If I hold the truth in my hand,
dare I eat it like the eucharist
placed on the tongue of a simple sinner,
or savor it like a mouthful of bourbon
before it burns the words wholly?
(August 7, 2026)
Category: truth
-
details, like mosaics, decades old
around eleven, the adrenaline slowfall from my red Christmas bike,
ripping skin on loose gravel,
catching the pain across my palms
facts of a sortfollowed by conjecture
the sky was winter grey—I was heading home (from where)
hurriedly (was I late, for what
or just the thrill of speed
or both— fear and joy dancing
together like flames)
perhaps, perhaps
what-ifs’ multitudes unravelwith time and causal doubts
as perhaps twist and spin into now’s
singular, tight, and irretrievable knot
I tell myself I know and knewthe bits of broken glass cohere
but I don’t anymore than I did
I fell, I bled, I musthave made it home
for I am here
(July 20, 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)
-
“The heart lies to itself because it must”
—Jack Gilbert
What fragments have been lost
along the way? What holes filled
with other’s dry detritus?
other’s bland conjectures? These limits
become, over time, tattered as well—
perhaps more comfortable and loose,
easier to disguise time’s misgivings;
easier than telling the truth.
(November 21, 2025)
-
even memory becomes a lie—
that was a truth, and so goes
the old paradox— out of truth
a lie to beget yet another.
The hollowness must be filled.So, the words fall into the holes
like wet sand, thick and dark
until the voices have stopped;
until the voice becomes itself:pervasive like white static
smoothing all to a null point
where what we know is allowed.
I know my truth for now:one thing leads to another
(October 6, 2025)
-
Most of my lies
belong to me
forming a tight
enameled sarcophagus
in which I will be
remembered.
Others I have
gathered overtime
like dust bunnies
in unused front parlors
tucked softly under chairs.
Like someone else’s
discarded old clothes,
they are obvious,
and fit poorly. Over time,
I have become comfortable
with most of life’s happenstance.
Even now I pretend to know
in my silence, nodding sagely
over other’s conversations,
as if I had some wisdom
beyond circumstance,
allowing their thin opinions
to cling to me, layering
my cold emptiness
beneath wet shrouds.
(March 7, 2025)
-
A hawk slips between the trees,
silently like a child’s paper plane.
Here is no truth lassoed tightly
by a smug Wonder Woman.
For what is truth? The mountain
is still a mountain, despite its name.
We see it—imposible to deny—
but we insist words mean more,
tripping over them like shoelaces
as we cower in the short grass, and
listen for air as the hawk descends.
(February 6, 2025)
-
if I understood I would not
need to write this moment
i’d simply let the breeze washacross my skin without metaphor
like morning sunlight strikesthe strings of a silent guitar
(December 18, 2024)
-
Still Life: Trust as a Form of Truth
In the wooden chair
we use on occasion,
next to a house plant
I forget to water;
yet has lived for years,
sits an old guitar
I cannot play.
It’s out of tune,
I’ve been told;
which could be true—
but how would I know
any more than this?
(September 21, 2024)
-
“Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone.
“wineing the ghosts of yester year.”
—Ezra Pound
Last night conversation flowed
freely between wit and wisdom
as easily as comfortable privilege
protects the occasional faux pas.
What wisdom lacks is the bitterness
left with the dregs at the bottle’s end.
Alone this morning, I slowly collect
the mostly empty bottles scattered
about the house like an archeologist
sifting for hints of a civilization
in the shards of broken pottery.
I wash the dishes, slipping my hand
over the soapy crystal, careful not
to shatter the glass against the sink.
Last night’s Malbec has turned slightly.
I pour a glass, and sip a bit anyway.
Skoal! I am the only one still here.
I swirl the glass ruefully, as ghosts rise
from memory to confirm my sour mood.
Memory, after all, can only reflect
the present. Like the glass, it distorts
any clarity dispersed, any veritas
the wine might once have whispered
like a former lover years after the affair:
a version of reality dependent on what
had been said, and how much confirms
what was suspected, and how much must
be forgotten as a form of forgiveness.
(May 26, 2024)
-
after Fanny Howe
Lisa’s voice and laughter
Lisa singing by herself
The dogs sleeping nearby
Music playing while I cook
Food with friends’ conversation
Wine whiskey and poetry
Reading and writing
Books where sentences shimmer
Fields of flowers
A single rose in a vase
My children grown into their lives
Autumn and Spring blue skies
Slow walks in art museums
My grandchildren’s laughter
(May 9, 2024)
-
If you can
If you must
Drink from this cup
Without dying
Without speaking
With a different accent
Without speaking
Of other things
Other lives
Your life for instance
Then you canThen you must
Walk among us
Without fear
Of the apostate
That nod of the head
That short suppressed laugh
That quick glance of recognition
In some other’s shaded eye
Before looking again at the ground
Lest you expose some other
Thought some other
Older deeper truth
That is yours alone
(October 10, 2023)
-
There is no truth to face;
these circles are closed and reflexive.
War is endless: we walk blindly
through one blooded field or another.
Nothing matters. Her one endless song
is too full of flowers and mockery.
*
I float between sleepand dreams of sleep.
With no other joys,
no other pleasures,
I sink beneath
waves of dry tears.
(July 18, 2022) -
I tell you my truth;
so does he, but his is a lie.
Each morning we both shit,
take a shower, drive to work.
The mundane slaps my face,
as if waking to a wet bed.
In the tea house’s simplicity
the same tales are told nightly.
(May 7, 2022)
-
What light does one see?
Without the body,
without a place,
without a context?
Truth remainsradiant throughout
a thousand worlds,
silently loquacious.
(April 28, 2022)
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