before now
before then
as when waits
tomorrow
there I was
in the weeds
as always
forlorn lost
the path stopped
abruptly
so clearly
marked then gone
outside time
without thought
(May 23, 2026)
Category: alone
-
no one is home
no one sits in the dark
alone
no one waits for the keyto slip in the lock
and turn with a click
no door openswith a repressed
creak
no one is leftto ask for explanations
but you
no one but youand it is late
and the house is dark
(January 23, 2026)
-
Lost at Sea
by
People try to talk to me.
I hear, perhaps, half,
then, as they go on, drift,
moved as if by tides.
Alone, most days, slipping
slowly from book to thought,
to roll my tongue through words
plays with incoherence.
There need be notes like stones
left as markers to return;
or bits of marginalia
tossed along the shore
to hint towards an origin,
I can no longer explain.
(October 24, 2025)
-
He didn’t know how to act, and had no script to follow. She knew her part without book, and said all her lines with ease. This was, she pointed out, not her first time in this role. It was, he thought, a true love story, not just another chance for her to reprise a stock character. Repeatedly, she set the scene, hitting her mark, an easy cue to follow. Scene after scene, he vaguely wandered the stage, wishing he knew what to say; wishing he knew what to do; unable to act on his desires. She was confused. What was his motivation? Why wouldn’t he act? Why did he not respond correctly? Eventually, the farce ended as it began, without preamble, or resolution. Some one laughed in the wings, followed by a slow clap. Then, like a ghost, she left the stage, leaving him to ponder their performance alone, as the lights slowly faded past memory.
(September 5, 2025)
-
in the end
by
he did not mention
any more than did she
what was never said
those parts off stagenever explained yet
implicit to the scene
the vast open silencestheir words spoke into
the vast open silencestheir words tried to seal
the resonant confessionswhich adhered
(February 21, 2025)
-
I would like to say
I was just visiting
that I had somewhere elseto be where I belonged
a secret place otherthan this constant vigil
I would like to saythis was a pleasant trip
that it is time to goback home again
but none of that is trueI have no where to go
and loneliness is allthat happiness is not
(June 21, 2024)
-
Too many old ghosts walk about today,
leaning against the walls, blocking doorways.
They lounge around the house, reading sad books
they’ve read before, never leaving their chairs.
I wave my hands in the air, futilely
trying to chase them away. Like house flys,
They vanish along the periphery,
only to reappear within seconds.
They are in no hurry to return home,
where their versions of the story can’t change.
They like the nebulous nature of life.
I’m tired of talking to their shapelessness;
I want to slough off their soft vaguery,
and cast them into the unanswered night.
(June 18, 2024)
-
Through others we become ourselves.
— Lev S. Vygotsky
We think we are
what we think we are,
because we believe
we think ourselves
into awareness,
that it is us
who is thought
when we think.
I am unsure,which part of me
is me, and which
part is part
of who I am
supposed to be.
(June 12, 2024)
-
false starts
with tired thoughts
begin
in faltered steps
then end
off trail
vaguely muttering
lost
alone
in the dark
like Gretelwithout crumbs
to follow home
or a Hansel
to hold on to
(June 7 2024)
-
“Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone.
“wineing the ghosts of yester year.”
—Ezra Pound
Last night conversation flowed
freely between wit and wisdom
as easily as comfortable privilege
protects the occasional faux pas.
What wisdom lacks is the bitterness
left with the dregs at the bottle’s end.
Alone this morning, I slowly collect
the mostly empty bottles scattered
about the house like an archeologist
sifting for hints of a civilization
in the shards of broken pottery.
I wash the dishes, slipping my hand
over the soapy crystal, careful not
to shatter the glass against the sink.
Last night’s Malbec has turned slightly.
I pour a glass, and sip a bit anyway.
Skoal! I am the only one still here.
I swirl the glass ruefully, as ghosts rise
from memory to confirm my sour mood.
Memory, after all, can only reflect
the present. Like the glass, it distorts
any clarity dispersed, any veritas
the wine might once have whispered
like a former lover years after the affair:
a version of reality dependent on what
had been said, and how much confirms
what was suspected, and how much must
be forgotten as a form of forgiveness.
(May 26, 2024)
-
I arrive early at nothing, no door,
no prison wall to climb, a vast unknown.
Like time standing still in an open fieldwith an infinite empty perspective,
all direction the same grey hollowness,the same vacant stare into cold distance.
There’s no point in looking back for a road;it too slowly vanished into nothing.
The foreground is without prior contextand smudges vaguely into the background,
as if a charcoal sketch had been erasedhaphazardly and without proper care
leaving bits of paper and eraserdebris scattered across an empty page.
(May 21, 2024)
-
I saw an old man from my window
across the alley sitting alone on his bed.
A table lamp glowed softly nearby.
The room was barren, lifeless, empty
of all but the bed, the lamp, and the old man.
He sat still, staring toward a wall.
I could not see, from where I stood,
what it was that had captured him so.
It was as if I had been absorbed bodily
into an Edward Hopper painting;
he was so alone in his thickening sadness.
It oozed from his window across the alley
like an amoeba blindly frets its way
across a water droplet on a glass slide,
stretching toward its last bit of life.
Instinctively, I backed away quietly
into the growing darkness of my room,
and the silent frailty we all must live.
(April 10, 2023)
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