On this New Year’s Day 2024, I want to send best wishes to all my friends and readers. You have been so supportive this year. Thank you so much. Hopefully there will be a new novel for you to read this year. Keep an eye out for an announcement.
I wish my dear partner Geraldine a very Happy Anniversary. My apologies go to her for the first two difficult years, when I was so hard to understand.
Make Up Call, 1976
She: “Perhaps love is an illusion
a passing fancy, a mirage,”
Me: “Yes, a gamble, a game,
the risk we take to find true love.”
She: “That makes no sense”,
Me: “Love lacks meaning,
a dream of reality
in a fantasy world.”
She: “Why is Love so undefeatable?”
Me: “It vanquishes doubt,
pulls small victories
from the jaws of defeat.”
She: “Love can be hard to understand.”
Me: “It is a straight A student
failing a final exam
because his writing was hard to read.”
“Love is always held accountable
for misinterpretations of the past.
since it’s born and dies each day
through no choice of its own,”
She said nothing, so I went on.
“Love is all four elements:
rolling ocean waves,
dry land, air, and fire, too.
Love is our best warrior,
gives no quarter, takes no prisoners,
crawls on hands and knees
under barbed wire barricades.
Love is a great lie,
a trick we play on each other
while we anxiously wait
for truth to arrive.
In a corny western movie
love is an oncoming locomotive,
dark, mustachioed Simon Legree
and Nell tied to the tracks.
In the full-length feature
our hero arrives on a snowy steed
in time to save the frightened damsel
who ends up in his arms.
Love is outlaws buried in Boot Hill,
bullets that put them there,
drunken undertakers who dug their graves,
and heavy stones holding the bodies down.
Love is a child’s bright balloon,
sweet French toast each morning,
after someone else's orgasm
has driven you to distraction.
Love is followed by hawks and eagles
wherever it goes, even
to a noble mountain top
and every step taken to get there.
Love is always a live wire
running between our two poles
of a strong magnetic field
making it possible to survive.
It is a song you wouldn’t sing
if you weren’t in love,
completely private, yet on parade,
a knight in shining armor with dirty shorts.
A becalmed day-sailer on Bear Pond,
an organic popcorn farm in Maine,
one hearty vegetable soup,
and the cook who nearly burns the broth.
A quick embrace before a feast,
a free bottle of Maker's Mark
found in Wiscasset’s Inn,
gone in an instant.
The lucky lottery winner
whose ticket unfortunately can’t be found,
a loser’s scattered tickets
lying on the ground.
Love is confused and forgetful in anger,
Free and clear in joy,
quiet and calm under attack,
loud and rancorous when attacking.
Love is the last thing one wants,
until one gets it.
First thing one wants after it is lost.
Love is what we have:
Real Love.”
She hangs up.
Comments