This will end in tears

Back before Covid, when I had an office to go to, and when we were still attending conferences for work, I would often be inspired by things that I encountered on a daily basis. Here are a few poems from another era, before social distancing, before full-time remote work, before Zoom meetings were the norm, before we pined for those mundane interactions that would so often annoy us at the time.  --Friday, March 9, 2018 2:10:40 AM, A restaurant on Fremont Street in Las Vegas-- She sat alone at the bar wearing her leather, Buffalo nickel hat, reading a book The sounds of the Vegas nightlife washing over her, leaving no residue In a setting of constant motion and commotion she was the calm center of my attention Chestnut hair,    skin so fair,      casual style,        without a care An anachronism to the modern crowd and to the tawdry spectacle everywhere you looked It was too irresistible to keep from dropping a rock into her calm waters ...

  It's a long day It's a long day It's a cold night It's a sad thing to watch the sun dwindle in the sky To think about the distance now between you and I Shape of the World The world has a shape A repetition of patterns And I notice things that have gone missing Like a tree cut down along the road that I usually take Like the void in our bed when you aren't there at night Torches This torch that I've been burning for you Has finally gone out And has left me horribly disfigured The guttering and the sputtering that endured These many long years Fueled by your occasional flirtation Or misdirected intimation During a drunken reverie Burns no more Leaving me cold in the dark Waiting for my eyes to adjust Reckless Beauty Beautiful. Because you're beautiful. You are always beautiful. Reckless, dangerous beauty careening through life like an errant arrow of Cupid, never hitting home, just glancing and ricocheting off of every wandering soul you encounter. Spreadin...

I lament the demise  of the epistolary novel. When I share my grief, via text, with my literary friends, I get back the reply, "lol ikr"