
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)

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)

a scream like lightning
rough ragged quick
followed by male laughter
then more garbled screams
like dogs growling
lights go off and on
upstairs then downstairs
the front door opens
light stabs across the yard
then the door slams shut
a bedroom light remains on
a car guns out of the driveway
then shoots off into the dark
then silence
(February 28, 2026)

i don’t know
he says to himself
about nothing in particular
and then smiles
for he knows
for once he’s right
(February 25, 2026)

Walking into the kitchen
I forget my reason
for going; I stop,
and retrace my steps.
As when I am reading
and my attention drifts
lost in the dream of text,
I must return, sometimes
pages back, to regain
myself and what it was
I was looking for before
I wandered through the door.
(February 24, 2026)

it may just be
a timely coincidence
but have you noticed
the last circle of hell
in dante’s inferno
ends in the cold
betrayal of ice
(February 17, 2026)

Maise, our dog, lounges on the over-stuffed arm
of the old leather chair which squats squarely
next to a bare window in the front room.
The late afternoon sun pours bright puddles
of warmth on the floor for her to bathe in;
and from which, if inclined, she may muster
yips and growls at people slowly walking
their sweatered dogs on the sidewalk outside.
I fear falling on ice still lingering
on neighborhood paths, so we stay inside.
But that is just an excuse, I hate cold
weather as much as I tolerate heat’s
dominion during the long summer months.
Even when I, like this poem, go nowhere.

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)

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 streets
fur 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 in
a 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)