The Yearly

Musing on the Muse

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This national holiday will mark our 51st anniversary. We’ve been walking the same roads together for 54 years, tied the knot on July 4, 1973. This living is a trip, and the longer we’re here, the trippier it gets! My bride has not received much fancy shit from me. We’ve kept it simple. Our greatest rewards and “achievements” are two human beings we made with dumb luck and love. I really don’t know what any of this means, this “life” we wake into every day (and I know you don’t either . . . that is if you are really honest with yourself) so all I got is my heart, my gut, and my brain. They all tell me to let love lead the way. Somehow I learned that young, and if we’re lucky, we find someone who feels the same way. I was lucky to find Pam. So here are a handful of poems written between the mid-90s up to yesterday for my life partner-wife-lover who (like our sons) is part of me. I don’t know when that exactly became clear to me, that the person I had been in a relationship with most of my life had actually become a part of me. Or that we’d become this separate-combined entity. The old vows of “two become one” are true when longevity is involved. We each have two identities. So this is the time of year we celebrate that goofy and magical third wheel—our journey together. We wish you all luck and love, and a summer celebration of this living, this life, of being alive! Peace.

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Riders on the Storm

	Like a dog without a bone
	an actor all alone – The Doors 

Layers of sun slash through blinds, 
find my thighs in a foreign room, press 
warm there as your palms and blood 
red nails that have traced my femoral veins. 
I miss you. I want to drive home,
swallow the salt of your skin.
When I imagine you here,
my breath flutters like flame, the rhythmic 
lap of fire we pulsed four days ago
open and naked as the sky. Sweat,
our secretions, love beads in our hair
bind us rich beyond our rings.
Never doubt our address, my hunger
to return. I am flinty and fueled
by distance. I crave the friction of desire.

I conjure you now to take me by the hand,
hold me till we dust to ash. 
Make me understand fluid music,
transport your body slick with song.
Our tongues know the work, language
without words, dark and wet as rain. 
You know it would be untrue
if I said the Earth was separate from the sun.
Come to me. We’ll tend to our rust, our weld. 

I don’t care about the Greeks
or voodoo economics.
Let’s start a new physics, make a world
that’s strange, refuse the responsible
pose. I rouse you to claim this space 
with me. Let’s collide like gongs, like bells, 
merge flesh to fire – ignite on the other side.
Say to Hell with custom, the rules and the rest
for a moment, the moment,
just one fucking moment we can relish – 
two Riders on the Storm.

SUMMER ANGEL

You might think 
	my heartburn's
from too much whiskey

& beer, too many
	burgers & beans --
a bachelor's diet.

The fire in my chest flares
	when I consider your heat
in this scorching summer

of our death; a new life
	for you, living your dream
in the City of Angels.

I keep telling myself to live
	in the moment (where I sit
hoping you'll come back to me.) Today

the temperature hit 100 degrees.
	I didn't realize so much
of our backyard was clover.

I'm sure the cats knew
	but didn't think it mattered to me:
always so busy coming & going,

working & knowing 
	what to do & how & why.
I know cats understand

grief. When I was wracked
	with sorrow, broken down
over my father's death,

Poppy curled next to me in bed
	& purred, squinty-eyed,
wouldn't leave me alone.

I guess it's a good thing 
	we have two cats now. 
I hope those folks in L.A.

appreciate you. Pardon me
	for being a pitiful bastard,
but I want you with me

when I notice the clover 
	or when the rain begins -- those nights
we turn out the lights & hold on. 

First Date

When I forget that night 
at the State Drive-In with you 
in the backseat of Christ's 
brother's '68 Wildcat,
Elvis ministering to Mary
Tyler Moore's Change of Habit . . . 
nothing will matter anymore.

When I forget the smells
of your hair and the Wind 
Song on your neck, the Coppertoned 
skin of your legs & arms against
that tight-white terrycloth 
shorts & top outfit, our blood
throbbing, the trickling sweat . . .
nothing of me will remain.

When I can't recollect
the fullness of your mouth
hungering to devour mine,
the anxious embrace of your arms, 
your breasts pressing into 
my chest, and our tongues
tangoing the ballroom of yes . . .
nothing will be left of my mind.

So, today, when you ask me
if I remember this anniversary,
the 43rd since our first date,
I laugh at the silly romance of it all,
duck my head as if someone lurking
overheard—afraid to be found out 
a dream lover like you . . . 
nothing else has mattered more. 

Dark Chocolates 
        
My Valentine is snoring next to me.
In the last fifty years I don't believe
she ever received roses this day. 
Obviously I'm no romantic, just a fool.
I gave her plenty of sleepless nights 
watching me follow My Old Man's trails: 
the booze and miles of derailments—
perdition road, that blackout land of 
the “lost.” It felt better than “found” 
country to me. Chasing my dad through those
dives in the name of love revealed much
but never enough, only more head & heart-
aches. Love is never easy, always difficult
to define. Roses have thorns. To know love,
must there be blood? Do we suffer love? 

My Valentine and I are lucky we crossed 
paths. Like two magnets we slammed 
together which makes as much sense as 
anything. Certainly we can be pried apart 
if circumstances are right, get turned 
around to repel one another, but always 
we've snapped back hard and stuck it out.
I know that Hell I put her through. The son 
of a drunk, I've been there, too. My choice
was selfish, and it cut her deeply, yet 
I did it and can't change that. I had to go 
there, had to know where my dad had gone 
without me. I discovered dark, dead-end 
roads he drove to lonely nowhere, risked 
my marriage, everything. Then I'd promise
her I'd stop, whatever I couldn't remember 
I'd done . . . before failing her once more.

Maybe love is sticking together to a not-
so-bitter end. I have no satisfying words 
of wisdom, think it's probably best not to
overthink it. If she goes first, there won't be
a bouquet of roses, and if I die before her, 
I doubt she'll pour a glass of whiskey. I'm 
betting a box of dark chocolates will suffice.