a scream like lightning
rough ragged quick
followed by male laughter
then more garbled screams
like dogs growling
lights go off and on
upstairs then downstairs
the front door opens
light stabs across the yard
then the door slams shut
a bedroom light remains on
a car guns out of the driveway
then shoots off into the dark
then silence
(February 28, 2026)
I guess I am just a cold hearted humbug. I finished reading Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishoi over the last couple of days, and found it to be a sad little retelling of the Matchstick Girl. I went to the internets to see if what I saw was not just my bitter heart. Most of others opinions loved the book for its Charles Dickins-like Christmas sadness. It just seemed all so predictable and pat. One reviewer compared it to Barbara Kingsolver’s reworking of David Copperfield in her Demon Copperhead…but I don’t think Brightly Shining holds up to that comparison. There is just not that much there. It is just a sad story about two young girls who have to deal with an alcoholic father during the run up to Christmas. I have to admit when I first picked up the book for RFB (my book group) I though it looked like a Hallmark Christmas Rom-Com. In its favor it wasn’t that, instead it was a sad tale about being poor and caught up in troubles larger than a child can handle. I’m sure it makes many shed a tear or two. But not me.
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)
I want to fall
to be in the storm
through the night
the wind breaking branches
above my head
rain lashing the air
with elemental righteousness
instead I cower
in the dubious safety
of this cave
huddled against a stone
with no reason to believe
the rising water
will not continue
until I drown
(February 7, 2025)
Pattern’s traces, worn through
repetition, call from dance’s edge;
where shadows pulse like breath,
and flicker leaves against the sky.
I hear only the sharper echoes,
of the little dog at my heals,
whose yips and growls cut past
the surf’s surge far below, but not
the curved contours cloistered
closer to my heart. I am a fool
to trust so blindly in a god,
who allows me to languish
in faith’s certainty, as if
cowardice could protect me
from the final fragile shattering.
The bits and shards scattered
along the broken grounds are
difficult to winnow. I become lost
in a melodramatic reverie
where each memory excavates
a self-abnegation usually reserved
for saints confessing their silent sins.
(September 4, 2022)
For several days, I don’t write at all,
then start to worry I won’t write again.
Not that it matters to anyone else,
except me and the niggling voice within.
I know, time to think will quiet the voice
which fills the silence like an open wound;
for Time’s a negligent god, not caring
if I pick up any of the dry bones
she casually drops as talismans
on this twilight path I long to travel.
So, I tear out my heart as sacrifice
to the twisted beast who is my other:
will it satisfy this constant hunger,
and let grace fall on me like winter rain?
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)
As the old world swirls
in laconic siroccos of doubt
flinging sand adroitly
into a warm Mediterranean air
how do I stand still with silence
aware only of this moment’s breath
how do i ignore the nattering pedants
who brandish their wet cliches
like limp wands twined from roses
as petulant proof of their originality
how do i negotiate the spaces
i must traverse without
slagging off chunks of flesh
until the sinews abandon my bones
(October 26, 2020)
from a work in progress: Memory and Silence (81)
he spoke to silence
the remnants the shadows
gathered into the ghosts
he played across the wall
they were his shadows
his ghosts his play
like dark French caves
the walls distorted
the shadows bent away
from him into a dark
into his larger fears
into his silence
(July 29, 2020)
from a work-in-progress: “process not a journey” (38)
seed pods drift destroying
the dandelion’s soft unity
days slip past and I remember
less and less who I have become
.
I too am pulled apart
as memory’s long strands float
away like red silk scarves
on a late winter’s wind
(March 19, 2020)
they said, then she said, and can you believe
it that this happened, then that happened too,
and I said that she should say, but then she
went and said that this was just way too much
to stand, much less believe like Santa Claus;
I am so upset that I stabbed myself
with my pen, and wondered if I would die:
but first answer me this: “if you’re tattooed
on your lip, do you have to hold the lip
the whole time, or do they do that for you?”
as she stared into space holding her lip
lost in the quandaries of everything
not involved with the task which was right there,
and not there like an answered Zen koan.
(February 28, 2020)
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)
subtext 