within a multitude of soft tongues
a flame whispers accusations
around the kindling at your feet
and with a puff from her lips
it flourishes like angelic trumpets
curling toward a blackening sky
then soon enough
the fire fades
to a boredom
akin to sadness
it’s not there
in its absence
as sadness pervades
each need
with lackadaisical ease
(April 5, 2021)
large or small a space
is only emptiness defined
a hermit crab lifts and peers
within a new shell’s prospect
examining the spiral depths
of the nothing there
(January 29, 2021)
she said you said he said but shouldn’t have
said what you said she said quiet angrily
because what he said dared to disagree
with what she said you said were simply lies
(January 19, 2021)
with an accent slightly different
than any dialect spoken here
a hole opens around us like an amoeba
and we are contained within
an other’s misinterpretation
as if we were not a part
of the conversation like a rock
is not a part of the river
which erases incrementally
shaping the rock as it surges past
oblivious like memory to the change
as each remembrance rises
to take dominion everywhere
if only for the moment it takes
to speak and then to unhear
all the patterns which brought us here
(November 19, 2020)
I cannot see much of life
beyond the ragged hedgerow
I’ve grown from broken thorns
scattered like blood
across still water
unless the walls fall
and all the little boxes
open like rain misting
the tightly trimmed
topiary with ice
and the cold parenthesis
cracks like cicadas’ wings
as i slip from myself
a worm through earth’s minutia
feeding on the remains
and fragments that were mine
(November 13, 2020)
As the old world swirls
in laconic siroccos of doubt
flinging sand adroitly
into a warm Mediterranean air
how do I stand still with silence
aware only of this moment’s breath
how do i ignore the nattering pedants
who brandish their wet cliches
like limp wands twined from roses
as petulant proof of their originality
how do i negotiate the spaces
i must traverse without
slagging off chunks of flesh
until the sinews abandon my bones
(October 26, 2020)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (77)
the abstract
takes shape
along an edge
a plane
teased
to a form
more tangible
than shadows
in the grass
beneath the stars
(July 14, 2020)
Infinite Watched Pot
“That is, if you write it has it happened twice”
—Michael Palmer, Notes for Echo Lake
I woke and now it is now; the sun’s setting.
Was the writing the thing that happened?
Would today happen without being written?
Are they two events or one?
I see something—
like a car crash,
or water boiling on the stove.
One’s disconnected,
one’s intentional, possibly
even a causation; for example;
I’m hungry, so
I hop in the car for a burger.
She was in a hurry. It was
raining. She slams through a yellow light.
The driver in front of me dies
on the wet street. Or,
I’m still hungry. I hold dry
pasta knowingly, and watch
as the tiny bubbles form
on the bottom of the pot.
Did anything happen?
I am hungry, and will be
each time you read this,
even if I was the driver
who died, or I just wrote
it down; even if something
more than this
was in my thoughts
as I waited for water
to boil.
(May 3, 2020)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (7)
as the creek flows past quick
minnows mouth my fingers
(January 7, 2020)
I swim toward a room.
The door is open, yet dark.
Someone is there, hidden.
I shout out vaguely
like a toothless dog
growling at shadow.
*
In this dream, I am other;
not the dream where I see
myself as some other:
I’m a mobius strip
made of my flesh
rendered to a game
where dice clack quietly
into the thinning air.
(December 31, 2019)
