Your hands dance the air
as you sit across the table
describing an event we shared
decades ago in our youth.
We are both there as before;
a sequence of events similar
enough to be the same events;
yet, causality and context shift.
Like Wittgenstein, it dawns
on me slowly that the story
you are telling is not the one
I have told about love’s loss.
You ask why I’m crying;
I realize you never knew.
(July 15, 2026)
“The heart lies to itself because it must”
—Jack Gilbert
What fragments have been lost
along the way? What holes filled
with other’s dry detritus?
other’s bland conjectures? These limits
become, over time, tattered as well—
perhaps more comfortable and loose,
easier to disguise time’s misgivings;
easier than telling the truth.
(November 21, 2025)
by
an afternoon is enough:
an hour, or so, with the sun
as shadows slip across
the walls and ceiling
he was there,
and now he’s not
(December 27, 2024)
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
—Oscar Wilde
Late at night, beneath a new moon, after too much cheap vodka and pot, a group of us, friends for most of our lives, gathered out on Tipton Road, a one lane gravel road running between two farms a few miles outside of town. The closest light glowed dimly from a farm house a mile or so in the distance. Infrequently faces were illuminated briefly like angels in old paintings as someone lit a cigarette or another joint only to disappear quickly back into the dark. We talked quietly about impending graduation, going off to college, or jobs, or the military; our parents, our girlfriends, knowing we were all losing touch as we spoke.
As we headed back to the cars, someone said, “Where’s Jackie?” He had wandered off on his own without anyone noticing. We all started calling for him in the dark. No response. We called again, then again: no response. Then faintly from a ditch next to a corn field down the road, we heard him giggle to himself, then shout out, “The stars— Man— look at the stars— look up— the stars are so close.” As one, we all looked up. The stars were brilliant and beatific, as for that moment were we.
We pulled Jackie out of the ditch, staggered to the cars, then finally back into the dark to find our separate ways home.
(March 29, 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)
My gravity slipped,
as she moved from time.
a radio signal wavered
one degree to the side.
The song grew static,
then solidified,
reinserting the melody
before vanishing
like dusk into night.
(January 20, 2023)
I talked too much, saying little.
Then a decade of unbroken silence
followed without your laughter.
Yet, I still felt the silent trace
of your fingertips along the length
of my bare arm, as you spoke.
Our intentions were never clear.
Then we left, each to our ways;
and, I became a ghost to you.
(July 10, 2022)
Together we drank and sang
into the night; we were true
to ourselves and each other.
Today, even the half-hearted
are cut down by the heartless.
What chance did our song have?
Tonight in the distance,
I hear a solitary flute player.
I think of you, and weep.
(June 17, 2022)
by
For decades he shambles
along the same path,
oblivious, naive —
then there it is— blossoms
arrayed along a branch.
She offers a taste
of a dewy-ripe peach;
he cannot bear
such divinity, and falls
away into profane sorrow.
(May 5, 2022)
by
to assuage the beast
i toss my heart into the fire
smoke billows angrily
against the oblivious sky
(January 26, 2021)
when mom died
we scattered her ashes
near the New Sweden cemetery
the chill wind swirled
like a witch’s spell
I inhaled then spat her out
today a cold wind dances
fall leaves down the street
I cough slightly then spit
(December 2, 2020)
With a late autumn
wind, a burr oak leaf flutters
gently to the ground.
(October 20, 2020)
He entered the water,
and drowned.
She entered the earth,
and decayed.
He entered the fire,
and was consumed.
She simply vanished
into the air.
Between her words
and the sediments
of his desires,
they were transformed,
becoming more the other
and less themselves.
Like beasts who love
in shadow’s spheres,
they entered metaphor,
and returned home.
(March 5, 2020)
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