Both long for some other than exists now,
and then vanish when consummated.
Both, in their hearts, contain a tarnished shard
of pessimism which gives them a meaning.
Both are wrapped in a spongey optimism
to protect them from dark life’s toxic barbs.
Both are twin aspects of an endless hell:
one leads you there, one absconds at the gate.
(April 26, 2026)
My father’s ghost has returned
to haunt me after decades
of silence. I only knew
his decline; now, I’m learning
my own, a slow remembrance.
I’m no Hamlet; to avenge
his death, I would kill myself,
there would not be a question.
Telling that story once more,
I am what remains of him.
At night looking for water,
not as broken as he was,
I see him in the mirror,
frowning at me from the side.
My body reflects his own.
My mom used him as a threat
even after he was gone:
If you could be half the man
he was…if he could see you…
what do you think he would say?
She has been gone for years now,
while he hangs on the edges
darkly brooding as in life,
a storm always eminent,
on the verge of violence.
I saw my future at eight,
and a clearer past today:
his presence was an absence
always nearby, yet distant
like a shadow on water.
(November 16, 2025)
The wind gusts in bursts
rushing leaves down the street
in a spasm of seasonal ritual,
as if a pattern’s repetition
creates a meaning separate
from our own simple noticing.
I have a hard time hearing
these voices of the world
through the constant clatter,
through the daily dazzle
and flash of the spectacle
playing in the wind’s
petulant laughter.
My screams are too loud.
To maintain my illusion
of safety, of purpose,
I whisper stories to myself.
I know stories are stories
and how they move through
each other like incestuous ghosts,
or confluent rivers, shaping
one another as they change.
I know change is incremental,
so I listen closely to my heart.
I notice a difference, but
am unsure what is different—
my notice, or the angle
of the wind through the trees.
(November 13, 2025)
He didn’t know how to act, and had no script to follow. She knew her part without book, and said all her lines with ease. This was, she pointed out, not her first time in this role. It was, he thought, a true love story, not just another chance for her to reprise a stock character. Repeatedly, she set the scene, hitting her mark, an easy cue to follow. Scene after scene, he vaguely wandered the stage, wishing he knew what to say; wishing he knew what to do; unable to act on his desires. She was confused. What was his motivation? Why wouldn’t he act? Why did he not respond correctly? Eventually, the farce ended as it began, without preamble, or resolution. Some one laughed in the wings, followed by a slow clap. Then, like a ghost, she left the stage, leaving him to ponder their performance alone, as the lights slowly faded past memory.
(September 5, 2025)
With a metaphor’s
soft fluidity,
one replaces
an other
granting grace
as a form
of explanation.
I breathe;
trees breathe.
Air flows
between
shadow and light.
One to one—
not quite,
but enough.
I mistrust the soul
as a concept
of consciousness.
Not as is said:
a soul with a body,
or a body with a soul,
but some sense
separate from sense,
a constant desire
to set markers,
like a small asterisk
in a dense text
to divert the eye
along the bottom
of the page
like a river
we must cross
to finally arrive home.
Except, all is water;
and, there are no bridges.
(July 27, 2025)
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)
Ghosts move through the house, sitting on the kitchen table, on the arms of overstuffed chairs, looking at the blurbs on the backs of books left casually on side tables as if they still knew how to read. They have something more to say, but they have lost their ability to speak. I loan them my mouth. Their words almost fit what I say. They speak in the footnotes as unacknowledged experts to cite variations and caveats. Although no one has time to read their comments, their soft attention to others’ details reshape the shadows until memory begins to cling to their faces like stone veils, or muscles to bone. They no longer belong to the story they once were, anymore than I know the end of mine.
(April 16, 2025)
I have a Spring cold,
my chest thick with congestion.
Still, I go outside.
One must be at work,
they say, for inspiration
to find room to breathe.
Oxalis from mom’s
house in Victoria grows
beneath the iris.
Our yard is chaos
planned out from the beginning;
nature is random.
The roses need to be pruned.
A hummingbird whirrs nearby.
(April 11, 2025)
by
he did not mention
any more than did she
what was never said
those parts off stage
never explained yet
implicit to the scene
the vast open silences
their words spoke into
the vast open silences
their words tried to seal
the resonant confessions
which adhered
(February 21, 2025)
1
the chihuahua. chases his tail
spinning and spinning
ever faster, then stops
as if it slipped his mind
as if it never existed
as if not a part of him
2
no redemption no salvation
for the innocent no sins forgiven
except those perpetrated by us
3
memory tightens even as lived
the street where I lived was not
the street i lived even as I walked it
4
the details left in the burning village
the character arcs tangled in the bodies
left in the streets their chores undone
5
fifty years in my head were other
people’s lives written over mine
each revision scraped a layer clean
6
I don’t know what to say anymore
all the shades slither a dance
along the edge of the trees
a slow shuffle forward three back two
enough to circumnavigate the field
to find only this overtime
(February 19, 2025)
Beneath the whispers
I hear a nascent breath:
a phrase, isolated,
out of context, yet
still a residual force—
like a white noise
days after a concert,
sings in my inner ear.
Outside the poem,
ghosts of my desires
rise mouthing words
out of order, slurred,
as a pentacostal’s
frozen fire burns.
(February 3, 2025)
Crows fly overhead
with raucous caws.
With less than an hour
before the long night begins,
I start a fire in the back yard.
Inside where candles burn,
guests gather bearing wine and gifts.
Spilling some wine, I turn
from the fire and wave
to my friends inside.
Tonight we share food,
and laughter. Fear of the dark
hangs on the edge of the fire.
Of this, we are all aware.
Tonight, we smile, hug,
and toast the coming year:
there is always hope.
Tomorrow, the light,
in daily increments, begins
to slowly turn from the night.
(December 22, 2024)
we returned after months
because we knew me must
despite exhaustion of the dead
we returned with each other
to each other’s acceptance
despite the darkened folds
we returned to common rooms
to staccato conversations
despite our acquiescent whispers
we returned to rearranged chairs
to vaguely shifted points of view
despite our best attempts to lie
we returned to our solitudes
to our redacted definitions
despite our fractured lives
(December 15, 2024)
After wandering lost,
circling familiar trails,
I brought us here again:
a reflection in a mirror
of a mirror’s reflection.
If I turned to you now,
my face in your eyes,
your face in my eyes,
and supposed
a vision of love,
would much change
from what it was,
or what we have become?
(September 26, 2024)
I say something.
You hear a window
a smudged image,
vague with familiarity,
despite the angles
of the frames,
or the broken glass
in the dead grass.
We wear our wounds
like overstuffed chairs,
or hermit crabs their shells—
alone and voiceless,
despite what was said,
despite what was heard.
(June 20, 2024)
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