to be a parched flower and watch water pour over you, the joy must be immediate   I know that high after the chain holding a lead ball of guilt, suddenly snaps   like serving time, then seeing green trees under a wide blue sky as the prison door slams behind you   another way is a nosedive into love or have love fall into you   either way, you become a balloon floating over everything that would hold you down

how rare to reach 100 years old, even rarer to have a friend of that many years   I didn’t know Bernard as a young, middle age or older man, only from the cusp of his century   we are good chums, sharing the silly and deeper things that buddies do   but when a history lesson is told by a history still living, just a few words colors the pages of the past and after ten minutes with him,   I’m in NY, leaning against a building on Broadway, watching those overweight cars rumble

we’ve done it online, offline over the line, and so many times, crossed the line   in pictures and pinups in person and innuendo in moments of fleshy crimes with eyes like knives and licks like beasts awaiting fresh meat, we men, long ago, declared women, the fairest prey   how fearless the ones that meet our eyes , as others offer the cold indifferent look-away and hold a breath to ready their tongues if our rudeness arises, before some greater self-defense is required, but