subtext

My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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this modern age

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death, fate, lament, life, paradigms, poetry, sonnets, ways of knowing

“corpses set to banquet”

–Ezra Pound

bloated heads mouths agape

tongues loll silently free

some lie face down spitting

blood across the table

others slouch faces bent

toward a dark sky in prayer

we wait our turn to eat

with a trepidation

that aches into our bone

the insult of living

inculcates each moment

until we come to know

the feast set before us

will melt away like snow

(April 29, 2015)

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After the Storm

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memory, poetry, thinking, ways of knowing

“Did he ever hear his own deafness?”

–Roland Barthes

His thoughts’ clutter

enjambed, like a

flood’s detritus

caught in a sluice

clots the flow of

the creek’s slow

meander, stirs

strange connections

between what he

imagines, what he

remembers, and

what happened; until,

no differences blur

the dark horizon

of his silences’

numbing wash.

(April 26, 2015)

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We Remember What We Will

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fate, fragments, identity formation, memory, narrative, poetry, ways of knowing

“And what

Men desire

With such love

Nothing can

Remove

From their minds”

-Louis Zukofsky

memory’s a fickle master

revising as one wills

one imagines the past

as easily as the future

the death of a friend

reforms a narrative

as a river bed shifts

moving time across

borders of now and then

as easily as closing a door

behind you upon entering

a room full of strangers

reshapes the current’s flow

of what we will remember

(April 21, 2015)

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Spelunking

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clarity, dissatisfaction, poetry, traces, unstable

Which folds of shadow

do I pull tightly around

my tired flesh when alone

and frightened of being alone?

I desire to disappear, to fade

into an insignificance,

to look away from life

to find some place other,

to whisper a newer space.

Patience atrophies, a dull

ache, deep in a center

I cannot extract with ease.

My secrets exist within

my bone’s striations;

they cling like bats to cave

walls awaiting their portion

of darkness to slip free.

(April 20, 2015)

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A Slow Erosion

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aging, despair, poetry, sonnets, unstable

turn on the way to work

and another ten years pass

each day ground into meal

for a bread as dry as chaff

such sustenance to feed

a bitterness into a beast

gnawing with dull teeth

on the tidbits of my heart

until little remains for love

to do except stand stunned

at the bored horror of it all

like vacant eyed refugees

waiting for dust of a passing

army to settle to the earth

(April 15, 2015)

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Memory Sift

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clarity, interpretation, memory, poetics, poetry, traces

I winnow my words

searching to glean

from the random bits

I’ve said and done

some sense of hope

that what I remember

was the way it was

instead of what it seems

(April 11, 2015)

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a meeting

by

existential angst, fear, metaphor, poetry

a spider descends

along a line

connecting branch

to branch;

and like harpist’s

fingers play across

the colored strings,

she knows the way

across the sky,

which strands cloy,

which stands clear.

He waits

In a soft cocoon

to be dismantled.

Black mandibles

scissor the air,

slice through

taut tendon.

Then with a quick pop,

he is dismembered.

(April 10, 2015)

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algorithm

by

change, definition, identity formation, poetry

the time it takes to slough off

the chaff of my personality

to separate who I am from traces

used by others to guide my soul

toward hell is infinitely small

when measured by any device

the mechanics of normality

can devise to compress me

into an unforgiving formula

where any variables are tightly

defined within predetermined

parameters to keep everyone

safe inside the possibility to be

a perfectly balanced equation

which cannot derive into me

(April 9, 2012)

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Ecstasy and Fear

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erato, eros, fear, life, memory, obsessions, poetry

I think I am finally free,

and then, there you are,

as if you were never gone,

a presence returned,

pervasive, yet just

out of sight, always

shifting, like wolves

near the wood’s edge,

before I can flinch.

Memory’s mosaics

maintain integrity only

within my silent life:

speak to me, and I shatter

with the fragility of glass

searing a moonlit sky;

as once, long before we met,

fireflies rose in a mountain field

shimmering a cool Vermont night.

(April 8, 2015)

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cutting the umbilical

by

aging, change, control, family, identity formation, poetry, storytelling

what comes before us

sends multiple strands

through the warp and weft

of the time allotted us

I try to trim away the false

bits frayed through retelling

but the whole cloth’s tattered

rent beyond redemption

what matters what holds import

after years of listening to stories

is the silence to hear myself

my story told by me to me

free of other’s impositions

and the lies of the dead

(April 6, 2015)

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Love’s Location

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communication, erato, eros, happiness, love, offering, poetry, relationships, sonnets

where you are matters

less and less over time

if one attends closely

to the unfolding rose

I hold out a hand

open unassuming

a gesture as simple

as the words I write

we read too much

into momentary phrases

veiling our complexities

from joy’s simplicity

truth lives within you

open your heart to me

(April 5, 2015)

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Prison House

by

control, definition, identity formation, poetry, power, response

Shutdown in belief made from brick,

I scratch upon the walls like skin.

My face is clear, but bloodied from constant

self-abuse; the scars pulse like veins

of silver traced throughout the rock.

I could escape, but want for fear

to justify my roiling discontent.

Each word becomes a condemnation,

a sentence written along my bones,

defining in tight lines the boundaries

of what I cannot be, more than

what dust remains arrayed in crevices.

This much certainty I hold close,

I do not believe I believe as you do.

(April 2, 2015)

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mea culpa

by

blame, existential angst, fear, lost, poetry

I was lost

alone afraid

afraid I’d fail

fail you and I

could not say

any of this

to you

because

I had failed

to listen

to you

and I was

afraid

I would lose

you

and be alone

and lost

without you

my love

(March 30, 2015)

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Standing Still

by

aging, change, dissatisfaction, fate, life, poetry, transition

“If I had wings and I could fly

I know where I would go”

–Bob Dylan

I tend to move along an edge watching

the river’s slow meander to the sea.

Before, I liked to float while pondering,

in my plodding fashion, deeper matters.

But now as I wander along these banks,

my thoughts tangled like the trees’ exposed roots,

not sure of the beginnings nor the ends

of one or the other as they all grasp

for a small bit of ground to hold on to,

I wonder at the leaves, like some people,

caught in an eddy’s backwash until it

becomes impossible to continue,

and I simply hang back watching the flow

of my life as it drifts slowly away.

(March 29, 2015)

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Circuitous

by

change, life, poetry

1.

As my paranoia grows,

like moss

across a forest floor,

I return again

to this flagging vision.

2.

Blood flows,

unlike a river,

back into itself,

no exhausted push

through silt

as it filters

into the sea.

3.

I fear I am lost

between a crab-like

exchange of shells

of who and where

I am now and before;

just a quick rattle

of bones in a cup

before clattering

into air.

4.

Oh, Absence,

do not deny

love’s collapse

into the dark.

5.

I take a step

away from who

I am, a step

back to find

who I just was;

and then again,

another turn

finds me gone.

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