obsessions – subtext

Another Sad Love Poem

this letter will be ignored

as so many others

or perhaps worse

misread

as if

some other

were the subject

instead of you

(February 9, 2021)

doorway (113)

formed out of these walls to shape

the air to separate here from there

beneath the dark winter quilts

my skin presses to your warmth

longs to be more than my limits

more than what’s contained inside

more an opening to other spaces

other ways with different lines

to cross with a limping accent

a creole to hone words into an edge

I know only what I know

my cell wall’s textures memorized

through the season’s slow change

the light and shadow through the bars

play their fingers in the silent air

like puppets alive to the string’s pull

beaten path (90)

like an old dog

circling his bed

i turn then turn

the idea around

a phrase a word

a memory

until the floor’s

worn away

and i fall

a slow spiral

like a rock

bounces against

a stone wall

and steps

with a clatter

before it stops

and I wonder

as if the thought

mattered

(October 30, 2020)

I started a serial poem back at the beginning of January. The plan was to write 140 poems, each poem’s length pre-determined by a random number generator, ranging from 3-140 syllables. It was to follow vaguely the rules of a renga, where each poem grew out of the one before it somehow, whether through theme, pun, image, or a reply. The number of poems was determined by the number of syllables in a sonnet.

I have reached 80 poems in this series. I hit 40 back at the end of March. I have 60 more to go. I would like to finish this by the end of December, which means I should speed up a bit. LOL. I have never really written under a deadline except for required essays in grad school. However, 80 poems in 7 months is a fairly phenomenal pace for me.

I will now begin to move forward with the third ‘stanza’ while collecting and tightening sections 1 and 2, in hopes that as I reread and work over the first two sections, the third stanza will continue the conversations, if you will, that began in the first two “stanzas,” and the themes and images will continue to echo and grow organically in section three.

A little obsessive, but then what about life is not.

(July 27, 2020)

Writing About Writing My Work in Progress

I read this morning that Hemingway said that better writers didn’t talk about their writing; I think it is often important to reflect on what one is doing as one writes: metacognition to use education jabber. So, fuck off Ernie.

I started a serial poem back at the beginning of January. The plan was to write 140 poems, each poem’s length is pre-determined by a random number generator, ranging from 3-140 syllables. It was to follow vaguely the rules of a renga, where each poem grew out of the one before it somehow, weather through theme, pun, image, or a reply. The number of poems was determined by the number of syllables in a sonnet.

I have come to the end of the first “stanza” section—40 poems. The last poem in the section #40, ‘rhymes’ with (39), (20), and (1); as (10) and (30) ‘rhyme—in an attempt to create an overall section unity. I will now begin to move forward with the second ‘stanza’ while collecting and tightening section 1, in hopes that as I reread and work over section 1, the themes and ideas that emerged in section one will echo and grow organically in section two: a conversation between sections one and two, if you will, as section two talks to itself.

Well, it keeps me something to do, and think about if nothing else.

(March 22, 2020)

one

from a work-in-progress: process, not a journey (40)

for years years ago

I thought about amoebas

how I wanted a metaphor

which would work well

with the amoeba image

to surround and absorb

until there was no difference

to contrast a comparison

no space between to slip

a prosaic definition

where on wanders safely

through dusted hallways

and life’s sharp ambiguity

blends into one

(March 16, 2020)

Mistranslations

My past imperfections intercede

to lay claim to what I can see.

The air between thickens in time

like delirious veils in the wind.

Each word she spoke I heard

as if her fingers on my arm

traced a secret in braille

I was too blind to read.

Now too tired to transform time,

I watch myself as if dead;

the chill pushes through my flesh,

like a rat gnawing in the wall.

Time’s translations fill my silence

with the words neither of us spoke.

(December, 20, 2019)

Limitation

from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress

Image property of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

Random borders set blurred forms

to contain apportioned bits

of chaos. He accepts these

chains, like religion, to free

himself from the infinite.

(June 10, 2019)

Marginalia

The ghosts in his forest sift

between the bramble, collect

momentarily in clearings,

and compare notes on their

unconsummated affairs.

His apparition slips along

her edges, begging the margins

she ignores. Annotations,

without context, entangle

his thoughts, growing a life

of their own, a meaning

of their own, as blooms

of moss on the forest floor

disguise the broken trees

in a green effulgence.

He tries to trace her designs

within her fractured words.

Each turn he takes leads away

form yet another possible exegesis;

until, he falls into a clarity

forever uncertain and voiceless.p

(May 5, 2019)

Category Archives: obsessions