Stardust dreams of immaculate perception
 holy hymns of sacred friendship,
 and reclaiming long lost love.
 
 Chrome-plated memories of pickles,
 endless cups of coffee,
 long conversations
 of  constructing identities
 and apprehensive realities.
 
 Booth recitations
 amid clatter and grease:
 intimacies shared,
 promises made,
 loyalties sworn,
 
 the unobstructed purity
 of infinite possibility. 

 Bag of festering grief,
 trapped in the never-ending night.
 
 Ceaseless concussions
 of suffocating loneliness,
 nose dive collision
 through terror and dread,
 tumbling into pits 
 of perpetual loss.
 
 Bare wire deprivation,
 stripped of insulation,
 discarded and raw, 
 The Nothing Draw - 
    no connection,
    no sleep,
    no dignity,
    no pleasure,
    no hope.
 
 Abandoned and forgotten,
 insatiable black hole remains,
 the catastrophic gyre of misfortune and terror,.
 
 Then:
 Nothing
 Nothing
 Nothing.
 
 Address unknown,
 state of damnation;
 not quite dead,
 just live enough
 
 to endure each day
 with a broken heart. 

 6:15 PM 
 Union Square
 a black-hooded guy,
 exuding youthful  sincerity,
 approached a kinda pretty girl
 sitting next to me;
 aquiline nose, runway thin,
 wearing black leather boots
 with gold studs in circular patterns.
 
 with sweet-faced
 I'm-not-a-con man subtext,
 he talked of being an artist
 interested in drawing people's
 faces;
 
 may I draw your pretty face?
 
 yes, of course, she said.
 
 with a black marker he began to
 work, never taking his eyes off her,
 asking her personal questions of small
 consequence, the attention 
 being all.
 
 where are you from? 
 any brothers and sisters?
 where do you work?
 
 while sketching her eyes, hair, lips, nose.
 
 outline finished he sat down on the bench
 and filled in details,
 first with a yellow highlighter,
 then a red marker.
 
 the questions continued,
 bourbon smooth.
 she seemed intoxicated.
 
 the drawing wasn't very good,
 didn’t matter,
 his moves were.
 
 on the back of the portrait he wrote:
 Kara & Mookie 4/21/14
 Which he outlined with a red heart.
 
 she took the drawing, thanked him,
 folded it, put in her
 pocketbook, then got up.
 
 without any negotiation,
 she left with him,
 not arm-in-arm,
 but nudging him
 with her shoulder.
 
 the smoothest pickup
 I've ever witnessed.
 
 it seemed too easy,
 
 and I couldn't help
 but think that within
 the next hour
 someone's heart was
 going to get broken. 

 
 
 It’s not all chandeliers and shadows.
 no matter how fine 
 the crystalline filigree of light
 marks the darkness
 in shifting monochrome  geometries,
 tempered by bandwidth and perception;
 
 but holding steady 
  in these moments
 of time. 

 
 
 

 The protagonist of my dreams
 is often an ideal,
 
 cool enough,
 aware enough,
 looking good in tight jeans and
 black tee shirt;
 
 an age chameleon who blends in
 with everyone,
 talented beyond effort and training.
 
 Yet,
 women don’t want me, and
 men don’t want to be me.
 
 Even in dreams
 my powers are at an impasse. 

 Mind-tired,
 akimbo and askance
 the twirling imbalance 
 and involuntary disappearance
 of right procedures.
 
 Lifestyle adjustments gone the way 
 of Rock and Rye,
 longing for pineapple sweetness,
 while immobile 
 within the splatter
 of one’s own uniqueness.
 
 Lost in concussed redemption,
 skeletal wandering in forest
 of pretense,
 though devoted, 
 thoroughly, 
 to donning wings
 and mask of
 angelic impersonation.