Category Archives: literature

prufrock revisited by a woman in vegas

let us go then
under a desert sky
taut as leather hide, stretched

to the empty hall
where in younger days
our heels would have clicked with rhythm

my body used to hold
the shape of a stiletto,
now it wilts and bends

ah the men, they come and go

and how the sky changes knowing
volatile lessons, lost.
maybe i should
drop a rope for younger women
who don’t know
yet.

To Her, Love Wayne

when you dance, my heart beats so that I can
barely hear the guitar ripping
through the amplifier, damaging, loud,
and when you look at me and smile,
it seems I’m not alone in this bar but with my lover
who is like me great,

and when you speak
we talk of books, of Ayn Rand, and the meaning of
reading and understanding
that great swirling world just outside the door of this bar,
that can seem so pale sometimes.
I made you that stone blue necklace because it reminded me of
your eyes
and when you wore it right then, while you danced,
I knew it was love.

I traveled every Sunday night for you.
I waited to talk to you, patient.
I bought you beers, and for your sister,
thinking you noticed me, my smile, my love,
I dreamt of you
in my arms, only mine
mine mine mine,
I wanted The Fountainhead to give to you
like in those shaking dreams,
dreams where you and I stood on the summit
and consumed each other
and the pale pale world.

I ignored their laughter, those musicians with long hair,
long past their days of true rock and roll–
who are they to judge me,
they can’t move on from 1979,
from mediocre covers of uninspired music.
I professed my love after four months of longing,
of knowing you and me,
me and her,
meant to be, like a happily ever after…

you smiled
and looked away and around,
around, around, around,
desperate for?
for what?
someone to save you from the embarrassment–

I hear them laughing, and i can’t sleep anymore, and
I hear you saying, “you’re nice, but”
and I can’t dream anymore.
I will be patient. I will wait for you.
you will come crawling on bloody knees to me
back home like the exile who has
gone so far away punished
hurt,
lonely,
near death,
and is forgiven and asked to come home.

reading Sylvia Plath (on a Friday night)

not quite midnight yet the page
hustles me to suddenly note –
the catch of desperation in my throat
outside Earl’s temptous winds a beggar
on their wayward trek to Maine
clacking round my lonely legs bare lain
with echoes of a lonely man
whom outside speaks maniacal tone
“where am i going?” i couldn’t know
and the north winds of a sweet
counter-clockwise spin round, a round
saying lonely child, silence is yet a sound.