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)
Category: chance
-
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’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)
-
I suppose I should
be grateful for all
the people and events
of which and of whom
I am usually unaware
who are daily doing
deeds without awareness
of me yet enable me
to go about my life
oblivious and happy
(November 24, 2025)
-
Night continues to fall, dark upon dark,
unrelenting, cold as eternity.
Yet, tonight a half-moon hangs in the stars.
I try to ignore the fear on the wind,
but it eats its way in, splintering bone.
Ice, like a steel knife rusting at our throat,
parses words to an elemental degree.
What can be said contains but small nuance.
So I write pinching syllables like rice
to keep starvation one more day away,
hoping without hope that what I can say
is enough to carry hope through this dark,
that whatever bit of love which remains
is enough to hold our world together.
(October 3, 2025)
-
Money makes one mad.
As if one controls the dice
with a simple kiss.
(April 19, 2025)
-
Despite the despots,
despite the collapse
of oceans’ currents,
despite the anger
flowing through the streets,
the iris push up
though the garden mulch,
and roses burst into bloom.
(April 6, 2025)
-
The thing is you won’t live long
anyway
the thing is to see where you are
While you are—
—George Oppen
fool, look out the window
And write
—George Oppen
You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
― Samuel Beckett
I made the mistake of looking at an old “manuscript” from about 15 years ago. I made it about 10-12 pages in before I ran across a couple of lines that I could call good enough to be poetry. There are about 40 more pages to go. I hesitate to go on. I have always over the decades cycled up and down in my opinion of my writing. I know, every writer has doubts. But that does not make it any less depressing when I am plummeting, nor any more justifiable when I am flying high. I remember Robert Frost saying somewhere that he didn’t write experimental poetry, because experimental poem was another name for failed poem. The poem either worked or it did not. If it did, then it was not an experiment; if it failed, then it wasn’t a poem. The old manuscript was not a poem—which was depressing. Instead it was a series of posturing hoping without hope to somehow adhere from one poem/stanza/blither to another without any real attempt on my part beyond “chance” in some misguided belief that John Cage’s ghost would descend to lead me out of the wilderness of my hubris. I take solace in the belief that I knew it was crap, because I put it away and never really looked at it for the last 15 years. I somehow knew without knowing….I am smarter than I let myself be (to use a mantra I said about my students on myself).* My current plan is to plow through the fallow field, and see if there are some living roots that can be salvaged. It will be a trudge. But then, what else would I be doing.
*They are smarter than we let them be.
-
I approach a common ledge.
It was once, in a different world
than this, a waterfall cascading
to the half-hidden rocks below.
Oblivious, I would often sit,
feet dangling casually above
the water’s icy swirl, listening
close to the whispers beneath
the roar of the waterfall’s
incessant gush and rush.
For hours, I would watch. The mist
would rise and fall from soft depths,
beckoning me with seductive arms
toward an unrequited leap of faith.
Now, a clarity, weighted with remorse
and infantile regret to change,
whets the air with metaphor.
The rocks are dry and stark,
full of sharp consequences,
and vaguely permanent decisions.
Dust slips slowly among the cracks.
The contrast between then and now
cuts a razor line across thin skin;
blood beads like dew on a leaf,
hesitating before falling away.
Afraid to fail even in the attempt,
I turn away, once again lost.
(October 30, 2024)
-
Do you see the hope, the longing
that waits always unfulfilled
like despair upon a bridge
unwilling to stand balanced
upon the rail, to watch the flow
of the white river through the rocks;
unwilling to decide
which ecstasy to embrace:
the ecstasy of hope—
to fly unimpeded into the sky
as the wax our father shaped
into wings softens with the setting sun;
or the ecstasy of fate—
to accept the freedom the plunge offers
in the froth and blood far below?
(January 20, 2024)
-
(the world reversed— Rider-Waite)
A broken dance is still
the dance. Where I finished
is where I am, without motion.
I arrived at a misunderstanding
of my misunderstandings late:
the promised ecstatic secrets fell
into a heap of exhausted rags,
no chain of roses to hold me close.
Everyone I know have already left.
There is no divinity in this vision;
I am at least that cognizant.
Silence is only silence. I am
intoxicated with joy, and dread
the stagnant pain of morning.
(September 28, 2023)
-
(ten of pentacles, reversed, Rider-Waite)
We face each other. You look
into the house, I to the outside.
Beneath an unrelenting sun,
the streets are hot and bright.
Inside, the house is cool and dark;
the dogs spread across the tiles.
Local lords flash knives like smiles,
while risking other people’s lives.
We stand here at the threshold;the door is open. With one step,
we enter the square, or the warmth
and comfort of the house.
In the air between us, a coin spins,
and we wait, without moving.
(September 26, 2023)
subtext 