Agamemnon and Diane

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We want so much to love and be loved, but we destroy those who endeavor to love us.


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We do it out of ignorance and fear. On our good days.


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I am no stranger to inflicting pain on my beloved, I  do it all the time. Insensate, I thrash and rage and draw blood, metaphorical perhaps, but still....and I bear the marks from my beloved on my own soul.

The two of us are lucky in that we have used the bonds that enslave us to bind us tighter together, in a rapturous bliss of love and despair and longing and freedom and stupidity and neglect and passion and, and, and.

We are all fragile creatures, diffident and unreliable.

But we love in our small ways, and row for shore, and that, in the end, is enough.


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I am blessed to have found my helpmeet.


Nor will I quit her, or let her flee me.


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here is a poem for today by my good friend Alan Dugan, whom I do not know, but admire greatly and imagine he would be glad to have my friendship if he knew me, but not too well, and if he had not died seven years ago, which he did:



Love Song: I and Thou

Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage's nails
into the frame-up of my work:
It held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that one great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planed it I sawed it
I nailed it and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can't do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife. 


Alan Dugan
Son of a Bitch Poet

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Namaste.


May you find what peace is yours in this life.



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