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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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  • again

    by

    change, communication, conversation, erato, interrelationships, love, obsessions, poetry, relationships, sonnets
    then he’s seventeen
    with all the awkward
    hems and haws and
    hesitant responses
    there is nothing
    except everything
    life and dreams
    fold so to the other
    one tense shifts
    present to past
    no difference
    to be parsed
    love endures
    words fail
    (September 1, 2016)

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  • still life, two unfinished metaphors

    by

    abstract, change, liminal, lost, metaphor, poetry, sonnets, transition

    as when you stand still
    before the door eyes closed
    hand resting on the latch
    gently for the moment
    a quick breath and sigh
    establishes a space
    around you like prayer
    and you quietly leave
    as when on the highway
    for your commute
    and the light’s different
    then you sense the road
    is no longer your road
    and you are no longer lost

    (August 30, 2016)

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  • First Thought Upon Hearing

    by

    babies, communication, haiku, happiness
    My son’s wife’s pregnant:
    I wanted to tell my mom,
    dead now these eight years.

    (August 29, 2016)

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  • permeable

    by

    abstract, conversation, existential angst, interrelationships, metaphor, poetry, sonnets, transition
    I am a thin
    caul
    stretched and shredded
    the holes grow
    tattering me
    like a net
    ragged on a pier
    beneath the unrelenting sun
    blood cakes across
    cracked lips
    what I said now
    what you said then
    collapses
    onto sandy rock

    (August 27, 2016)

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  • drop

    by

    abstract, borders, change, fate, fear, metaphor, poetry
    tension holds
    along the surface
    all that should flow
    yet stays hesitant
    pregnant with fear
    as if the drop will
    not fall in time
    rippling circles
    across the pond

    (August 25, 2016)

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  • Four Haiku for a Lost Full Moon

    by

    change, fate, haiku, lost, moon series, poetry, process, summer

    It has rained for days,
    rare for a Texas August:
    the moon lost in clouds.
    I too have been lost—
    low clouds blur the sky with rain;
    no sultry red moon.
    To what do I rise?
    The lake black in warm moonlight?
    Another year’s gone.
    With patience one waits;
    green corn rustles through the field.
    The moon ripens too.

    (August 21, 2016)

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  • metronome

    by

    attention, death, fate, poetry, sonnets, ways of knowing
    she moved between
    now and then
    unaware of one
    or which was where
    for weeks after work
    sun’s last light
    sifted shadows
    through her room
    she was loved enough
    to watch her die
     to hear her breath’s
    slow waltz count time
    we came and went like
    whispers down the hall

    (August 20, 2016)

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  • wait time

    by

    life, poetry, sonnets, transition, writing
    once again
    too tired
    to write
    no time
    to think
    at work
    beyond work’s
    trivial grind
    into dust
    patience must
    wait on her
    master
    I must write
    just not tonight

    (August 18, 2016)

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  • Scattered Remains

    by

    death, fate, memory, poetry, traces
    “in out as dead”
    –Samuel Beckett
    After a few words—
    he spit the ash from his mouth:
    nothing is left to say.

    (August 15, 2016)

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  • Worry

    by

    broken, control, dissatisfaction, poetry, work, worry
    not enough distraction
    to stop the rain
    from falling
    like knots
    another thought bends
    back obsessively
    there is nothing
    to let go
    even if I could

    (August 15, 2016)

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  • off meds

    by

    broken, control, despair, lament, poetry, work
    I’ve made a mistake
    returning
    a carapace encases
    my breath

    (August 14, 2016)

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  • Dusk’s Quiet Rhythms

    by

    abstract, borders, clarity, definition, liminal, poetry, sonnets
    Mountains at a distance blur the horizon.
    He tries to explain himself like scarecrows,
    through dance, explain themselves to the raven.
    He mistrusts the shapes of this common world
    presented with such precise clarity,
    as if lines like these can be so thin and
    impermeable to divide us all
    into differentiated grains of sand.
    Another wave tumbles along the shore,
    he cannot wait for the water to clear.
    Along the edge of the fog, figures dance
    between the trees weaving a patterned lace.
    He watches the moon rise above the hills:
    Who’s there waiting—the widow, or the bride?

    (August 12, 2016)

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  • Now

    by

    breach, life, poetry, sonnets, space, transition

    there’s always a door
    an emptiness to cross
    unknown spaces on maps
    filled with dire beasts
    a perpetual threshold
    to move love through
    like a bearded iris unraveling
    into a crisp spring morning
    with no latch except hesitancy
    a hand lingers on the jamb
    as if time can frame
    a portrait on a wall
    containing as a thought
    the next step and fall

    (August 10, 2016)

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  • A Map Distorts

    by

    choice, control, fate, lost, poetry, sonnets, ways of knowing

    Spreading the map out flat
    across the hood of the Ford,
    she fingers the route home
    like a vein along his arm.
    Nearby, he watches the night sky.
    The distance draws closer
    than the stars’ mythologies
    allow in reason’s smudged light.
    He resists the part he plays.
    She recognizes the distortion
    as a vague interpretation
    of where he once belonged.
    She sees where they’re going;
    he denies there is a destiny.

    (August 9, 2016)

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  • negative space

    by

    borders, desire, erato, eros, interrelationships, liminal, love, poetry, sonnets
    silences fill the shapes
    between the words
    mold to contours
    closing and opening
    frames like windows
    listen as water moves
    through the substrate
    to the crevice’s deep
    shifting structures
    in my laconic speech
    patterns in patterns
    tesselate the air
    with each shared breath
    with each trembled kiss

    (August 6, 2016)

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