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)
Category: anxiety
-
Another party
with awkward conversations—
Will I ever learn?
People talk and talkabout the most inane things—
as if I do not.
I try new topicsbeyond the hellish heat wave—
nothing in common.
We all stand in linediscussing the food choices:
oooh, what is that there?
I think about Jane Austen.
Does this fill up my dance card?
(August 24, 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, 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.
-
There’s a snapshot of my mom
when I was twenty-four
which would put her at sixty-six,
my current age. She looks tired,
worried. She holds her face as if
deeply troubled, or grieving.
I was about to go to Europe—
my first time outside of Texas.
When I was a child, she would readbook after book after book to us:
Little Golden Books: Pokey Little Puppy,
The Little Tug Boat and others.
They all had one common theme:
There’s no place like home, no place but home.
(June 8, 2026)
-
1.
i cannot move
too much is broken
2.
demons live in mirrors
and are trying to escape
3.
it’s almost tuesday
yet there are no doors
4.
there is a dream
i cannot see
(May 19, 2026)
-
It is three forty-seven in the morning;
my eyes are closed, I am still not asleep.
The old whispered violence collects
like spittle along the corners of my lips.
An anger suppressed by custom
and obedience waits with patience,
its old friend, for others to gather
from their day of quite rage.
The night cannot go on unbroken;
the day will surely return to itself.
Yet there is no reason to assume
the moon will fall or the sun will rise.
My eyes are closed, I am still not asleep;
It is three fifty-one in the morning.
(May 14, 2026)
-
he shifted to the third person
someone outside his skin
someone easier to understand
someone easier to forgive
somewhere easier to hide
he felt under interrogationfor years answers formed easily
short sentences small words
now the simple questionswere grey nuanced and difficult
set with slow traps and baited
with articulate parenthesis
now he was no longer firstnow he had someone to blame
(February 5, 2026)
-
I want to worry
about our dogs
barking randomly
along the back fence
at shadows and leaves
while the occasional squirrel
fusses at them
from the safety of a tree.
Instead wolves roam the streetsfur stiff with dried blood;
and eviscerated prey
muddy the snow,
while neighborhood dogs
howl through the night.
(January 14, 2026)
-
“the world is too much with us”
-W. Wordsworth
no longer the getting and blind spending
though that is still here teeming at our feet
like low-level radiation leaking
into the spongey ground we walk upon
but the powerful’s thick drooling anger
flailing curses wildly on everyone
that does not resemble their idea
of a pastoral past they never knew
this is the time I have come to live ina time where the soft smell of hope lingers
like a dusty corpse left alone at home
when to be cloaked in ironic disdain
is to disguise an intellectual
self-revulsion that equivocates death
(January 10, 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)
-
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)
-
Silence is silent.
Except it is not,
just ask John Cage.
He’ll look at you
for four minutes
and 33 seconds.
In VermontI met a man
from Boston.
He could not sleep;
the forest was loud
compared to the city.
In zen, the goalis to still the mind
into silence:
to be aware
to such an extent
to become extant.
In an anechoicchamber, one hears
one’s bones,
and the thrum
of one’s blood
beneath the skin.
(November 14, 2025)
-
storms rage without rain
like shrouds across the dry earth
trees drop their dead leaves
each night grows longer
one more minute of light less—
incremental death
i’m tired of trying—
too cynical to pretend
darkness has not come
it is ironic
with the weight of centuries
nothing can be done
the sycamore’s branches fallI fear spring will not return
(October 21, 2025)
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