More than simply quantity, it is
The quality of your words that
Remains with me.
Not simply the sounds,
But the silences.

Music, some say,
Is not simply about the notes,
But it is just as much about the
Silences between them.

Each night it is the same dream,
Each night.
It is the same.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.

I see myself
Alone in the airport,
Bag in hand,
Walking through and among the
Faces
Of strangers.
Walking to meet
A face that is so familiar,
Yet still so much a stranger.

I see myself
Alone in the car,
Following a map
That is so new to me,
But I have memorized
My route.
Driving
To meet a face
So well etched in my imagination
Yet still so much a stranger.

I see myself arrive
At your door.
Bag in hand,
You pull me in to your
Private space.
And I see myself
Kissing a face
So many times seen in a picture
Yet still so much a stranger.

More.
This is so much more
Than a dream or a fantasy.
More.
My eyes remain closed
And it is more than
Simply images and wishes
And desires.

My hand wanders down
And I touch myself,
Slowly at first, wondering,
Amazed that as I turn fifty
I am still as hard as that twenty
Year old man of memory.
I touch myself
And feel your hand surround my
Essence.
I feel your hand
And not mine
Picking up drops of moisture
From my essence.

This is more than
A lonely man lying
In the dark
And bringing himself off,
It is so much more
As I stroke faster,
In the dark
A dark blur of a hand
Gripping the dark blur of
My essence.

More for me now,
At fifty, alone
And so much time has passed
Since another's touch has
Moved me.
Alone and yet I remember it so well.
The warmth as she, as anyone I ever called "she",
Surrounded me,
And embraced me,
And touched me.

Call it what it is.
It is my
Cock in hand,
Furiously racing toward
A climax,
I feel the hand of someone
So familiar
And yet so much still a stranger.
To me, at least.
A stranger.

In the dark,
I see little more than
A blur,
And then the fragments of
Street lights and starlight
Illuminating my dream through my window,
Catching the shimmering white stream
That now covers my hand and my
Heaving belly.

Fifty.
One more than last year.
Thank heaven for the dark,
For the stranger,
For the anonymous
Moments created with eyes closed.
Thank heaven for strangers
Who did not know me at forty-nine
And just see the fifty,
And who cannot see what one year more
Has changed, has added,
Has taken away.

My dream continues
And becomes a fantasy
Of hands, of lips,
Of touching and tasting
And of holding.

As my breathing slows,
As the warm liquid pools and cools on my skin,
As I become silent.

Never believe that the silence
Is about you.

Always believe that there is no silence
For me,
And the sound of your voice,
The sweetness like sugar of
Your voice,
Fills my silences,
As I imagine the touch, as I feel
The touch of a stranger
That is so well played out in my
Soul, the pages written by both the
Notes and the silences in between,
The music of a stranger,
That is so much more
Than just music.

It is my anthem.