pillow
My night fears slink away
And my fears are allayed
By the light outside my window
A kiss lightly laid upon top of my head
Blanket tucked tightly about my shoulders
Once more I’m left alone
With the light outside my windowpane
And I fall to sleep again
Wrap’t tight within
The glow from without
My window
MOTHER’S LITTLE KILLERS
She hates them, the unguent power
Which sticks her fairy wings together
Making impossible the ivory tower
Of disinterested passion, the if and whether
Of generic names, the ultimate aloneness.
The honest answer is to unstick
The loathsome epithets accompanying the mess
Let her soul free with a lexographic brick
As she goes on her desert train to limbo -
Grant her freedom to ride into the dusk
Without turning her into a soulless bimbo,
Pills shedding the epigrammatic husk,
Cavorting in the lunar satellite,
A spaced monkey too drugged to fight
Your curiosity pulled
the poisoned dirk of loneliness
from the deepest chamber
of my quaking heart.
With steady hand
pressed to the open wound,
the healing process began
as wonder turned to love.
After washing away
festering insecurities
then wrapping me
in the gauze of your embrace,
you breathed into me
new desire to subsist.
Your devotion became
an unguent balm.
Kissing my heart
made it well.
Now I wear an untoughened scar
capable of growing stronger
through days and nights
of togetherness or gaping again
should the straight-bladed
dagger of solitude
be repositioned.
I tremble,
hold my breath,
in frightened anticipation,
loathing the thoughts
of lovelessness
cutting through me
again.
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