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: worn
-
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)
-
storms rage without rain
like shrouds across the dry earth
trees drop their dead leaves
each night grows longer
one more minute of light less—
incremental death
i’m tired of trying—
too cynical to pretend
darkness has not come
it is ironic
with the weight of centuries
nothing can be done
the sycamore’s branches fallI fear spring will not return
(October 21, 2025)
-
it was just the two of us Lisa and I
too young for children we thought
now they’re all grown and goneand I’m too tired even for regret
(May 26, 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)
-
The grass is dead; heat
and lack of water condemned
it to a fiery death.
The sun sets the skyon fire; the air vanishes
with the last ember.
The dark cannot grantreprieve from the constant heat;
our sweat turns to ash.
There is no relief.Our father has failed us all
The sun chars the dark.
God smells of stale death in ice;A silent corpse’s last breath.
(March 24, 2025)
-
I am not a mirror,
a reflection formed
in images I walk within.
I am lost in the projections
along my surfaces, vague
and inchoate like smoke.
I am not a windowwhere a stranger
in the street may watch
the pedestrian drama
of my life’s denouement.
I am a sack-cloth bagstuffed with cliches.
I slip my hand in
to find tattered masks
which fall to dust
as I drape them solemnly
across my skin.
(February 2, 2024)
-
By the time I wake, I’m worn out.I try to convince myself I slept,
because I have no memory
of being awake. All night’s dark
moments resemble each other;
until incrementally, day breaks
shadows cleanly across the wall.
I can see I am awake. Yet still,
I’m unsure I have slept at all.
My thoughts too are like this now:
ideas and images enter, then part
with only a hint they were there,
like a lover’s perfume on the sheets
hours after she has left your arms,
returning once again into his.
(January 7, 2023)
.
-
The students used to be enough
of a balm—
their curiosity, their light.
Today the ephemera wears me:the pointless testing,
the political demagoguery.
It becomes harder to ignorethe razor thin insults,
the slow bleed.
This should be the end—yet inertia pushes me,
slouching towards another year.
(April 12, 2022)
-
I feel my life tonight—
the weight, the textures.
There is no wisdom to create
an escape, no simple design
to relieve the recurrent terror.
Outside the wind grabs the trees
by the hair tossing them about
in an ecstatic frenzy.
I step into the growing night
and listen to the trees whip
the pale sky into the dark.
What control I thought I had
flees from me, abandoning
the promise of the light to come.
(April 11, 2022) -
Worn Thin
by
Tattered like old rags
I’m tired before it begins:
unravelled from years
of worry and work.
Gravity crushes the lightinto the room’s corners.
I move, a fragile ghost,
with slow thick steps.
Once again, I’m pushedback into the grey chair
to stare out the window
at nothing in particular.
I know what to do,but the thought wears me.
(April 5, 2022)
-
I look out and see the sun;
I feel no warmth.
I do not want to be here,but I have nowhere else to go.
I would say I’m unhappy,but that implies happiness
existed as a measureto gauge an amount of rain.
If I listed all my faults,I’d have something to do.
Today was much like yesterday:hot, dry, and lonely;
The sun slowly shimmersthe surface of the lake, like ice.
(November 11, 2021)
-
“but in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself”
—Albert Camus
Any tremblethrough the trees
contrary
to the first
wind, the
next wind,
or no wind:
always afraid,so afraid
to simply be,
with no
definition,
with no
place to go,
nowalls left to build,
no excuse
left to believe,
no end;
then again,
no end.
(September 12, 2021)
-
There is no causality, no maze
to transcribe into memory,
simply a chance to breathe
near the bottom of the stairs;
and, like a mouth singing
arias, I crack open the bones
in my chest to find a way
into the warm flesh, to dip
my worn fingers slowly in,
to feel the heart’s contours
define the next last moment,
to map another return into
the ocean’s lost metaphor.
(August 25, 2021)
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