He could not sleep
In the dream,
So he wandered,
Without moving
Room to room,
Worrying details,
While obliquely
Hiding
His traces.
Until like a flower’s
Augury For love’s
True answer, he strips
Off the flavors
Of the dying night,
And stands barren,
Without possibility
Within the omnipresent
Never-ending day.
(November 1, 2018)
Someone has already been here
Always, even if you are still
Unaware of her presence.
You are never alone, even
When you are alone, in awe
On a mountain cliff’s edge.
Someone has been here—
Even if only in imagination
Someone has been where you go.
Everyone you have met—
Everyone you have read—
Everyone, even the slightest touch
Has always already existed
Inside you now, and forever.
(October 26, 2018)
He picks up a rock,
He puts it down.
He picks up a rock,
He puts it down.
He tells himself:
Don’t pick it up;
He picks up the rock,
He puts it down.
He tells himself
He is stupid—
He tells himself
Not to say such things.
He tells himself
He is stupid
For saying such things,
Then says them again.
He tells himself
Don’t pick it up.
He picks up the rock,
And puts it down.
(October 15, 2018)
“go in fear of abstractions”
–Ezra Pound
In evening’s corners,
As Dark stalks the streets,
Times’s serrated silences
Gnaw even king’s bones,
Content in the certitude
Another mundane day has,
Once again, passed unmolested
Into Memory’s vague grasp.
No need to fear, abstractions
Are ubiquitous as starlings
Murmuring along the eastern hills.
They pulse and turn back on us
Like cold-clotted blood,
Until we can no longer breathe.
(October 11,2018)
hands cupped beneath
the water wait,
like still bells hang
about to sound
the sky’s dark depths.
spaces open
where there were none
like hope rising
with a new moon
above the trees.
out of nothing
a shape’s contained;
out of nothing
a world’s remade.
(October 9, 2018)
Ritualistically
like fingers slide
along rosary beads,
I worry the minutes,
feel the grain
of the past,
then shift between
decades and days
as if idly shuffling
a tarot pack. I heft
each moment’s density
tasting the cold hours’
iron passage
like blood clots
which slowly drop
from bones
strung across
a killing floor.
(October 3, 2018)
Am I here?
Can you hear me
anymore?
I am no answer
to your questions,
implied, or stated.
Is this what’s left–
to fade in and out
like a side-show ghost?
Am I here
scratching inside
the house’s walls,
like a rat
slowly dying?
(September 27, 2018)
