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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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

    by

    attention, beauty, desire, erato, eros, happiness, hope, love, lust, poetry, sonnets

    A rose opens
    to a bee’s
    persistent nuzzle.
    Busy, busy bee!
    What do you see
    within the petal’s folds?
    Oh, soft damp petals
    of the newly open rose!
    I have no reason
    to pursue
    beyond this longing
    to caress you – – –
    Such is my life’s desire
    along this garden path.

    (May 24, 2016)

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  • photography

    by

    death, fear, poetry, sonnets
    nuclear flash
    leaves shadows
    stunned by light
    in stone’s crevices
    as if the soul
    too was too slow
    to escape thought’s
    annihilation
    we too wait here
    with a death’s head grin
    to be transfixed
    in the moment
    as it shatters
    into primal light
    (May 23, 2016)

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  • transitory

    by

    communication, erato, liminal, love, poetry, relationships, sonnets, ways of knowing
    we met once awhile ago
    I talked you listened
    in a way after a fashion
    you talked I listened
    deeper than you could know
    then you left and I remained
    still I obsess as I obsess
    turning each phrase into a symbol
    each symbol into an icon
    then tear them down once again
    to reshape my words from rubble
    as if what I said could matter
    the I and you I thought we knew
    met at a crossroad and parted

    (May 21, 2016)

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  • Mother Moon

    by

    interrelationships, moon series, mythic, poetry
    night flowers suckle
    the milk moon’s reflected light
    we are the other

    (May 21, 2016)

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  • one motion

    by

    abstract, borders, change, definition, liminal, poetry, sonnets, transition
    a door is a void
    an open space
    a defined space
    step out of the room
    step into the hall
    a single step
    everywhere
    nothing’s there
    other than here
    I am a door
    an opening
    a void
    a step out
    a step in

    (May 21, 2016)

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  • Presence

    by

    attention, erato, eros, interrelationships, life, poetry, sonnets
    “Each time you happen to me all over again.”
                            –Edith Wharton
    here always
    time and place
    unchanging
    always here
    the setting
    holds us still
    always near
    skin to skin
    we each speak
    such voices
    always distant
    I cannot hear
    here near distant
    always this instant

    (May 20, 2016)

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  • before

    by

    alone, breach, broken, interrelationships, poetry, relationships, sonnets

    not the glass
    shattered on the floor
    not the silence after the shots
    not the incongruity of blood
    expanding around you
    like red scarves unraveling
    in a soft wind
    none of the phone calls
    none of the tears
    none of our friends
    with their warm hugs
    arriving through the night
    none of the moments after
    matter before

    (May 18, 2016)

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  • a tuesday night

    by

    broken, control, existential angst, poetry
    and I’m drunk
    at least for a bit
    before sleep and
    the two bourbons
    lead me to bed early
    exhausted from work
    from twenty-seven years
    of slicing off bits of flesh
    close to my heart
    to keep myself fed
    and hobbled
    so as not to wander
    too far astray
    from it all

    (May 18, 2016)

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  • three haiku: port aransas, wetland education center

    by

    change, critical theory, poetry
    morning’s pond ripples
    as gulls squabble like children
    time does not exist
    *
    pockets of nature
    to store bits of this life
    away before death
    *
    safe along a path
    nature’s just an exhibit – –
    look! we’ve saved the world!

    (May 14, 2016)

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  • reconciliations

    by

    erato, fragments, poetry, relationships
    broken-toothed clocks’
    sprockets grind and
    stutter through their hours
    as you draw near
    mispronunciations
    become borders
    abstract and armed
    with misunderstanding’s
    bitter truculence
    with thick black swaths
    your understanding’s clichés
    inscribe these tropes
    between our vague edges
    I ask forgiveness
    for sins
    not quite committed
    for possibilities
    not enacted
    as doubt’s consequence
    and oblivious indecision
    bloomed virtue’s flower
    through omission
    here is my undoing
    there my failure
    this trust in what I say
    as replicable in you
    as a rose to a rose
    within the same bush
    echoes one to the other
    as if time is enough to grow
    from these broken thorns
    scattered across the ground
    a reconciliation which is whole
    (May 15, 2016)

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  • here not there

    by

    attention, desire, hope, poetry, sonnets
    hope like desire destroys us
    stretches our attention away
    from what’s left of the day
    the way smoke is pulled
    from a fire through the flue
    to dissipate into the night
    this moment’s ash cascades
    as we begin to grasp
    how rarely we are here
    with each slow breath
    a thread of air uncoils
    into our smallest cells
    as now and again we are
    without hope without desire

    (May 9, 2016)

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  • Speaking to You Still

    by

    alone, erato, eros, lament, mythic, poetry, sonnets
    A narcissistic creature,
    I have only my voice;
    yet, think this is enough
    to pronounce some other.
    Language is not god,
    anymore than god.
    I can no longer conjure you
    from conversation’s scraps:
    I speak your name again
    without an echo for reply,
    only my muddled reflection
    in which to quietly drown.
    Close by this silent pond,
    such flowers bloom now.

    (May 7, 2016)

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  • always a door

    by

    change, life, poetry
    the rhythmic throb ripples
    you along the passage
    tight flesh on flesh
    until you present
    to drown gasping air
    into a different world
    a moment as metaphor
    pulls you to the next
    always a wall always
    a hall always a door

    (May 3, 2016)

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  • love, you

    by

    assignment, conversation, erato, love, poetry, response, ways of knowing
    there is no again
    to imply
    an abatement
    love to be love
    is without time
    no before or after
    or even a now
    it simply is
    overtime
    without measure
    within me
    within you
    love breathes
    like the universe

    (May 2, 2016)

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  • Love’s End

    by

    change, erato, humility, liminal, love, poetry, transition, ways of knowing
    he was a rabbit
    ready to run
    caught still in the grass
    he was trapped
    trapped in his knowing
    trapped in his not knowing
    he wanted something other
    than a future regret
    something other than this
    memory’s remnants
    possibility’s bloody scraps
    unfit even for motley
    (May 1, 2016)

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