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: sonnets
-
To be in the moment
Aware and conscious
Of the vibrant air
Is to be in the past
To think is to lag
Behind the words
Arising like starlings
Turn in murmuration
The present is evasive
Becoming lost within
The cards’ shuffled
Reiterations
Until everything said
Can only be said again
(October 22, 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)
-
Hovering behind me
on the edge of vision,
they show themselves
through innuendo.
No blatant laughter,
but violent whispers
which hint of storms
later from the shadow.
I cannot exorcise them,because I cannot name them.
They refuse to confess
preferring instead to sift
through old possibilities
like snow through dead branches.
(August 20, 2026)
-
Your hands dance the air
as you sit across the table
describing an event we shared
decades ago in our youth.
We are both there as before;a sequence of events similar
enough to be the same events;
yet, causality and context shift.
Like Wittgenstein, it dawnson me slowly that the story
you are telling is not the one
I have told about love’s loss.
You ask why I’m crying;I realize you never knew.
(July 15, 2026)
-
As a child, I studied old paper maps;
the folded, stained, and torn gas station maps
Dad used to follow the back country roads
into the Texas oil fields to find work.
I’d trace my fingers down the thin lines
leading away from where I was living
through the small black dots signifying towns
and larger amorphous yellow cities.
I read books with imaginary maps
full of dark rivers, and magic mountains
where characters stepped lightly from legend
and wandered with clear purpose and meaning.
While at home, I’d find my place on maps,
and make a way toward any where else.
(July 14, 2026)
-
There’s a snapshot of my mom
when I was twenty-four
which would put her at sixty-six,
my current age. She looks tired,
worried. She holds her face as if
deeply troubled, or grieving.
I was about to go to Europe—
my first time outside of Texas.
When I was a child, she would readbook after book after book to us:
Little Golden Books: Pokey Little Puppy,
The Little Tug Boat and others.
They all had one common theme:
There’s no place like home, no place but home.
(June 8, 2026)
-
The night is broken in a multitude
of awakenings. The dogs are disturbed
by the full moon’s motion across the sky.
Between their futile barks, I lie awake.
As dawn approaches you pull me closer,
laying your head upon my chest. I sleep,
finally drifting to the edge of dreams
where the world is neither vast nor empty.
Lately I have been thinking about death.Not my own, nor anyone’s I know, but
Death— the absurdly inevitable
avalanche collapsing beneath our feet:
as if I can know more than what I am;
as if I am something other than dust.
(May 31, 2026)
-
This evening the old ghosts have returned.
They inhabit the edges of my vision
whispering their tired secrets to the past.
Like scions of privilege hang in cafes
deconstructing last night’s party gossip,
The ghosts wail their sad regrets-she never said,
nor he listened- Even in death they cling
to their moral shortfalls like life jackets.
If there’s a hell, here is where it festers:the exhumation, through exegesis,
of dead variations left to decay
like tattered banners along the ramparts
pretend the siege was easily broken
and the dull ashen smoke never smoldered.
(May 25, 2026)
-
The afternoon sun glares down without ire
as I step out onto the front sidewalk.
A horned lizard eyes me, suspiciously
tilts its head into the still of the day.
Aware without motion, I am no threat
where I am. It’s warm in the sun, why move?
This lumbering slow beast cannot compete.
It knows without knowing; we are killing
ourselves. Small, hot, warm-blooded, bound in fur,
we were no more than rats when its kind loomed
across the humid landscape. Choking on
our own waste, we will perish soon enough.
There’s no hurry. It turns back, looks at me
with disdain, then patiently darts away.
(May 24, 2026)
-
If I understand
correctly, then
I have stumbled
on a rule,
a pratfall,in my case,
accidentally
into a truth.
Not that rulesor truths must
ever exist
necessarily:
here, where I am lost, iswhere the first word falls.
(April 24, 2026)
-
The snow, the road,
the woods, the town,
the wild geese, the sleepy cat
are not the snow, the
road, the woods, the
town, the wild geese, the
sleepy cat; the words I use
are not what I am saying.
Like lovers’ conversationslate at night after many years
and a second bottle of wine
are never about what they say:
a metaphor is what is left;
a metaphor is what you fear.
(April 22, 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)
-
Sancho Panza
by
Nine books lie
on my bedside
table, unread:
six poetry,
two non-fiction,
and Don Quixote.
I should finish
Cervantes—
or at leaststart— once
again, now
that I’m older,
and his windmills
have turned to giants.
(March 24, 2026)
-
“and there is only the dance”
—T.S.Eliot
each step in this dance
trembles the body
like little orgasmic ripples
across an expansive lake
a small tenuous call
for a redemptive love
in a fragile universe
fleeing from itself
I believe in the tedium
of individual self-expression
as if it truly matters
truth is a smooth pebble
in an ocean alive with
mundane mendacities
(March 21, 2026)
