
I want to sleep.
not to dream,
(just another form
of thought); but
to fall to darkness
without the rat tooth
nibble of thought
gnawing nearby.
(August 29, 2026)

fear is always present
like air or dust
caught in the throat
seconds before a cough
I’ve said this before
it is worth repeating
if nothing matters
everything matters
so find what you love
and who you love
and hold that moment
tighter than ice
until it’s eternal
until it’s present
(August 18, 2026)

As bare brown feet dance for rain,
a wind stirs the distant leaves.
I move lost as usual
through the slow everyday tasks,
as if it is some place new,
some place I have never been;
a place that rises from the dust
of drought-dry caliche roads.
In between where we are, and
where we were in history,
I move against the dark sky
and watch clouds form like old maps
which leave space for new monsters
to thrash in violent seas.

The morning is humid and thick with heat.
Yesterday cloaked its version of today
in brighter shades than those of nostalgia:
the past’s certainty belies its troubles.
I live along an edge of some other,
Uncomfortable in the skins given
to me for the roles I need to play now.
Like hope, regret is best left to itself.
It is as if I’m stuck in a crevice,
the walls widening above and below
where the frenzied wind leaps from edge to edge
until vanishing to violent air.
No opportunities rise with the sun;
I feel old, and know the end has begun.
(July 2, 2026)

If I understand
correctly, then
I have stumbled
on a rule,
a pratfall,
in my case,
accidentally
into a truth.
Not that rules
or truths must
ever exist
necessarily:
here, where I am lost, is
where the first word falls.
(April 24, 2026)

The ground shimmers
beneath my feet;
I reach out to find
a wall to steady
the loss of gravity,
until time gathers
the disparate shapes
back into me.
I’ve heard this before—
again, too often.
So much so,
I stop listening:
I know how it ends;
we all know the end.
(April 11, 2026)

He is in a chair in an empty room. It is dark outside.
He is in the same room, in the same chair. Light comes through a window.
He has questions, but is hesitant to ask. Unsure of the answer he seeks.
His uncertainty is his fear. He sits still for hours at a time.
The room never changes. The furniture is static and old.
The room is not the same, depending on where you look. Depending on where you sit.
The room was new once. The room is always empty.
The room filled with furniture slowly over time.
There are windows. They are shut, without curtains.
When the lights are on you can see in the room from the street.
There is nothing to see, but white walls without art.
There are windows, one cannot see much outside.
He holds his breath for minutes at a time.
When he feints, he quickly recovers.
(April 6, 2026)

Free of belief’s comforting vanities,
the small profundities of the day
reveal themselves through slow unravels
as their collective weight strips conceit
away, leaving bare bones exposed
to judgement and snide approbation.
(March 4, 2026)

In this dream,
I unfold other maps
between petulant winds.
In this place, I am known,
but not by this name,
not in this direction.
I have lost my way.
It was a mistake
to come here today.
Ignorance always wins,
because it does not know
it lost long ago.
Tracing a vein in my arm,
I find a way home.
(January 17, 2026)

What do I do
with the I here,
with the voice here,
with an other
who is just me;
yet, not as well?
For so long now,
I have written
into my life
out of my life;
I know myself
as different,
something other
than what I write.
Someone must breathe
behind these words,
must speak slowly
to understand.
What is being
sotto voce?
Am I speaking?
Or listening?
What tight constraints
must be applied
in order to say
that I am here?
(January 7, 2026)

memory agitates into vision media res: the precise moment of peak self-revulsion, the inaction, the cowardice, the lie inherent in regret— when nothing more could have been done, nor anything now retroactively applied which can act as balm to the shame carried for decades through the day in those quiet moments on the way to work, waiting for the light to turn green, or some phrase, or song on the radio which tumbles memory’s cascade through the spongey canyons to again reconfigure itself into this contiguous present as some other story without static cause
(December 25, 2025)

No blood splatted rubble
no violent clashes
between blind love’s
engendered hatreds
no screams
nor whimpers
of the dying next door—
only a silent room
is left to clarify
another day’s first light
as it expands
through an open window
(December 1, 2025)