Stop talking. Listen:
eventually someone will speak
to fill the irredeemable silence.
(July 29, 2026)
Category: awareness
-
On the other side of the sliding door,
the dogs have not noticed
the rabbit sitting on the patio.
They are, however, immensely interestedin what I am having for breakfast,
eyeing each forkful to my mouth.
Later as I wash plates at the sink,the rabbit squeezes under the fence,
and the dogs hunt for places to sleep.
(July 21, 2026)
-
details, like mosaics, decades old
around eleven, the adrenaline slowfall from my red Christmas bike,
ripping skin on loose gravel,
catching the pain across my palms
facts of a sortfollowed by conjecture
the sky was winter grey—I was heading home (from where)
hurriedly (was I late, for what
or just the thrill of speed
or both— fear and joy dancing
together like flames)
perhaps, perhaps
what-ifs’ multitudes unravelwith time and causal doubts
as perhaps twist and spin into now’s
singular, tight, and irretrievable knot
I tell myself I know and knewthe bits of broken glass cohere
but I don’t anymore than I did
I fell, I bled, I musthave made it home
for I am here
(July 20, 2026)
-
Your hands dance the air
as you sit across the table
describing an event we shared
decades ago in our youth.
We are both there as before;a sequence of events similar
enough to be the same events;
yet, causality and context shift.
Like Wittgenstein, it dawnson me slowly that the story
you are telling is not the one
I have told about love’s loss.
You ask why I’m crying;I realize you never knew.
(July 15, 2026)
-
What can I do
with conjugations
of being— beyond
a fool’s confession?
I’ve been here before.Hours hurry past the window
like soft grey mice
skittering between shadows.
The sun slowly approachesthe eastern horizon
as if a mendicant
with an empty bowl.
My impatience vaultsover the obvious words;
I have difficulties
reading as a result.
I crib lines from bookslifting them out of context,
then go down paths
that refuse to exist.
-
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)
-
OTD 2022
by
-
Of course, there’s a soul:
I take a shot of bourbon
as I pour the next—
(June 2, 2026)
-
The afternoon sun glares down without ire
as I step out onto the front sidewalk.
A horned lizard eyes me, suspiciously
tilts its head into the still of the day.
Aware without motion, I am no threat
where I am. It’s warm in the sun, why move?
This lumbering slow beast cannot compete.
It knows without knowing; we are killing
ourselves. Small, hot, warm-blooded, bound in fur,
we were no more than rats when its kind loomed
across the humid landscape. Choking on
our own waste, we will perish soon enough.
There’s no hurry. It turns back, looks at me
with disdain, then patiently darts away.
(May 24, 2026)
-
my resistances arise
through the day
in the wayI see
the trees leafthe roses bud
and bloom onlyto let go
their petalsto the ground
and hereas well as there
in the streetsfilled with anger
is a beautyand a love
which must be heldwith all our arms
and namedwith all our voices
no matter how smallor fleeting
we feel our heartsto be
no matter the terrorslithering nearby
laugh as wellas mourn
sing as wellas scream
see morethan is allowed
see what we weresee what we are
and see whatwe can become
(April 29, 2026)
subtext 