Fifty years I have known him… and he is the most God-awful boring man alive. His parents picked his career, gave him their business, and all their money. He lives about a mile from where he grew up. Married for lust in college, and because it was the 70s, he fell in love with the endlessly perfect blond hair hanging down her back, covering her ass. She left him eventually, well, because he was so unbelievably boring.

He made every good decision in life one can make, but after two beers, and listening about his perfect kids, his evenings watching…

Total silence. Not a hum from traffic we hear, but never hear. Not a bird, we are much too high for the small chirpers to survive, no planes rumbling overhead, as common as flies and just as annoying, my phone buried in the bottom of my pack, worthless this far out anyway, nothing here but a vast expanse of absolute, deafening quiet.

We were eight hours deep into the Gore Range of Colorado, just three of us. I sat alone on a slab of an ancient rock jutting out into a deep blue sky so close I wanted to wave…

Your love for them was your life,
but love is never enough
to keep them with us,
one by one,
those we cannot live without,
and love without reservation,
die no matter how many tears we shed
We are always
left alone in the end

When the ones
we love leave us,
we beg for one more minute,
time to set it right,
to settle unfinished business
to say the right things,
the things that should have been said,
but long ignored

There was a friend now gone,
who had it all,
the wife who loved him,
the kids he thought…

Older today, much older, moving slower and there will be a time to quit…. but not today world, not today. I walk the worn, wooded paths, crunching along in the red and gold leaves of an early fall, walking my furry friends who sniff and play in the clusters of fall magic. I still live, I still love, and I still appreciate the beauty that is my life.

I could make another call, answer another text, return another email… but world, not now, there are a few people who love me and now is my time for them. No more…

Love savored,
one endless day at a time
No whispered promises needed,
or given,
of a tomorrow

No lifetime beyond this hour
Just you and me my love,
passionate touch
in the full intensity
of this moment

Loving each other
one day at a time,
alive now in the hours
the world has lent us

Loving another
is the simplest hell
on earth,
be in love in this minute
with one who is yours,
yet knowing the deepest
of love is a fleeting mist
the universe may blow away
on a random whim

But today we are love
Today, are hand…

They walk by in an endless flow of nothingness
The good ones all happy in perfect lines,
following the path of least resistance until death

I sit in the weeds, sipping wine out of a paper bag,
wondering how I made it this far and haven’t died
I throw a rock now and then to make them dance,
maybe the only moment of sheer terror this group ever faces

Finish school, any school, just get the stinking degree,
marry the one who will complete you,
even if she is not the one,
then marry another one if you get the first one wrong,
then…

I love the mean karma,
the kind that bites you
in the crotch
like a rabid poodle
You run down the street,
shrieking in pain,
small dangling fluff
of white fur, flopping
in the wind
between your legs

I love killer karma even more,
the one strong enough
to chase down
and pound the scum
of society into
a pile of dribbling,
whimpering, dog poop
in the gutter
of humanity

You, who didn’t call
your mother this week,
a poodle to nibble greedily
on what used
to be your manhood

You, the one who walked
by the homeless guy
in your five-hundred-dollar…