Mid-Summer

Do you curse the deep cold of Winter

Do you you curse the heat of Summer

What will make you happy?

Can you not accept the change

and be content within it?

Yes, I can. 

I can find contentment 

through change 

I must

Early October

Is it Fall on this October Morning

Or is Summer extending her stay?

I don't complain. I let the sun in

to my heart, onto my skin.

Is it warm where you are as well?

I wish it to be so for you.

Let us sit and wonder 

I'd rather dwell in uncertainty

Early Summer

What they say is true

You have to die a few times

before you really start living

I have lived long enough 

to start seeing the patterns

in my thoughts and actions

almost as clearly as strata

in a canyon

I am not as unique as 

I once thought

I am as human as you

I am as human as 

everyone that has come before

Memories

Old pictures

Music from another time

These things at once part 

of me and yet separate from 

who I have become

How much younger we were

How much older we are now

Everything as it should be

Everything as we chose

Summer Rain

Rain falling in darkness

A flash through the trees

A distant rumbling

Trembling

Moving

summer days

boxes filling up

things given away

whirring back and forth

tear apart the old

throw it away

take the rubbish to the bin

only take what serves you

Experience

Is there a joy greater than watching children
of your own blood laughing and playing
in the early years of their lives?

Unencumbered joy. Happiness untainted
by any worldly concern.

Sometimes I wish I were these children.
Wishing I were freed of the burden of being,
the burden of knowledge.

These children will cease to be children one
day and I will mourn the passing of their
innocence into that of worldly knowledge.

I did not know, did not understand when
my change into experience occurred.
Am I still the child I feel in ancient memory?

At times, I do not feel the weight of my
years and experience. At other times
it weighs me to the sea-floor.

This late summer day overwhelms us
with it's heaving embrace.

It is good to be alive and feel this warmth.
The sweat of life. The passion.

Hold me tonight.

Bored beneathe the bough of summer
Breathing in time
to a rhythm older than life
Clarity arrives without notice
Call it understanding
Call it whatever you wish
but it has arrived
and it will always
be there
like an ancient
rhythm

First Day of Summer

A beer and a whiskey
followed by a bummed cigarette
Slow pulls off all of them
Voices from the television
as the game goes into the last inning
and the batter is at a full count
Hoping the other team
won't make it's comeback complete
Ball connects to bat
and is driven deep to right field
A glove catches it
and the game is over
Dave and Moni are dating now
Couldn't be happier for them
Another beer
Another whiskey
My life coming back to me
Memories flooding
overwhelming me
I put out the cigarette
in an empty cup
A new cold bottle
reaches my lips
Old familiar places
I've been trying to leave
Here I am again
Keeping the world at bay
Trying to keep going
long enough to change things
waiting for sunrise
on the first day of summer

Summer Has Yet to Fade

The fan has been whirring all night
All we can talk about is the heat
Windows wide open
Fan oscillating back and forth
Summer heat has yet to yield
to cooler days of approaching autumn
You drink and you drink
and it doesn't matter what you drink
your body continues to sweat and thirst
Some miles away a fire consumes
swaths of land as if collecting
on a debt that had yet to be paid
Some will ask
Why me
Why us
The better thing to wonder is
Why us
Why not
Dawn has broken
and the relentless sun
is readying itself
once more

Summer Sleep

Warm summer nights
Sleeping next to an open window
How easy it is
to fall asleep in this comfort
Floating between worlds
Eyes moving behind eyelids
Seeing everything and forgetting
Seeing everything and remembering

Slow march to summer
Days of endless warmth and youth
Watching starry nights

summer flowers bloom
when will fall winds come to pass
ask the moon tonight

Is it beautiful out there?

We have a drink
and listen to the sounds
of the neighborhood
in between brief
pauses in conversation

It has been a long day
and the only question left
to answer

How soon until we go
to sleep
so we can try this again?

Echo Park Summer

Haze of heat 
My body covers itself in sweat
The city seeps into the soles of my shoes
and I breathe it out

Walking the streets
choked full of youth on such
a summer day

I am as old as I have ever been

Spring is fading fast
Summer's warmth is beckoning
Fall wanders nearby

Oscillate

My fan has grown weary of Summer
and I can't say I blame him.

All he can do is oscillate back and forth
at three varying speeds.

When we are together in my room
on those warms nights I thank him

for the pleasant air on my skin.
Other times I glare at him for doing

nothing but circulating hot air back
at me. He is a simple creature-

almost as simple as I.

All Night

The night is so warm
that I wish to turn my music up
as high as the volume can go
so I can dance
and let my neighbors hear me
over the sound of them
having air-conditioned sex
in their homes.

The night is so warm
that I wish to get in my car
and drive up the coast
with my windows rolled down
until my car runs out of gas
and I am stranded along
a beach where
I will sleep in the sand.

The night is so warm
that I wish to drink
all manner of alcohol
with friends until
reason leaves us
at 3 in the morning and we
all call out sick from work
by not showing up at all.

The night is so warm
that I wish to feel your sweat
against my skin, in my hair,
in my mouth, until
we reach a little death, then
we'll tire ourselves once more
into a balmy sleep.

this late summer

Waves are easy
when we wish to speak
of the ephemeral nature of our lives

It is late in the summer
she punishes us
with a final heated assault

Our will withers
and we find comfort
in the smallest of ways

We crowd onto the beach
the way ants will swarm
around a piece of candy

My skin burns easily.

Sun Bathe

content to be bored

you smile

let the sun tan your skin

After The Run

sweat beads down my forehead


trickles down my nose


splotches onto my clothes