What do you ponder?

Staring through sunglasses

Looking across the white river

Glared by the spring sun

Are your thoughts happy?

In-depth of what could have been

Distant lost in shadows of regret

Maybe you pondered just a moment ago

I’m the erosion decades of pondering

Sitting in the sun just a ways from you

Your solitude is crashed upon

By necessity and disturbances of the present

Soft cheek against the cold breeze

From the icy river flowing under white

Your thoughts are hidden from me

Flow under the back, stand, and walk away.

What did you ponder?

Behind those shades of black

Looking into your tundra

Glared by the sun of your landscape

I was lost in my fate

Just for a moment, I was free in you.

Thea D.

You are close Thea D.

I can feel you I can taste you

The first drop of you on my tongue

Sends my flesh into tremors

You turn away with a smile

That wave retreats the hunger remains

I had to let you go the sun was here

All those shadows did not see you

Your essence just from your smile

Is as thick as chocolate

On a summer’s day

I’ve taken a deep breath

Still, the hunger remains

It is to kiss the smothered scream

With my lips and swallow your fear

To take what trembles inside you

And press me against its strength

As you watch his eyes dim

From the even flow pushed out

By the every beat of his heart

It’s as thick as chocolate

On a summer day

12.

Sirens echo through the city blocks

Bouncing off concrete and glass

Shatters the murmured traffic hum

Dividing the peace from the pieces

Fragmented serenity in their gutters

Crude clay and crack

Slurred and muttered

Flows thick as blood in these corridors

Cleanest filth you’ll ever sink into

It moves thick and black in your veins

Shifts what matters in your head

Just enough to make it go grey

And what matters just goes away

Until they find another to be a victim

To their self -assurances victimizing another

Like vampires cyber feeding on defamation

Ghouls sitting next to their guillotine

13.

I am not that which I see in the mirror

That reflection lies

Nature has formed me

With the breast of a man

And best intention’s guise.

Turned what soft hand there was

To become the hard hammer

Of many lives

Under brooding and thunderous heaven

It tears the fabric of assumption

Sense denies

Winding moments into decades

Aspiration into regrets

A present that cries

And cries aloud for the truth

To change the thing I am

As day shows no stars

Oceans share no secrets

I am as bright and as deep

I am not the shell assumed by the world

But the just gender that unfurls.

14.

I see glimpses of me

When gladiolus bloom

Perfumes the moment I pass

My breast swells when I see

A child distraught

In her discomfort of hunger

Or need of close caress

I am captivated when mother robin

Feeds her chicks

Quieting their cries

I am amused when the girls

Laugh with their freedom

Conquering the moment

With friendship and admiration

Of each other

I am amazed when these girls

Lack of oppression and self-censorship

The last few decades have imposed on me.

I see glimpses of me

When rose blooms falter

Leaving petal strong paths

Lush pink in the morning sleep

My heart swells

When the oak and the elm dance

In the afternoon wind

Letting the chattering laughter

From Mercer’s tavern

Be carried off while I

Stroll a path in solitude

When I get home

Oppression and self-censorship

Has withered and waned

I look in the mirror

And all I see is a lonely old man.

15.

I am alone dark and empty

I have nothing left to give there is nothing to take

My, hunger grows caught in a whirl

Twisting me apart bringing me down

Turned, tossed in a wave by the great big sea

Twisted into knots shredded into the quiet lake

My, headaches caught in the ravings you hurl

Against this wall, the whole thing will never come down

Just to make matters worse I think of you

Nothing prays on my mind more

I remember summer fires and sunset hues

The smoke and you so far I couldn’t grow

I remember a long-distance drive soared

Through the night just to look into your eyes

I fell from the blue.