yet another day
with another grey sunset,
my glass is empty.
(May 13, 2021)
Bone Tired
Category: poetry
Alone
I fear silence
for it leaves me
to my words.
Their whispers
mouth
my periphery,
like minnows
tear a worm’s
flesh from
the steel hook
glimmering
in a creek’s
slow eddy.
(May 11, 2021)
turn turn turn (140)
with spring’s violence flowers burst
into bloom from winter’s death
as chimes toll slowly in the tree
mere weeks ago ice creaked
tightly along the chase tree’s
twisted branches as the chimes
hung limp and people froze
to death alone at home
(May 9, 2021)
community spread (139)
when listening to someone speak
each word takes root
along the tendrils of the unsaid
a pattern emerges
branch grafted on old wood
flowers to mourn the newly dead
(May 8, 2021)
ways of knowing (138)
certainty’s a razor’s edge
pressed lightly across skin
i draw a line along
the length of my arm
tracing a blue vein
a way in a way out
(May 4, 2021)
as the world burns (137)
the turn was not a turn
you saw with my eyes
I blinked it vanished
she said no it was
not as you said
the way I knew it to be
the ragged lines spoke
with stranger accents
skewed cognates
the way was only
the way here
the sole path here
the sky cleared
the sky stormed
the rain was dry
the way here was
the only way here
only me here now
I only know
this language
the words come to me
by birth
by chance
by god
she said yes but
not as you said
only what I said
it was the way
I knew the way
the way I said
(May 3, 2021)
how history begins (136)
maps do not speak
as vaguely blurred
vowels along riverbanks
where second cousins
two counties removed
slur to their mates
nor sift for finer
details in pap’s
bourbon tongue
(April 26, 2021)
forgive us this day (135)
“lesser christs of dim aspirations”
—Apollinaire
as an early spring front approaches
and dark clouds push across an empty sky
the first line begins the separation
from who I once was to what I’ve become
the slow dissolve from silence
into a momentary resistance
to the callow acquiescences
and the nodding submissions
imbued in these day to day devotions
this moment turns without motion
without thought as though it were
not there as though I was not ever there
as i was not the day before nor after
but only now in a field arms outstretched
the cold rain washing softly over me
(April 25, 2021)
Clouds Drift Apart
The moon’s still there;
look up. Happiness lies near
the ground where you stand.
(April 22, 2021)
neither knowing nor unknowing (#134)
there in the day
to day constancy
there in the grain
of our tongues
as we speak
each to each
of the most
trivial things
there is where
the how arrives
on soft cat feet
oblivious of the night
there is the story
you said then said
along the seams
between dark and light
the story we heard
the story we tell
stitching our scars
along calloused lines
one strangled knot
woven into another
an embroidery
of nooses
until we’re hardened
to brittle words
which shatter all
we once were
thin crystal slivers
from a broken glass
scattered like stars
across the floor
(April 19, 2021)
