Some Sunday stream of consciousness. I dedicate this to my friend Craig, a college chum who’s sharing of a memory got the words flowing today.

Come Find Me
(For Craig)

Come find me
I am sitting in the back
My head tipped down
over a book.

Come find me
I am at my table alone
The salsa I am eating
is too spicy

Come find me
I am looking for
a face with creases
still furrowed from the night.

Come find me
I am not in need
but my falafel
is enormous.

Come find me
I am in samsara
A new cycle
is beginning to turn

Come find me
I am drinking coffee
and gazing at a poster
of noir classics

Come find me
I am below the speakers
they are playing The Beatles
and I think of Italy.

Come find me
I am near the brochures
There will be art classes
coming this spring

Lounge Lizards

I spilled the iced tea you bought me

fiddling with the watch on your wrist,

thought of how you were one surprise after another.

We listened to the chicken sizzling

on the grill, the fleshy smell

wafting in from the open patio door.

You told me stories of the steel mills,

the rock bands you didn’t like in the 70’s,

the girl you dumped in high school

because a wrestler mauled her tits

inside a darkened movie house.

I let you know why my heart was hard,

that in the grunge era I showered once a week,

a girl named Lori broke my confused heart in college,

how I almost lost my virginity on prom night

but then didn’t because I started to cry.

Later on in bed as you grazed my navel

I realized that I had fallen

harder than you could ever know

and your eyes of gunmetal blue

blazed like a neon sign

in the middle of the night.