I am tired,
And tired of being
So tired
Constantly.
I’m tired
Of the voices
Constant
Critiques;
the constant
Mirrored
Dialog
Between
the dark
And the dark.
(November 10, 2026)
Category: meditation
-
Though we know that the answer of eighty will not be the answer of eighteen”
—-Kenneth Koch
If only we knew
We act
Through ignorance
With a confidence
We have no reason
To believe.
We improviseOr patterns,
And follow the rainbow’s
Teleological arc
As if we know
More than nothing,
Until we arriveWhere we were going;
Where each step
We took; each fall
To ground was a kiss
Of intimate consequence.
(October 31, 2026)
-
So
by
So, I hesitate, thus
stumble on the next
shadowed step—
the surprise
where it was not before.
A flash of light on the stairs
breaks continuity
with the dark’s flow.
So, I recognizethe recurrent other.
I am, for the moment,
dizzy with doubt,
left to determine
my next step myself.
(October 8, 2026)
-
We extrapolate darkness
as if somehow we can trace
a way past the next horizon
with the sun always settingperpetually on the edge
of our small redemptions.
While no confession’senough to encompass
the ease of complicity,
there is no life without guilt,no guilt without awareness:
the sparrow will always fall,
as once will we all in timesimultaneously with the sun.
(September 4, 2026)
-
I wander up Bread Loaf mountain
The day before my Chaucer final
With my professor’s wife, an Anglican
Priest, and their 7 year old son, Luke.
I am not a hiker, but I need to think
About something other than Chaucer
So when she asked us all to go along
I thankfully said yes. No one else did.
I am not a hiker. I am an introvert.
I plod along, thinking, not talking.
Luke asks question after question.
His mom answers each patiently.
She says I’m quite taciturn.
I don’t know its meaning
So I say nothing and continue
Trudging up the mountain.
Luke asks me how I keep going.
I say I think of something else.
She asks what I’m thinking about.
Boethius, I say and take another step.
I need to read it again before tomorrow.It is short enough to be read overnight,
Unlike anything we read for class-
Which was all of Chaucer’s works.
She offers me a bottle of water;I naively did not bring my own.
I am not a hiker. I have a headache,
But nothing like Boethius.
We make it to the top, somehow.The view is stunning and vast.
After eating a sandwich, Luke
Runs about, eager to start down.
The next day, I write for three hours,Comparing parts of Boethius
To corresponding sections
Of Troilus and Cressida.
Stunned I finish, somehowWith nothing left to say:
I am not a hiker. I know
What taciturn means now.
I took a chance on BoethiusAnd found consolation.
I am not a hiker—
So ends my tale.
(August 2, 2026)
-
Time to Go
by
I have a tendency, I’ve noticed, to rush
the ends of my poems, to hurry home,
as if I’m bored with myself as well.
I don’t question any more the days
I don’t write. I know I will write,
because I always, eventually, do.
I know someday it will all end.
My heart will stop; I’ll take a last breath;
I‘ll say one last word. But that’s okay.
Life does not have to be an adventure
full of subtle profundity, and radical awe.
It is more often the slow morning after
sunrise, or mid-afternoon’s summer heat
when nothing moves more than a sigh.
(July 28, 2026)
-
details, like mosaics, decades old
around eleven, the adrenaline slowfall from my red Christmas bike,
ripping skin on loose gravel,
catching the pain across my palms
facts of a sortfollowed by conjecture
the sky was winter grey—I was heading home (from where)
hurriedly (was I late, for what
or just the thrill of speed
or both— fear and joy dancing
together like flames)
perhaps, perhaps
what-ifs’ multitudes unravelwith time and causal doubts
as perhaps twist and spin into now’s
singular, tight, and irretrievable knot
I tell myself I know and knewthe bits of broken glass cohere
but I don’t anymore than I did
I fell, I bled, I musthave made it home
for I am here
(July 20, 2026)
-
Anomaly
by
If something is not part
of a pattern, does not repeat,
is it still not a norm—
the norm of the anomaly?
For more than fifty years,I have scratched my poems
like a dog its ear searching
for temporary relief.
The comfort of a pattern:another successful day
passes without consequence.
I’ve placed a word on a page,
replaced nothing with purpose.As above so below.
(June 20, 2026)
-
I could write about the dogs,
their usual sniffs and yips
as they go about their doggy lives,
but they are both curled asleep
on the rugs in the front room;
or I could write about Lisa,
who I have loved and written
about for more than forty years,
but she too is quietly napping
in one of the overstuffed chairs
by the back room’s windows.
Outside, the wind waves slowly
through the sycamore and oaks
like a man treading water off shore.
Earlier a friend sent me an article
showing Americans who say they drank
over the last year has declined
by a third since the 1970’s.
This does not alleviate at all
the grey flannel feeling this hangover
has draped across my melancholy day.
(May 17, 2026)
-
—11:11am, 81 degrees
After an interrupted sleep,
I am slow to wake
into a muggy spring morning.
The dogs were restless
and anxious all night
disturbed by shadows
shifting across the moonlit yard.
Both now curl at my feet,
silently asleep.
I sip my second cup,
stare out the window
at the sycamore’s leaves
slowly stirring the still air,
and try to start the day.
(April 26, 2026)
-
Process
by
I do not sing these songs
as much as mutter
over what I notice
like an itinerant priestparsing last rites randomly
to people passing outside
nevertheless I trust what I saymatters yet to whom or how
I do not pretend to know
there is a truth to poetryI will never understand
for it occurs without my help
I have become resigned to itas with much of my life
things happen as they happen
(April 7, 2026)
-
He is in a chair in an empty room. It is dark outside.
He is in the same room, in the same chair. Light comes through a window.
He has questions, but is hesitant to ask. Unsure of the answer he seeks.
His uncertainty is his fear. He sits still for hours at a time.
The room never changes. The furniture is static and old.
The room is not the same, depending on where you look. Depending on where you sit.
The room was new once. The room is always empty.
The room filled with furniture slowly over time.
There are windows. They are shut, without curtains.
When the lights are on you can see in the room from the street.
There is nothing to see, but white walls without art.
There are windows, one cannot see much outside.
He holds his breath for minutes at a time.
When he feints, he quickly recovers.
(April 6, 2026)
-
I wrote this a couple of years ago…
“to combat the resistances of language you must keep talking”–Anne Carson
I write most everyday. Since the end of last August, I have filled up two 150-page notebooks, completed close to 80 short poems. I have written, if not so obsessively as now, since I was 15. I write poetry, with the occasional venture into essays like this one. I have trouble with narrative, one event leading into another befuddles me, as does conversation between people. So I do not write fiction. Yet, I do have an interior running commentary on the narrative I am living, snipes and admonitions on my life as it unfolds. To push back against this cruel eviscerating voice, which adheres tightly within my skin, I write. I write to explain the world to myself, to explain myself to myself, to resist the world, which is lain upon me by the world. I write to resist the temptation to settle into myself without a thought. I am uncomfortable in most social situations. It’s discomforting when others try to define me, or attempt to interpret me from my writing. Yes, I am aware that all writer’s expose their minds in their writing. Even writers of fiction expose themselves through their fictional characters. Nietzsche wrote that in the end we only experience ourselves. Yet, I believe there is also a separation from oneself, a leap into the universal other, which occurs when one writes: a transubstantiation of individuality into a larger third person narrator, who watches and observes with more objective, more just, eye. Of course, I also know this is pure bullshit. I am as clotted with my biases and situation as anyone. But it is through writing, through the transformative nature of writing, where a third space can open, and one can enter along with whomever can follow into a changed world, a different, perhaps better place, if only for the time it takes to read the poem. And to keep from being defined, trapped even in these new spaces, I continue to write, to find a way to exist with myself.
(February 28, 2017)
-
Poem
by
A rose requires
no one to notice
it bloom; come spring,
it just blooms.
(March 27, 2026)
