AD's Journal 2024

    We wake and it is a new year, more than just a turn of calendar page or tick of the clock – each new year bringing its own litany of changes we can’t possibly predict or expect, and so, we hope for the best as we toss off the blankets, make our coffee, and act as if all will be as it once was, knowing it will all be different, only different in a way we may not be prepared to accept – not number of resolutions can halt the new revolution that makes time for us, or those that burn our world into turmoil We can only accept it will occur and deal with it the best we can.     2024 journal menu   email to Al Sullivan

    Jan.12, 2024   I missed it the moment it went missing like an old ache I mistake as missing until it is gone, and I ach to have it back, the face I see still in the half remembered dreams I know I’ve dreamt yet can’t get back in focus once I am awake – that face she posted then removed and replaced only not quite the same face, resurrected, more doubtful, even in the depths of her eyes that still drawn me to look into for too long, maybe with a tinge of the old fear she felt way back when I doubted myself, this face, these eyes, those precious lips, stirring up the broth with a slow simmer to an intense boil – again.   2024 journal menu   email to Al Sullivan

    January 11, 2024   She reappeared as if a miracle, the same face is not the exact same image, head titled slightly to the left, angled so I could see most of the frame around her, a darker face than the one that was, a slight look of concerned – the slanted lips but especially the all-consuming eyes, the weight of the world on her shoulders as if she is thinking “I’m not too sure about this” after having yanked the previous picture down, all these years later she still fears the unknown, even when she thinks she knows more now than what she knew back then, her face a face I can’t forget, could not even if I wanted to.   2024 journal menu   email to Al Sullivan

    I won't tell you that I am immune, all these long years later I still react the same way as I did back then, this odd sensation that comes over me, sweeping me up as if in a dust storm  Where I land is unpredictable as a honest roulette wheel, though i know now as I did them, I'm not destined to win, and must settle for admiring from afar. This is the nature of the beat, the trap in which I find myself, unable to resist her in the same way a bear cannot resist honey, never destined to taste anything more than I have already, and my sticky paws come not from ingesting sweetness so much as a reaction to it, she always there, angelic, her voice ringing in my head, a siren's song with me strapped firmly to the stiff mast of my ship, if only to survive.   2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

    (This is another contemporary poetry journal entry. I have a few of them over the last couple of months. I figure I’ll get some of these out of the way before I plunge back into 2013 entries, not to mention the remaining entries from those troublesome times during the summer of 2012.)     January 1, 2024   It is not stardust that gets in our eyes all these years later, but grains of sand, the hour glass, broken, the storm slowly fading away, not yet letting us see a clear view of the past, yet not so blinded as we once were, more a dreamscape of what we once thought as possible, lost in a rage of wind, so we are left with the remnants of the dream, shredded rays still clinging to us after we trudged so far and for so long with the rage of sand set against us, able by luck or fate to have avoided the pitfalls and quicksand we once believes would consume us.     Journal 2024 email to Al Sullivan

    Feb. 22, 2024   No one road connects here with where she is and where she will be – but almost. A path back through the past she assumed she would not see again, a multi-lane thruway through memories she thought she would forget, each step retraced from the present to those roads hear where she sprang, and then beyond, present back to past, the hum of tires on the road she likely still sees in her dreams, not quite nightmares, and yet filled with the images of one-time hopeful success she never achieved, a road she needs to take again and not merely for nostalgia.     Journal 2024 email to Al Sullivan

    Jan 15, 2024   She changes her face so frequently, I can’t blink fast enough to keep up, this time reverting to the face of a little girl, who just got a wee bit naughty and yet still innocent, like a modern day Cinderella, who dresses up for the ball, sweeping gaze in search of a Prince Charming who is not really there, pretending she’s not, though the truth lay in her wide open eyes, even when those times she shows a face that seem bright, looking just a bit silly with camera affixed to her riding cap, and yet, lovely in the shirt she wears bearing small hors on her chest like a medal.     Journal 2024 email to Al Sullivan

    January 17, 2024   I never stop loving the people I loved even when they cease loving me, you don’t close a spigot once its open, the flow just goes where it will and all you can do is flow with it, suffering through the droughts when they come, drowning in the floods, the unpredictable nature of it as varied as weather, the need of it outweighs the burden you carry when loves becomes something other than you presumed, that soul you held your heart out to remains the same, even in the varying degrees of hot and cold, the on and off, the rage she might express in response, love is love, no matter what.       2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

    If a picture tells a thousand words, then the picture of her amid all those people she calls friends sends a message to someone that she is not alone in the world, a member of a tribe, people she can rely on to help her in need, though in the end, she will be leaving them behind, making one small joke about one of those whose face appears in the photo as if he head is attached to her shoulder, and thus will be with her on her long trip north, at least, in spirit – all this to suggest she has friends and may be more after she move, a somewhat sad take in which she says everything except that actual words “good bye, as sad a tale in some ways as her tale of how she won’t be able to ride the horse she just rented, her world changing again – forever.       2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

    The reason why is less important that the fact it is, strolling over paths you will not see again except in memory, and seeing faces you see daily now, but will become spirits floating in the ethos of remoteness you won’t be able to re-forge, and must make new friend with whom to share such group moments. There si pain on your face as you pose with them (me imagining it no doubt sinc ethe picture comes from a time before she knew she must leave) the reason why is less important than the fact she must surrender again and retreat before being trapped in the Vicksburg of her own life.       2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

      I can’t believe I once rejected her, hormones so out of control each time she posted a picture or texted one to me, nearly going into a faint, trying desperately not to stare into the eyes that stared back at me from my phone or computer, as if I felt she would swallowed me whole if I dared to stare for too long, and all these years later, I’m grateful for a mere glimpse, taking the photos she posts as gift, to treasure, like Narsissist staring into a pool, only instead of seeing myself I see her, the ache of what I felt long gone, yet not the hunger for the image and the spirit contained in her eyes, still as deep and mysterious as eve, and I’m still lost in them     2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

    I don’t know why I need to see her hands each time I see her, at the ring or rings she sometimes wears or doesn’t, at nails clear or polished, at the way her hands move, articulating a message of their own while she talked or stands, and I wonder (because it has been so long since I’ve been in contact with them) if they are soft or firmer as I think of other parts I once had the pleasure to determine for myself, impossible to get at all those important things, taken for granted all those years ago, the scent of her hair or her perfume, the taste of her lips, the feel of her face, cheek to cheek, all lost in the remoteness of the internet through which we now live our lives.     2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

(poetry journal)   The sign said, 28 miles to Kingston. We had not intended to come this far north, taking a trek along River Road that turned into 9W, following signs that said, “Bear Mountain.” Only when we got there, we kept going, this long and winding thing, and then, we stopped at the sign saying “28 miles” because we had never intended to go there, not yet, not since I took my daughter there before COVID, seeking a bit of the East Village she could no longer find in NYC, we stopped and wet back, leaving the sign and its destination behind, for another time, for our annual overnight stay when we were better prepared to deal with the consequences, 28 miles turning into 30, then more as we made our way home.   (Journal) We were a half an hour south of Kingston when decided to turn back south, We had not intended to go so far north but had followed a highway that started near our town and snakes its way along the Hudson going north. We wanted to see where it went and