cast off like rubble
from the melodrama’s troubles
the constant clack and tumble
the rush and rumble
swallows my voice with a gurgle
(January 16, 2021)
ephemera’s viscous nature (105)
Category: erasure
which simple metaphor shapes my day (104)
a different time with new shadows
wraps the light in different patterns
more random more abstract less fragile
less likely to crack like a beetle’s
carapace beneath my careless boots
I roam between my vacant days
then disappear easier than I thought
between quick ire and old resentments
like broken branches slip easily
with the river’s froth across smooth rocks
despite all the engrained justifications
despite the comprised and contradictory
narratives despite the feral rage
I am who I am stripped of language
laid down since birth like shrouds
(January 15, 2021)
parenthesis (95)
with an accent slightly different
than any dialect spoken here
a hole opens around us like an amoeba
and we are contained within
an other’s misinterpretation
as if we were not a part
of the conversation like a rock
is not a part of the river
which erases incrementally
shaping the rock as it surges past
oblivious like memory to the change
as each remembrance rises
to take dominion everywhere
if only for the moment it takes
to speak and then to unhear
all the patterns which brought us here
(November 19, 2020)
Day’s End
If I could peel these veins
from my arms and fashion
them into a noose,
then I’d find a dead tree
to swing upon
like a tattered paper lantern
dancing in an empty breeze.
(August 30, 2020)
who tells the tale
from a work in progress: process, not a journey (65)
she speaks of her self
and all that entails
.
your memory is not hers
less so than those daffodils
.
shut up and listen
(June 19, 2020)
Dream Journal 37: He Woke to a Memory Which Only Happened in Metaphor
As they walked, she spoke and collected items she saw along the trail. A kind of reverse Hansel and Gretel: instead of finding her way back by dropping bread crumbs, she wanted to become lost, and collected markers which would have shown their way home. Finally, she asked if he would read a draft of something she wrote. He disliked reading friend’s work (it was all too intimate: entering another’s mind), but he said for her he would. He lay down on the soft grass, entranced by her voice. She told a story as she placed the objects she had found (an acorn, a feather, a stone, a dead butterfly, a ribbon) in a shallow hole next to where he lay. After a while, he sat up and glanced at the objects in the hole. He said, it’s like a witch’s ingle. She laughed gently, and began to loosely tie his hands with the ribbon as she finished her story. He watched her dark eyes focus on the task, becoming lost in their intensity. When she was done, she said to him, now you’re supposed to untie yourself, and become free. He said, one would first have to want to be free. With nothing more to say, she walked away leaving him in the woods.
(April 1, 2020)
winter’s end
from a work-in-progress: process, not a journey (40)
blue bonnets bloom in the backyard
as a new plague floods the city
I fear all that has changed enough
to become a normal day yet forget
what patterns have been replaced
by emptiness reweaving a past
which should have existed like flowers
found pressed between the pages
of a favorite book marking the poem
you read to me when we were in love
instead of these tattered nets I mend
as best I can from wisps of memory
in the hope a better world will blossom
like the wild flowers in the backyard
(March 20, 2020)
one
from a work-in-progress: process, not a journey (40)
for years years ago
I thought about amoebas
.
how I wanted a metaphor
which would work well
.
with the amoeba image
to surround and absorb
.
until there was no difference
to contrast a comparison
.
no space between to slip
a prosaic definition
.
where on wanders safely
through dusted hallways
.
and life’s sharp ambiguity
blends into one
(March 16, 2020)
Fairy Tale Endings
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)
Lightning Ignites the Core of a Tree
All around him, the forest burns,
uncontrolled, beautiful.
The warmth reassures him
with its certainty.
His fingers burn; the flesh
chars as on a spit.
He turns, searching;
but she is gone, if ever
she were truly there.
He stands alone,
arms outstretched.
Flames leap through the trees;
smoke swallows the sky.
(December 10, 2019)
