Love in Three Acts

Love in Three Acts
I.
Dogs with shrunken legs jingle on the sidewalk, rapid breathing oblivious to toxins we put here for him to inhale. We didn't mean to do it, of course. But the only thing I can think about is
"Where did I lose you?"
Where are your footsteps, less rapid than mine but reaching further into the future with each fall?
Where is that place I liked to go to, encased by the simplicity of notes pounding, resonating underneath your fingers?
"I don't know."
I want that again, so fleeting are my faculties to catalog new memories, because I just want to live in those moments that already existed prior to each passing second I breathe in the same air as dogs, cats, criminals.
We all share something (blood?) warm, subzero, pulsing, stagnant, racing, frozen, present, absent, and I can still see. My eyes still function to follow the fall of this pen, the traces of your footsteps that now just walk further away.

II.
I guess you could say I'm in mourning of something still alive but gone from myself. It's the demise of lessons learned in spite of everything I ever to wish to forget.
"Can I have a do-over?"
Because I've learned how to torture, forgot how to love.
I've entangled the best intentions of someone naive, unsuspecting, unspoiled, optimistic, into the twisted pockets of a former misery I'm slowly extracting myself from.
And he was willing, undeterred, because of some unexplained magnetism - love - he felt towards me.
Where did I learn all that?

III.
"I learned it from you."

FIN

nonsense.

I am lost in a fever of gypsies
Selling their wires and candy ropes
I am hoping to buy a boulder
To steady my telescope
I’ll magnify the heathens
And shower in the morning light
I hope I’ll undiscover the traces
Of where I might end up tonight

Sarasota Short Story: Bicycle Ride

I'm in the open air, heat reaches my pores and bounces off. A car rolls to a stop. The driver, a smoker, has a missing front tooth and an artist's beret.

I'm thinking: I wonder what he did today.

He smiles at me, moves his mouth, and makes the ok sign with his pointer finger and thumb. I can't understand him over the smells of summer.

"Nice legs," he says.

Again, I am bewildered.

I've found these holes
where sunlight is sinking in spots here and there
wherever did my sunshine go
i put it on a milk carton
but it never returned.
It must have found a better place
someone to bask in its growing heat
cause here the light is fading fast
and my mind is fading with it.

the rain is coming with valiant flair
i cannot swallow toxic air
if I escaped away from here
would I ever see your face again?

8:25 am

oh mornings
with your coffee and sunshine
and loads of friggin opportunity
though I can't even fathom
what I will do today.

Yes, it's nice to sit outside
right about now
but I have all my stuff here
in my room
and I don't even have to leave it.

Oh, self-induced hermeticism
and lexicononinventism
and blah blah blech
I'm far too tired
to be proper right now.

Sarasota Short Story: Wednesday, Post Nine.

9:32 pm. Man in running shorts, cowboy hat, other acoutrements approaches me. Flip flop noise comes from plastic shoes. Carries an umbrella, tells me I'm "ADP. All Day Pretty." I thank him. He also tells me I shouldn't drink my coffee with the lid on. Something to the extent of "the warmness does funny things to the plastic." Plus, he adds, it will taste better. I told him I have my reasons for the lid.

"You know black Kim..." man at the other table says. Says it costs him twelve dollars a month to stay at the YMCA. The tablemate, a woman's shoulder, is scarred. She wears a bikini top and a gritty laugh. People I know are inside yet I'm out here, withdrawn from something and drawn into something else, a conversation that's not mine. I know I'm avoiding something but I don't know what.

I'm reading "The Me Nobody Knows," copyright 1969. Page 20:
"I am not like all the other children. I'm different because I like to hear birds singing but I don't like to hear people shouting. It is not nice to hear people yelling or shouting in the street."

sometimes I catch people looking
their senses are taking me in
I'm wondering how neurons are firing
make my image permanent?

I'm sitting on a blanket
hitting notes for the turtles to hear
the world is nonexistent
save the space between my ears

"Big Boob Italian Food." Wish I had big boobs.