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)
Category: agency
-
-
“Oh, God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son.’
—Bob Dylan
I want to write
something other
than this poem;
this trifle;
this moment,
but this is all
I have to give
after another
eventless day.
Another day
which was enough
for what I had
to accomplish,
as this poem
is enough for
it is all
that I have
left to offer.
(April 20, 2026)
-
I box them up—
one as flat
as another,
as only our
equivocations
can be believed.
I box them up—pack each tight
into darker,
smaller boxes,
until I can
no longer move.
I box them up—so they cannot fly
deeper and deeper
into a stranger hell
where all we fear
festers with hope.
(April 20, 2016)
-
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)
-
Sancho Panza
by
Nine books lie
on my bedside
table, unread:
six poetry,
two non-fiction,
and Don Quixote.
I should finish
Cervantes—
or at leaststart— once
again, now
that I’m older,
and his windmills
have turned to giants.
(March 24, 2026)
-
“and there is only the dance”
—T.S.Eliot
each step in this dance
trembles the body
like little orgasmic ripples
across an expansive lake
a small tenuous call
for a redemptive love
in a fragile universe
fleeing from itself
I believe in the tedium
of individual self-expression
as if it truly matters
truth is a smooth pebble
in an ocean alive with
mundane mendacities
(March 21, 2026)
-
When what I see is not
making sense even in jest,
there is where the hinge bends
one plane into the veneer
of another, and I fall away
afloat in a delicate chaos
of dust through afternoon light.
I live along a distant periphery,
where change happens
like one season to another;
a slow edge of soft magma,
where tectonic plates patiently
grind their jagged stones
into a field of dominant debris.
(March 15, 2026)
-
“the war never ended somehow begins again”
—-Natalie Diaz
they no longer confine their hatred
to the darker shadows of night
but walk about mid-morning
unconcerned when recognized
thick blood drips from their teeth
while they stand in line at the bank
or watch the game at the bar
casually drinking a craft beer
we all know them for what they areyet say little above a whisper
we tell ourselves they won’t stay long
yet they do linger like smoke
long after the fire has burned
our lives into softest ash
(February 16, 2026)
-
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)
-
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)
-
There is a difference he implied
between what you do— (write
your poems), and this book—
which had been published
and which he now held out
(like a capitalist Eucharist)
before him as empirical evidence
of his claim’s veracity; the attention
toward profundity, cannot simply be.
Cannot simply happen. As if
there were no luminescence
inherent in the creative act,
no value to the happenstance.
Yet it does happen,
as we happen. The ineffable silence
fills in what cannot be said—
no matter the credentials, or what
god waits to make the first move.
The writing, the process, the evolution
of the text opens the word into light,
and power, and even glory
as has been done forever and ever.
(December 23, 2025)
-
I’ve tossed yarrow stalks on a table,
and stared blankly at arcane cards
pretending at small divinations.
Last week I’ve been reading poetrythat survived orally for millennia
before copied slowly onto a page.
I’ve done all these things before,so much so I almost recognize
the footprint’s patterns in the sand.
Each morning repeats itself:I let the dogs out, start coffee, piss,
as if the sun wouldn’t rise otherwise.
Yet, it does, as it will again:so starkly beautiful, so new.
(December 15, 2025)
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