whose story
your story
my story
some other
someone speaks
some listen
some believe
some obey
here the page turns
hear the page turn
slow whispers
form a deaf ear
control’s the word’s
darkest destiny
(August 13, 2020)
whose story
your story
my story
some other
someone speaks
some listen
some believe
some obey
here the page turns
hear the page turn
slow whispers
form a deaf ear
control’s the word’s
darkest destiny
(August 13, 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” (78)
after the worst of summer’s heat
we’d sit in the grass
beneath the pecan and cottonwoods
away from the radiant streets and sidewalks
the adults spoke of friends
far away or long dead
they’d laugh and tell stories
which we were not a part of yet
we ran wild through the night
afraid of nothing
(July 18, 2020)
from an untitled serial poem (3)
and nothing specific is ever learned
it’s more a pervasive atmosphere
an inescapable context which traps
us in a web woven and rewoven
moment by moment knitted from our flesh
and residue left from this dark frenzy
*
daily we fall deeper into the tale
yet there is no white rabbit to follow
only desire to ride us like harpies
the news the neighbors our friends all screaming
into a discontent none can escape
nor explain enough to be forgiven
*
as if there could be a strong enough god
to save us from our own stupidity
(January 5, 2020)
from an untitled serial poem (2)
tufts of dark fur
scraps of red cloth
broken glasses pools
of wine the remnants
of someone’s meal
are splashed across
the cottage like blood
on a butcher’s apron
she is not here
neither is he
one fled
one’s dead
birds hop and sing
on the window sill
a family of rabbits
nibble grass
along the path
the door lies shattered
on the ground
dry splinters of wood
punctuate the grass
with unvoiced cliches
(January 3, 2020)
I tell a story:
I am a part
as are you
being pulled
apart, each
part one.
The horizon’s shadow
flees before
I write this line,
a demarcation–
this path
versus another,
which word
takes us where?
(November 5, 2019)
He sat by his pond content
with the depth of his longing.
Then one day, she dropped in
laughing her way into his dream.
He thought he heard a splash,
and a glimmer near the bottom.
She played along the pond’s edge,
waiting for what he might bring.
When he returned to the surface,
the forest was dark and she was gone.
The castle was so far away—
and it was just a toy after all.
He sat by his pond discontented
with the depth of his longing.
(November 4, 2019)
Bread crumbs were not enough—
insubstantial as memory
flitting away like sparrows
through the trees. He was lost,
tangled in possibility’s inevitable
collapse; he could not pull past
the brush to a salient interpretation:
where he went, where he was going,
or what language he now spoke.
–
She had fled years ago,
escaped to the witches who
had forgiven her childhood
sins. She no longer believed
in the lies of her father,
the long walks in the woods
with her brother. She returned
now for some redemption,
only to find him not at home.
(October 25, 2019)
My story is true in so far
as it is my story. The lines
I must maintain for my belief
to be justified are many.
I fear questions lest it all falls
like a child’s tower of blocks falls,
tumbled across unstable ground.
Although I know that the truth lies
for I formed each one on my own,
turning them over and over
like rosary beads until smooth,
they still allow me to believe
each stone lies firmly on the next.
With no one to doubt what I say,
the facade I have built is real
I explain to myself myself:
I live forms of happiness
As long as the ever after,
and the hero is always me.
(June 30, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
There is no center to hold;
no story of violent gods
to tell while drunk
around a fire.
There is no fire.
Yet still, we turn
to one another
with what words
we have, and begin
again to speak.
(May 8, 2019)