I think of something else,
and become lost in the time
it takes to exhale
like entering a different room
then forgetting why
you left.
(August 8, 2026)
Category: tired
-
I could write about the dogs,
their usual sniffs and yips
as they go about their doggy lives,
but they are both curled asleep
on the rugs in the front room;
or I could write about Lisa,
who I have loved and written
about for more than forty years,
but she too is quietly napping
in one of the overstuffed chairs
by the back room’s windows.
Outside, the wind waves slowly
through the sycamore and oaks
like a man treading water off shore.
Earlier a friend sent me an article
showing Americans who say they drank
over the last year has declined
by a third since the 1970’s.
This does not alleviate at all
the grey flannel feeling this hangover
has draped across my melancholy day.
(May 17, 2026)
-
“How have you made division of yourself?”
—W. Shakespeare, 12th Night, 5.1
I lean over
my sleeping body
run my hand
down my arm
to wake myself—
I feel my presenceabove me—
-time to wake up-
I stir reluctantly,
but I am so tired.
Still I wake enoughto find myself
-crawling back into bed-
once again alone
and return to sleep.
(May 3, 2026)
-
“the war never ended somehow begins again”
—-Natalie Diaz
they no longer confine their hatred
to the darker shadows of night
but walk about mid-morning
unconcerned when recognized
thick blood drips from their teeth
while they stand in line at the bank
or watch the game at the bar
casually drinking a craft beer
we all know them for what they areyet say little above a whisper
we tell ourselves they won’t stay long
yet they do linger like smoke
long after the fire has burned
our lives into softest ash
(February 16, 2026)
-
Night continues to fall, dark upon dark,
unrelenting, cold as eternity.
Yet, tonight a half-moon hangs in the stars.
I try to ignore the fear on the wind,
but it eats its way in, splintering bone.
Ice, like a steel knife rusting at our throat,
parses words to an elemental degree.
What can be said contains but small nuance.
So I write pinching syllables like rice
to keep starvation one more day away,
hoping without hope that what I can say
is enough to carry hope through this dark,
that whatever bit of love which remains
is enough to hold our world together.
(October 3, 2025)
-
Some days just walking—
and I lean from the earth’s core
like a falling star.
I stand up quickly,birds, planets, and stars swarm like flies;
I fall to my knees.
Nothing is stable,yet, I expect the sunrise
as I kneel in prayer.
One hand touches a wall,the other reaches into air
for something not there.
The earth spins about the sun,as my fingers lose their grip.
(May 3, 2025)
-
I wake. The puppy needs to go outside.
The older dog comes along as well
hoping to roust a nervous rabbit.
It’s close enough to six by this time
to feed them, and take my daily meds.
I am tired, and worried about the world.
They finish their ration of kibble
and head happily back up the stairs.
I turn off the light, and follow along.In the hazy half-minute it takes
for me to crawl under the sheets,
they’ve both tightly curled in bed.
I lay there unable to return to sleep,
and listen to the dogs’ soft snores.
(April 4, 2025)
-
On a sunny day in mid-November
in a newly gentrified part of Austin,
the restaurant is full of the young and educated
who chat at tables beneath the large oaks.
Waitresses bring armfuls of food and drink,
then easily sweep away the empty trays
in an all consuming dance of plenty.
Conversation at our table stays light
with talk of work and dogs and nothing,
nothing at all, of the coming darkness.
(November 10, 2024)
-
“worn out a way of being”
—-Jim Harrison
1)
Not that they went away,
my meds muted most,
and slowed the pace
to a lachrymose flagellation,
from relentless and revisionist
jump cuts, reshuffled
and reconnected,
in ever new and familiar
kaleidoscopic tropes.
2)I read once twenty-five percent,
or more, of people have no voices
talking to each other,
no inner voice to sound
the depths of their day.
“How do they think?” my students askedwhen I told them. “I wouldn’t know:”
I sighed, “strangely, I guess.”
“How lonely,” one girl said to herself.
3)Almost four in the morning,
the dogs insist on going out.
I’m tired and insist on telling
myself that I am tired. I want
to make a list of all the things
I’m tired of, finally coming
to a consensus: I’ve worn out
a way of being, a path carved
in repetitive quiet conversations.
(October 7, 2024)
-
I am Tired
by
I am tired of words,
the anxious necessity
to hear, if only
my own stifled whispers.
I am tired of talk:the exchange and banter
enmeshed in daily
guilts and desires.
I am tired of listeningto my stillborn story,
unsure each moment
if I’ve said it before.
I’m tired and uncertain;there is no end, no beginning.
(July 13, 2024)
-
I arrive early at nothing, no door,
no prison wall to climb, a vast unknown.
Like time standing still in an open fieldwith an infinite empty perspective,
all direction the same grey hollowness,the same vacant stare into cold distance.
There’s no point in looking back for a road;it too slowly vanished into nothing.
The foreground is without prior contextand smudges vaguely into the background,
as if a charcoal sketch had been erasedhaphazardly and without proper care
leaving bits of paper and eraserdebris scattered across an empty page.
(May 21, 2024)
-
I want to say something,
so I interrupt their conversation.
What I have to say
is not that smart,
nor insightful,
yet I say it,
because I must.
My words are protection
against my insignificance.
People are polite.
They nod their heads,
feigning interest
as if what I say adds
to the topic.
When I pause,
they pick up
where they were
as if I were dust
in a corner
of an empty room.
(March 31 2024)
-
if i move too fast then details
which get lost in the blur
tumble away from me as I fall
grasping desperately at roots
protruding from the rock
or seizing bits of grass
that rim the edge of the whole
yet if I move too slowthen the larger view decays
into each profound curvature
of stone I step upon
until i clinch my teeth
in anticipation of intercepting
the wall with my jaw, then
watch my blood follow in slow arcs
behind my shattered teeth
so i stand stillrisking nothing
(March 18, 2024)
-
the desire for words
inspires delusion
the ambitionlaced in envy
clots the throatwith small words
small ideasuntil all that’s left
to say wheezespast dry lips
in a finalthin sigh
no onecan hear
(March 15, 2024)
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