1.
i cannot move
too much is broken
2.
demons live in mirrors
and are trying to escape
3.
it’s almost tuesday
yet there are no doors
4.
there is a dream
i cannot see
(May 19, 2026)
Category: exercise
-
The grass is dead; heat
and lack of water condemned
it to a fiery death.
The sun sets the skyon fire; the air vanishes
with the last ember.
The dark cannot grantreprieve from the constant heat;
our sweat turns to ash.
There is no relief.Our father has failed us all
The sun chars the dark.
God smells of stale death in ice;A silent corpse’s last breath.
(March 24, 2025)
-
Summer’s heat hangs thick.
Doves coo through a slow afternoon,
hotter earlier each day.
Beyond shade’s cooler edge,
lizards hunt their prey.
Doves coo through a slow afternoon—
the long heat’s mourning.
(June 8, 2024)
-
Here is a madwoman, dancing, while she vaguely remembers something. She longs to possess it, grasping the air with hands broken like branches. As she dances, naked, down the road, the memory tangles through her hair. Between her desire and memory, she can feel herself smudge into darkness. It is something like the smoke that slid long ago through the hallways of the house she once lived in. They were all happy as time flowed around them. They danced to a music that passed between them like birds flitting through branches. He held her then as if she were as fragile as air. Her memory becomes her partner, but not the partner of her memory. He was as solid as stone on the day she first saw him. He arrived with spring’s flowers igniting the air with their passion; its echoes now flow thick like water and ash. Now everything’s cold and winter never ends. His hands were like fire caressing the kindling of her body. Time was eternal and demanded no penance. Their laughter was joyous and private; the children all danced, giggling around them. When the last child died, she wept alone by the fire. Now children chase her and throw stones at her, as if she were a blackbird.
seed text: The Songs of Maldoror, by Le Comte de Lautrémont
(June 23, 2015)
-
Within history’s shrinking confines,
poppies bloom in burning fields,
and a horned lark chitters in the grass.
Nothing I say can change any of this.
Days hinge on days. They open and close
like doors, any of two different ways.
Above, contrails crosshatch the sky
like satyrs’ claws down her back
caught in spasms of a darker lust—
and the new book snaps shut, unread.
Nothing I say can change any of this.
(June 9, 2023)
-
I sit at a window sill
and watch the people below;
I have too much time to kill,
and no place really to go.
My life is a broken gunleft hidden behind a door.
I forgot where I left it,
never needing it before.
(January 2, 2023)
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A Haiku a day for a Month
by
assignment, clarity, context, daily haiku, end, essay, exercise, friends, haiku, meditation, poetics, poetry, process, writing
A little more than a month ago, one of my work mates proposed that she, a math teacher, and myself write a haiku a day for a month. After 37 haikus (I wrote more than one some days), I am going to stop the exercise. I think that my fellow English teacher proposed the undertaking in order to make her write everyday. I do this already, so it did not motivate me to write. I did find it a calming activity most days: a time to stop and think about what was in front of me either physically, mentally, or spiritually. However, it also deflected my attention away from other poems I had been working on. Usually I post about 15 or so poems a month (sometimes even pushing to 20). In October, because of the haiku event, I posted 38 new poems. I like haiku, and like writing them. Usually I make up parameters for my writing in an arbitrary and random manner. During the exercise, I used the traditional 5-7-5 syllable count, although I have in the past ignored that stricture focusing more on the brief flash of attention than on a numbers game. Figuring the syllable count is more of a guideline than a law. I don’t plan on giving haiku up; I’m just not going to sit down each day to write one. I have always written in small snatches of time, never having the leisure to write for extended lengths during the day. So, haiku, and imagism, lend themselves well to going from start to finish in the brief time I have to write. However, I also like spending time in my head as I go through the day, thinking about a longer piece. Therefore, as I stated at the beginning of this ramble, I am going to end my participation in the project. Thanks to all of you who read and liked the work I have posted over the last month.
(October 31, 2019)
-
Bright fall light dazzles
the trees in fading green leaves.
Squirrels squawk all day.
(October 26, 2019)
-
Aging
by
My shoulder’s sharp ache
wrings my sleep like old dish rags;
grey clouds hide the dawn.
(September 27, 2019) -
At home, they sit across from each other
like a pair of stone-silent gargoyles, when
he sighs to himself as if with remorse.
Looking up, she asks, out of politeness,
“Is something wrong?” He shakes his head, and says,
embarrassed that he had spoken out loud,
“Oh, Nothing, just thinking, at least nothing
important enough to say: just thinking.”
They watch each other with a quiet calm
like the still center of a raging storm;
each happy enough at home not to stir
up any conversations to avoid.
Slowly, they fall into their silences,
starkly alone with their thoughts together.
(April 18, 2019)
-
Cant
by
“Knowledge of the name gives him who knows it mastery even over the being and will of the god.”
–Ernst Cassirer
The mythos surrounding
Can’t in positivity
Can’t hide the truth
That can’t can
Always be said,
And can occur
Even when said
Can’t can’t.
Ultimately changing
A word can’t change
the word. Limits
Exist that can’t be
Broken, even when
We say they can’t.
(November 12, 2018)
-
after GBW
My veins are vines—
my arms, branches—
lips, soft moss:
Instead of sorrow,
I sing songs
of wind and rain.
(July 31, 2018)
-
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein
Emerson once wrote
that the first circle
is that of the eye.
My self fleshed in words
falls in a circle
that binds me to god.
My world’s in my voice
which whispers close by.
The first circle sees
these limitations
inscribed in thin lines
along the edges
of my fragile skin.
The weight of my words
holds me to the ground
where the air grows thick.
No fairy circles
exist to conjure
magic from a dance
only a few know.
I know my own dance;
each step a new world,
each thought adds new flesh
to my empty bones:
my thoughts embodied
in the day’s motion.
I wander slowly,
head bound in prayer,
obsessively lost
in the ancient turns
one must take each day
to gather the strands
that were left behind
by all the others
who tried to escape.
(June 14, 2018)
-
we did not knownor if we couldno tense to timeno thing definedno I nor youno we nor meno other otherto disagreeall was peaceall was lightno one knewdead of nightI could not sayFor all was grey(October 25, 2017) -
I drop an alphaBit now withoutThought of whatWill grow withinA part of whoI was turns toWho I transformInto tonightFor now I’m lostIn liminal locationsAslant to allProximal thoughtWith this bit of soundOur fabric’s torn apart(July 25, 2917)
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