Today I sculpted these two birds, imagining the psyches of me and my sweetheart Donna inhabiting them.
When a Man-Bird Loves a Woman-Bird
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Tag Archives: romance
Help
Once upon a time a clumsy man dropped one of the many books he, foolish with optimism, was carrying, and when he bent his legs to try to retrieve it, two books, and then the rest of them, cascaded to the cobblestones. “Gosh darn,” said he, and, kneeling, began to restack them.
“Here,” said a voice. He looked up and saw a woman about his age, with one of the books that had slid afield. Her eyes were round and brown. Her hair was diaphanous.
When he took the book out of her hand she turned to retrieve the ones that were still left on the stones, but instead of handing them to him, she cradled them in her arms, schoolgirl style. “Where to?” she said, lightly, honey in her voice.
He did a head gesture, indicating direction, and said, “I’m parked a few rows up. Thanks so much for helping me.”
At his car, he carefully put his books on the hood, fished his car keys from his pocket, and opened the passenger-side door. She handed him the books she had, patting the one on top and saying, “I think you will love this one.” When she smiled at him he was awestruck. Without a word they had told each other that though she could use a ride, and he would love to give her one, it was not the right time.
But when he closed the door on the passenger side with the books in a neat pile on the seat, she handed him a business card that had the name of the bookstore where he’d bought the books, her name, the word M A N A G E R, and a phone number and e-mail address.
“Thanks for buying some of my books,” she said, a hint of laughter in her voice. “See you soon.” And she walked briskly away.
fullest
on a mission to live life to the fullest
this morning anyway
i walked 2,379 steps from my doorstep
to the ole brass rail, a sports bar and grill
and asked bar lady kristi[e] for an irish coffee
and a menu
..
the steak & eggs was tempting
but the breakfast burrito was six dollars less
and promised “spicy beef” so
breakfast burrito it was
and nice trimmings to boot
and i was fulled and filled with its generous portion
..
lots of screens with sports stuff
diverse & friendly staff and clientele
(times have changed here, i am glad to report)
fair pricing
so yeah
this day off is well launched
and i will go full from here
to fuller after a ceramics studio session
to fullest when i use my phone
and hear sweet Donna’s voice
quantum kiss entanglement
you are mildly lucky in love
with a romance beginning to bloom
and the exes and ohs
as the spiciness grows
make a grandma suggest “get a room”
.
soon your fantasies focus on one
and the others get sketchy and blurred
and the choosing will cost
opportunities lost
with the fading of daydreams absurd
.
as your multiverse gladly collapses
with a dwindlement sealed with a kiss
to clear all the fog you thus
make it monogamous
two souls entangled in bliss
Coffee-Colored Coffee Mugs
at PIP Coffee & Clay, Phoenix, Arizona
I made these mugs in late March and have glazed them to look like the coffee they contain. In both mugs are eight ounces of Americano coffee enhanced with cream and brown-sugar Simple Syrup. It is my wildly optimistic pipe dream that I will one day offer the mug of her choice to a future Special Someone, so that we might sit across from each other at a breakfast table and sip from our coffee-glazed coffee mugs while enjoying each other’s peaceable company. Hope survives, steamy and eternal!
nearness
the end is near/the endgame well under way
but relax, this is just a baseball game/in the ninth inning/in still-early may
plenty of season left
what else is near?
let’s see if I can spruce up my appearance and find “grooming kit near me”
hell yeah! 0.4 miles and open for another hour!
how about chateaubriand?
chateaubriand is near, all right/but beyond unaffordable, alas.
and the woman of my dreams? is she near?
alas, the search yields no results.
but isn’t it comforting to know/that some priceless desires/are beyond the ken of cold circuitry?
NaPoWriMo 2025, day 18: beachin’ daydream
if only the girl in the song were real/and the boy were me
she would be a california girl with a mild southern accent/and i would have surfed from an early age/and met her on a bright summer afternoon on the beach
and i would have a vw bug and legs almost too long for it/and she would say I was lanky
and we ate a lot of ice cream but stayed skinny by burning calories surfing and running miles and miles on the sand and making out after taking showers
and we got picked to be the first shipload of settlers on the first moon colony where there would be no surfing but plenty of flying with strapped-on wings and tail assemblies
and–whoops, the song is over
wow, what a song/really took me places
here I am a seventy-year-old man with stubby legs again
yearning for what can never be
but maybe there’s a woman out there, a woman my age, for whom leg-stubbiness is not a significant factor in the selection of a companion
who wants to be a landlocked surfer girl
with some occasional barefoot-on-the-sand interludes
time and patience will tell
and hearing that song
the envelope on the floor
open when you’re sad”
said the envelope on the floor.
block letters, but her handwriting.
i was not sad but i was killingly curious,
so i went on whitehouse dot gov,
and in seconds i was furious and terrified
and sad too.
i opened the envelope.
wouldn’t you know it,
another envelope was inside.
“open if you want another chance”
this one said.
hmmm.
do i?
within this envelope
were probably more envelopes
but there was also something that wasn’t.
best guess from size, shape and flexibility
was that it was a hotel room card key.
i did want her.
i thought though that the hoops
she would like me to jump through
were a red flag.
just when i decided to do nothing, though,
my doorbell rang.
.
three weeks later
i am not sad
and i need no further chances.
Valentine
To the woman of my daydreams
Velociraptors won’t be welcome here
And Cupid, don’t be stupid, don’t step in
Let’s let our love be natural this year
Enjoying warmth, not frenzy. Let us spin
Nice fluffy yarns where truest fondness wins
Tenacity and real respect hold sway
Intrinsic passion plays with easy grins
Next baby steps are taken, and we say
Each minute gently counts this special day.
A Mathematician in Cognitive Decline Pens Final Messages to 14 of His Lovers
After he had watched the movie {proof} he got a little angry and then quite sad
His own brain harbored no delusions but it was shrinking and had gone from a fusion reactor of ideas and insights to a sputtering engine with bad carburetion
And the movie did drive home how finite Earthly time can be
So he suddenly felt the urge to settle his affairs of the heart
Got out many pens and markers and dozens of sheets of his letterhead stationery
Wrote a sonnet that would apply to every one of the fourteen significant lovers he had had
And then wrote thirteen more sonnets similarly themed but unique to each lover
Retaining the final line in its original form for all fourteen of them
It was the line that was most absolutely true yet would mean something different to each person:
I so regret we did not make more love.
He sent most of the messages by snail mail. Two he scanned and e-mailed. One, the sonnet in its original form, he kept, because the lady was dead.
.
As often happens, attempts to settle affairs end up with the affairs being more unsettled than ever
but that,
to use a phrase found in many mathematics textbooks,
is “beyond the scope” of this account.
One with Clay, Image and Text 