by
he did not mention
any more than did she
what was never said
those parts off stage
never explained yet
implicit to the scene
the vast open silences
their words spoke into
the vast open silences
their words tried to seal
the resonant confessions
which adhered
(February 21, 2025)
I mistrust my poems
when people say
they understand—-
as if I failed
to open a space
for an emergent
thought— the sentence
extends like a hand
to help an old man stand
why say what could go
unsaid, easier to stay silent,
to allow them to stay
within their thoughts
without my re-inscription
of a belief they had forgotten
(July 25, 2023)
What light does one see?
Without the body,
without a place,
without a context?
Truth remains
radiant throughout
a thousand worlds,
silently loquacious.
(April 28, 2022)
Another cold night flows
into yet another dark day.
For more than forty years,
I have spoken to silence
unvoiced presumptions,
unvoiced expectations.
Why do I still presume
tomorrow with change?
Why do I still expect
that day will come?
I’m tired of talking,
pretending some one will hear.
(January 1, 2020)
I made her breakfast:
cheese, bread, and a sliced red pear–
what love can offer.
(October 6, 2019)
He knew enough
if not too much,
while pretending
he knew it all.
She, too, wanted
more, something
other, ineffable,
not here, not now.
They sat in silence,
without moving,
listening closely
for the other’s heart.
Nearby, on the wall
hung a stale still life.
(September 17, 2019)
Stop. I’ve said too much
to you. Stop. Like smoke,
I hold traces: conversations,
finger tips along my arm.
Stop. I cannot. Stop.
Love crushed me. Stop.
Still you run rampant
through my poems. Stop.
For years without reply.
Stop. I want you still
To say something. Stop.
What vague answers
Can I give you? Stop.
Other than this. Stop.
(November 21, 2018)
Not from any petulant resentment,
Nor a lack of matriarchal love, but
It does not bother me much now
That mom died a decade ago.
Worry distracted her and kept
Her distant. She wanted me
To be something she wanted
To be, without regard for me.
Her love, no doubt, was sincere,
But was obligated, and entangled
With obligations in return with
A thousand hair-thin lines to untie.
Like rags, I wring my hands, like her;
And wish, like her, I was someone else.
(October 8, 2018)
Am I here?
Can you hear me
anymore?
I am no answer
to your questions,
implied, or stated.
Is this what’s left–
to fade in and out
like a side-show ghost?
Am I here
scratching inside
the house’s walls,
like a rat
slowly dying?
(September 27, 2018)
Unless a care be taken to repair,
happiness is a tenuous lacework,
fragile and personal; the past
and present knot, like fate,
into seemingly intricate patterns
where one thread, time-worn
or simply stressed, snaps,
and the whole unravels into dust.
It comes to a question of hugs
or hurts, as if the two could easily
divide along traceable fault lines,
rather than entwine like caduceus.
I am conflicted as to the intent:
to be wary, or to pretend content.
(August 2, 2018)
by
to lost friends
The weight of silence
is not the same
as the weight
of absence;
anymore than the weight
of disappearance
can be the same as
the weight of being left.
The weight of forgetting
is much lighter
than the weight
of the forgotten—
for it does not carry the weight
of all that can be remembered.
(July 25, 2018)
to Lilith
I am no god to grant permission,
nor to watch your struggle
and pretend I know any more.
I want to lift you into the air,
to hug you close to my face, but
you are a grown woman now.
I flounder along in my own life.
The easy problems— to kiss
your stubbed toe, and all be okay—
have grown exponentially,
until I am as lost and incapable
as I think you feel. We all subsist,
scrabbling among the rocks searching
for that tasty bit of explanation
that will cause it all to fall neatly
into place, which never happens.
We are all lost in our worlds,
doing our best to love each other.
(July 3, 2018)
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