After picking herbs,
She muddles the mint
or basil depending
on what’s to follow.
She bruises the leaves
like an abusive lover
into an intimacy
he can swallow.
After all,
what is allowed
is tolerated—
no matter
the consequence,
of some god’s rage.
Category: paradigms
-
He stopped forgetting,
and began again to see
the shadows in the trees.
No longer willingto hide in oblivion’s
darker eddies,
his questions turnedto soft acceptance,
and he felt free.
Memory shiftedand reshaped itself
to a looser fit,
more comfortableto the details
he wished to deny.
(April 30, 2026)
-
inevitable
by
I make our dinner—
noodles with snow peas and shrimp.
She is not hungry.
We have forgottenhow many times we’ve been here.
Decades of hope lost.
Another year ends—Our pensions are still enough;
the night darkly falls.
We drink to forget—Tonight we dance a circle;
again, we are here.
Again, day falls into night.Life is inevitable.
(New Year’s Eve, 2025)
-
It’s the lopsided charm
of this day’s superlatives—
the shortest day,
the longest night,
which for millennia
provided power
to the metaphor
for hope to console us
with heavenly promise
that peace will return
as easily as morning light
washes over dark stone.
(Winter Solstice, December 21, 2025)
-
an old god
with a patina
of reason, like
the verdigris
on bronze statues
in the park
lives an assumption
of an intentional design
rather than the result
of time whispering
a mother’s lullaby
relentlessly and consistently
its comforting dream
until what we are told
and what we believe
and what we are
are all the same
right or wrong
(October 19, 2025)
-
Just another day:
the children go off to school;
students are gunned down.
-
Cycle
by
I’m tired of this life,
but not tired enough to die.
The sun rises, then falls.
(August 15, 2025)
-
Nothing is complicated.
Everything is simple,
if not simplistic.
Caught in worry, we
trouble our troubles
which are nothing really.
I read a poem todayon the internet: the poet,
obviously under the influence
of Bukowski, judges the bartender
for her intertwined tattoos
and for her storied fucking.
He ignores that what we writeoften says more of the writer
than the subject of the poem.
We are the pen and the paper.
While in the slow dusk of life,
we see only with myopic eyes.
I’ve winnowed enough truthfrom any number of lies to know
there is little difference, and
I’m not sure I trust anyone
anymore, especially myself
when it finally comes to that.
(June 30, 2025)
-
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”
—-Henri Matisse
we called them
by different names
the wrong names
confusing one
for some other
as if language
changed them
from what they are—
fields of flowers:blue bonnets butter cups
primrose mexican hats
from early spring
into summer
nameless not unknown
(April 8, 2025)
-
Despite the despots,
despite the collapse
of oceans’ currents,
despite the anger
flowing through the streets,
the iris push up
though the garden mulch,
and roses burst into bloom.
(April 6, 2025)
-
we pour this wine for the earth
that gives us a place to stand
we pour this wine for the airthat gives us breath to speak
we pour this wine for waterwhich gives us life on the planet
we pour this wine for the firewhich purifies our failings
we pour this wine for the etherwhich connects us to the world
we pour this wine as an offeringthat we may survive the dark
that the madness will spare us
and we will return to the light
(February 25, 2025)
-
fuck my life I say
as I go about my day—
ritual defines
(January 10, 2025)
-
As if leading a ritual, the dogs wake me from dream. Their wet noses snuffle in my ear, scenting for traces of consciousness. I slowly collect myself, then escape down the stairs alone. Their task complete, the dogs curl into the warm shapes I leave behind in the tangled sheets. I’m cold, so I wrap myself in one of the brightly colored Mexican blankets Lisa bought more than twenty years ago along the border. Behind me on the counter, the coffee pot begins to gurgle and spurt. I watch through the sliding glass door as the leaves fall from the cottonwood and sycamore out back. Chasing squirrels most of the day, the dogs have worn two paths through the grass, each ending in the same place on the far side of the cypress at the bottom of the yard. These paths breathe cliche, no less so because mundane. The squirrels, out early, leap from tree to tree, dropping to the ground unmolested to collect acorns they buried, somehow remembering where they are months after the fact.
(December 10, 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)
-
“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)
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