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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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  • topographic maps

    by

    clarity, communication, erato, loss, lost, muse, poetry, time
    like the flat
    relationships
    of these lines
    to the distant
    possibilities
    of our true natures
    your pattern
    I laid upon
    myself remains
    I bend back now
    a switchback
    path snaking up
    a mountain 
    as origami folds
    the timeline’s
    disparate moments
    to trace finger
    tips to lips
    to causality’s kiss
    a brushed cognizance
    like whispers
    much too late
    to know who
    spoke of whom
    if at all through
    the dark lost
    in our ways
    (December 23, 2015)

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  • what does the silence mean

    by

    friends, loss, poetry, time, traces
    the widening space between
    each word as if stars
    drifting apart could fix
    the dark in which they
    vanish slowly over time
    like friends I no longer see

    (December 20, 2015)

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  • All the Difference

    by

    chance, choice, definition, fate, happiness, poetry, sonnets, ways of knowing
    One has heart.
    One’s heart is death.
    One feeds itself.
    One’s omnivorous.
    One hears music;
    one war’s harsh drum.
    One plays the fool.
    One cannot laugh.
    So one chooses:
    the well-worn,
    the least trodden.
    No difference
    between the two
    beyond the heart.
    (December 18, 2015)

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  • Fragmented Awareness

    by

    abstract, attention, poetry, unstable, ways of knowing
    How much of my day is delusion?
    From moment to moment blurs
    between stock mutters brandished
    like shields softly rattling before
    the onslaught of tangential dreams
    as I walk through the halls alone.
    Each step, each side conversation,
    ripples like bells on distant hills
    calling and calling for some other
    to flow down the valley in streams,
    until I drown in possibilities’
    endless pulse and thrust.
    As a glass resonates on the verge
    of shattering, I can feel the first
    harmonic trembles flutter along
    the edges of my skin. My voice
    breaks in waves, then vanishes
    into the howling maelstrom.

    (December 16, 2015)

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  • World View

    by

    abstract, broken, poetry
    All is truth;
    I am the lie.

    (December 16, 2015)

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  • Then When?

    by

    haiku, loss, poetry, relationships
    Distance is rhetorical:
    I’ve sat next to you,
    wondering. Where have we gone?

    (December 16, 2015)

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  • one explains

    by

    belief, definition, poetry, process, sonnets, ways of knowing
    one explains the past to present desire
    as if nothing were not enough to cry
    into a mere transcendent belief
    each word trails more than itself
    coughing and hacking like an old man
    lost in his promise full of dreams
    until it becomes dizzy with sense
    and echoes beyond what is said
    to pull and shape us to our selves
    like a leaf resonate with the world
    begins to tremble in the still air
    before answering the earth’s cold call
    knowing nothing has to stay this way

    one falls toward the known pattern

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  • rhyme

    by

    desire, oblivious, poetry, sonnets
    he wanted up the stairs
    the polished marble stairs
    though nothing was there
    except strands of golden hair
    which cried beware beware
    there is nothing here
    go back now do not stare
    for your desires no one cares
    still he asks are you there
    were you there are you there
    then listens to the silent air
    to melodies vaguely clear
    no doubt’s cast too sincere
    to catch his tone deaf ear

    (December 11, 2015)

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  • memory & desire

    by

    conversation, desire, erato, interpretation, language, memory, poetry

    Desire bred misconception
    in longing’s golden aura.
    He half-heard in innuendo
    what he wanted to be said,
    but always so much later
    within memory’s gilded lies.
    Her endless chatter fed
    fodder for his ponders
    to chew like sullen cattle,
    waiting for their slaughter.

    (December 11, 2015)

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  • fade

    by

    lonely, loss, poetry, solitude
    as if with evaporation
    he vanishes from her thoughts
    an incremental erasure
    more subtle than a ghost
    no fissure fraught with guilt
    no tumultuous breach in faith
    not even the hiss of steam
    to mark his disappearance
    (December 9, 2015)

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  • mouthings

    by

    abstract, language, poetics, poetry, sonnets
    the slow tongue along
    a fold before the call
    and shout of an evangelical
    visions a pattern to confine
    the pulse and stutter
    in a mendicant’s response
    what are we within
    these folds but a fleshy
    wad of nerve ends
    reaching desperately across
    a micro-chasm like rope
    bridges above a fall
    where the froth and tumult
    swallows our voice’s whole

    (December 7, 2015)

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  • trope, or self-flagellation

    by

    definition, fate, irony, paradigms, poetry

    Where does satire start—
    a half-smile?— not quite
    nostalgia, not quite
    a smirk, but a recognition.
    or— a snide comment?—
    eviscerating with a cool
    pose, drink in hand singing;
    not quite wobbling—
      
    a stunned stagger
    into the knife through the ribs,
    laughing, as you recognize
    yourself, too late?
    (December 6, 2015)

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  • Agency’s True Awareness

    by

    definition, fear, identity formation, poetry
    I’m not brave enough
    to live within the moment;
    fear defines my life.

    (December 2, 2015)

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  • Guilt and Explanation

    by

    definition, existential angst, poetry, tension
    “Summoned, one shuffles guiltily into the Department of Trivia.”
                –John Banville
    When emotion’s explanation
    must be provided,
    then which direction,
    which answer sends
    me safely home,
    the wolf at bay?
    As if reason could encompass
    the complexities of the day
    within an algorithm’s
    plodding gait.

    (December 2, 2015)

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  • like a poem

    by

    definition, humility, life, poetry, traces, ways of knowing
    a deep cold pulls
    through me a hot wire
    through wax a line
    slipping at an angle
    lopping off
    the unnecessary
    until I stand
    exposed
    and shiver into place
    like November rain
    shaken to fall again
    from leafless branches
    upon unsuspecting heads

    (December 1, 2015)

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