the glass sweats
ice slips on ice
falling deeper
into the whisky
as i melt
(June 28, 2025)
Category: cliche
-
The conversation continues along
the old tracks of cliche. Clack-clack he says.
Clack-clack, she responds. And so goes the night,
Another milk run no one remembers.
I worry about what I should forget,and forget what I should worry about.
In a forest of clear trails and side tracks,
one word completes the regrets of the whole.
It’s easy to get caught in an eddy,to circle slowly back to past mistakes,
to unravel a gesture’s soft nuance,
to mean more than anyone could entail.
What could he have said? What could she have said?The words are spoken. The cast’s determined.
(May 31, 2025)
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Original Sin
If I hold cliché in my hand
like an apple, will I fall
to its seduction? Dare I bite
the peach, perhaps an avocado,
or pursue the nubile temptress
dancing a bare finger’s tip
out of reach? It’s laughable
to think I might escape it.
The original roots still leach
the metaphor from the soil,
while I root about like a pig
snuffling for elusive truffles.
Each word I speak is mine alone;
each word I speak has been said before.
(July 28, 2018)
Source: subtextures.wordpress.com
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“there is no absence
that cannot be replaced”
—Rene Char
She sits in a hole in the room
where time drifts like dust motes
through sunlight. There is no time
anymore for resentment, or anger,
to fester their dark intentions.
Everything fades. The half-life of names
expands absorbing our vague desires
in the absolution memory grants
with each revision. She is tired now.
Patchwork obligations, like cages
without keys, contain her reasons.
In her way, she is dying, as are we all—
an obvious cliche, yet rituals
daily provide us with parameters
where we feel most comfortable.
Life is painful enough. Outside the air
clutters with snow, and rime forms
along the fence line. She watches the door.
Once, long ago, someone knocked, then left.
(November 12, 2022) -
in the dream this time
I wrote a line to start
then again inevitably
I woke to remember
nothing but the sense
that something had left
something consequential
something now absent
like the vacancy we fill
each time we move quietly
through an empty room
something that’s always there
outside the dream I writemyself through the delusion
that I have something to say
beyond my mundane day
beyond my awkward cliches
beyond my last glimpse of land
where gulls screech to the wind
their sneers of mockery and desire
where I’m stripped of my words
and left alone with what I am
a tongueless mouth gasping
for air beneath a dying sea
(October 20, 2022)
-
My cliches wander in
with a negligent ease.
They have no compunctions
with rude visitations.
Like a tabby stalking
a yard of a neighbor
who fed her once
years and years ago,
they simply stray from
the page’s periphery:
an easy image
returned to repeatedly,
providing a brutish clarity
to a violent mendacity.
(October 6, 2022)
-
this letter will be ignored
as so many others
or perhaps worse
misread
as if
some other
were the subject
instead of you
(February 9, 2021)
-
as if trapped in a net of shadow
afternoon light through the window
struggles on the opposite wall
to form a coherent pattern where
a difference may be discerned
between shadows near and far away
outside the oak and elm stand muteallowing the air to whisper for them
allowing easy cliches to answer
decades of hardened blood
to answer questions never asked
to form opinions from shadow
as old palimpsests below the scars
re-inscribe the day hour by hour
-
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (74)
It is hard to hear
what must be said
easy to fall
into cliche
a pair of shoes
softly worn old
they know the way
to take you home
as cows wear down
a simple path
between one place
and another
no difference
really matters
our thoughts carve out
the same channels
and run like rats
trapped in a maze
never pausing
to look for more
than what was there
the last time here
repetition
a common thread
comforts us all
with old ideas
and traps us too
with such fools as I
(July 11, 2020)
-
from an untitled serial poem (2)
tufts of dark fur
scraps of red cloth
broken glasses pools
of wine the remnants
of someone’s meal
are splashed across
the cottage like blood
on a butcher’s apron
she is not here
neither is he
one fled
one’s dead
birds hop and sing
on the window sill
a family of rabbits
nibble grass
along the path
the door lies shattered
on the ground
dry splinters of wood
punctuate the grass
with unvoiced cliches
(January 3, 2020)
-
Are haikus the same
as internet cat pictures?
Here, look at this one!
(October 24, 2019)
subtext 