It does not matter
there are no antecedents
anymore than now
(July 23, 2026)
Category: abstract
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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, andwhere 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 rulesor truths must
ever exist
necessarily:
here, where I am lost, iswhere 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)
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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)
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What do I dowith 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 lifeout of my life;
I know myselfas different,
something otherthan what I write.
Someone must breathebehind these words,
must speak slowlyto understand.
What is beingsotto voce?
Am I speaking?
Or listening?
What tight constraintsmust be applied
in order to saythat I am here?
(January 7, 2026)
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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)
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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)
-
The wind gusts in bursts
rushing leaves down the street
in a spasm of seasonal ritual,
as if a pattern’s repetition
creates a meaning separate
from our own simple noticing.
I have a hard time hearing
these voices of the world
through the constant clatter,
through the daily dazzle
and flash of the spectacle
playing in the wind’s
petulant laughter.
My screams are too loud.
To maintain my illusion
of safety, of purpose,
I whisper stories to myself.
I know stories are stories
and how they move through
each other like incestuous ghosts,
or confluent rivers, shaping
one another as they change.
I know change is incremental,
so I listen closely to my heart.
I notice a difference, but
am unsure what is different—
my notice, or the angle
of the wind through the trees.
(November 13, 2025)
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these wounds will not heal into darker scars
these words will not heal into darker scars
they will burn forever on tongues of flame
they will burn on lecherous tongues of flame
what slow darkness grows in from the edges
what slow darkness reaches in from the edge
there is nowhere to go but further in
there is nowhere left except what is here
caught in this spiral as vast as the sea
the words shift along incomplete circles
what songs can be heard in this vast darkness
what old music must play against the night
unformed patterns shatter into fragments
like laughter breaking across an old fear
(November 4, 2025)
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