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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

  • This Writer’s Beginnings: EarlyYears
  • Bread Loaf Influence
  • Rock and Roll High School
  • About

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  • Love Tropes

    by

    assignment, erato, lament, love, muse, perspective, poetry, vision
    “the wounds produced by stereotyped sight”
    –Wayne Koestenbaum, Forward to “A Lover’s Discourse”
    1

    he could only see
    what his words
    allowed—
    the wounds
    filled with salt
    of their own making
    he reacted accordingly
    through a bank
    of emotions
    a cacophonous disquiet
    embedded
    in presumption
    2
    her words were
    hers, askew
    to his vision
    she suffered not
    the barbs in his
    intent—
    oblivious
    to his exhortations
    she wandered away
    singing songs
    drenched
    in his blood

    (May 24, 2017)

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  • He Breaks the Wall

    by

    abstract, communication, definition, erato, interrelationships, language, meaning, memory, social construction
    He exists
    Within parenthesis,
    An aside
    To an inattentive audience.
    He fears not knowing,
    Being seen the fool;
    So, he stays silent
    As he sifts through her words.
    What he thought she said,
    She said,
    But not within the context
    That he thought.
    He said
    What he could say,
    Not
    What he should say.
    She said, he said
    What she would say,
    If he said
    What he should say.
    He breaks the wall,
    The membrane,
    Between thought and vision,
    Memory and forgetting,
    The impermeable space
    Of  parenthesis.
    Such are the pirouettes
    Which define his day.

    (May 22, 2017)

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  • All Fall Down

    by

    abstract, life, meaning, paradigms, poetry, social construction
    Meaning’s Absolute
    Falls into disarray
    By default,
    As easily as
    Children
    Collapse across the ground
    Feigning death.
    (May 23, 2017)

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  • Salt Marsh Haikus, with a Tanka Couplet

    by

    acceptance, attention, haiku, life, nature, poetry, sonnets, tanka
    Port Aransas, Texas
     The crane’s slow patience
    Waits on the edge of the pier,
    All moments are now.
    Wind across the marsh
    slides through the wavering grass,
    if I’m here or not.
    With a fluttered splash,
    A fish leaps into the air;
    There is no escape.
    With words we fix time.
    The pelican preens its wings,
    Our noise means nothing.
    Lost to simplicity,
    Days rush past us unnoticed.

    (May 22, 2017)

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  • Was it Love?

    by

    erato, eros, haiku, love, response
    Or perhaps it was
    You, and not all the sonnets
    A means without end

    (May 17, 2017)

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  • Confession: How Far I Feel I Fell

    by

    erato, interrelationships, love, muse, poetry, romance
    I fell
    For I felt
    For you.
    Falling away
    I felt I must
    Fall for you.
    To feel
    I felt
    I must fall.
    I fell
    Through silence,
    Through words.
    I felt
    Alive,
    Yet alone.
    I felt
    You must
    As well.
    You fell
    Away,
    I feel.
    I fell;
    You fell
    Away.
    I fell,
    And fell,
    And fall:
    Still fall,
    Ongoing,
    Unmoving.
    Love lost,
    Like leaves,
    Falls away.

    (May 17, 2017)

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  • No Shade to Shadow

    by

    alone, erato, eros, love, muse, poetry, sonnets
    To whom should I speak
    If not to you,
    Or my projection of you?
    The morning’s soft shadows
    Flicker no light
    Upon the lake;
    A ghost gray glows
    A presentiment
    Into the day.
    Are you there
    In the morning’s shadows?
    They flee the sun.
    I hold out my hands
    Empty of shadows.

    (May 16, 2017)

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  • Apostrophe

    by

    abstract, change, communication, fractals, poetry, social construction, ways of knowing
    Again
    I address you
    The other self
    Myself
    Split into reflection
    Refracted
    Through a lens
    Neither you nor I
    Yet another other
    Beyond us both
    Who turns again
    With a jaundiced eye
    Gazes and thus transforms
    You me us
    Into a fractal array
    Without apparent source
    (May 14, 2017)

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  • Residuum

    by

    humility, poetry, sonnets, writing
    I rarely know what
    I’m going to write
    Until I start to write
    Or even while I write
    Yet still I return
    In spite of or because
    Of this uncertainty
    I return to common
    For me themes again
    And yet again until
    My obsessions beget
    Clichés and settle
    Like broken bodies
    To the sea floor

    (May 14, 2017)

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  • To Whose Robes We Cling

    by

    hubris, life, mythic, poetry, sonnets
    “Our interpreted world”
    –Rainer Maria Rilke
    They do move among us
    Through us around us
    Sometimes even are us
    A putting on of clothes
    We have an insight
    A flash of light
    Then fall away
    An emptied face
    Snagged on grace’s
    Brief flame
    An ember’s pause
    Before lost to smoke
    We are our angels
    Lost to our world

    (May 12, 2017)

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  • Small Talk

    by

    abstract, communication, control, conversation, poetry, power, words
    With words as walls to define,
    Where we stand’s unstable;
    Language’s grappling hooks
    Lift us to destroy.
    I’m no more than a tale
    Told to reinforce a whole.
    In silence, and because of silence,
    Fragments foster resentment
    Like flowers tossed on the floor.
    Small talk’s leathery skin
    Slips around us like a sheath,
    Protecting against discourses’
    Dangers: the traps, the unlacings,
    Coy revelations, and truth’s
    Sudden inexplicable violence.
    (May 17, 2017)

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  • Creation

    by

    definition, god, poetics, poetry
    Briefly, in the beginning
    You can see—
    A metaphor thickens:
    Galactic dust, along
    A horizon,
    Momentarily coalesces.
    Yet, the gravity
    Of the event
    Fails you;
    And what was imagined
    Vanishes like breath
    Into the breathless air.

    (May 17, 2017)

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  • To Live’s to Fear

    by

    borders, change, control, fear, metaphor, poetry, sonnets
    Aware, to an extent,
    How the air extends
    Like follicles sense
    A metaphor’s thickening,
    He rescinds permission
    To dream himself,
    Then retracts, like a hermit
    Crab refuses a shell.
    He likes his old walls.
    His skin’s tight confines
    Help to hold him in.
    Secure in a cell’s comfort,
    He’s safe in his belief:
    the chains make him free.
    (May 4, 2017)

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  • Tesserae

    by

    assignment, desire, erato, eros, half sonnets, love, poetry
    He placed bits before her
    Broken thoughts fragments of love
    An offering for her to puzzle
    Together in increments overtime
    In hopes that these tokens
    These talismans would suffice
    To form a larger picture
    Of all he could never say
    Yet his patterns remained
    Abstract if not obtuse
    His intentions blurred behind
    Shattered and pixilated bone
    No frame work no mortar
    To hold his heart together
    (May 2, 2017)

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  • The Anarchy of Need

    by

    abstract, change, creativity, life, liminal, poetics, poetry
    He wrote into a breach,
    A way through to some
    Other not himself;
    Like water through rock,
    He slipped through fissures,
    Ached along the cracks.
    There were slow moments
    When his old skin rasped
    Roughly on the wall,
    Leaving trails of blood
    Like blotches of ink
    Splashed across the floor;
    Moments when his breath
    Caught hard in his throat,
    Unable to speak.
    (April 30, 2107)

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