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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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  • Listening In

    by

    conversation, language, literacy, mythic, obsessions, paradigms, poetry, sonnets, ways of knowing
    Watch what you say;
    words reveal more
    than a gambler’s tell.
    Story bends backwards
    like a scorpion’s wit:
    the word unwound
    in order to define,
    if only to itself,
    within the context
    of a conversation
    ongoing as you edged
    along the fire’s aureole
    below a darker moon,
    listening for it all.
    (December 22, 2014)

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  • where I am in this story

    by

    aging, dissatisfaction, lament, memory, mythic, poetry, storytelling
    It begins with deep insecurities,
    embarrassments no one cares
    to know, even if extant beyond
    my tormented quandaries.
    Memory arrives unannounced
    like relatives best done without.
    Whole stories unfold in seconds,
    what I did, where I was, and how.
    If I tell this history another way,
    with a different slant here, or there,
    will the present be transformed
    into an exultant hero out of myth?
    Yet, my memory will not relent to form;
    each moment bends to dire consequence.
    (December 22, 2014)

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  • In Answer For You, Too Late

    by

    desire, despair, erato, eros, loss, love, poetry, sonnets
    What do I want
    beyond the obvious
    desire? to hold
    you afterwards
    until the sun rises;
    to write poetry
    to sing for you
    between conversation
    and caresses;
    to find myself
    again with you
    laughing – –
    instead of now
    and here, alone.

    (December 21, 2014)

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  • at a loss

    by

    change, lament, loss, poetry, unstable
    I don’t know
    what to do
    for you for me
    to stop
    the slow drip
    drip away
    from it all
    for it all
    to clot
    to seal
    to heal
    the word the wound
    the absence
    at our heart

    (December 19, 2014)

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  • Touch Me

    by

    hope, love, poetry, unstable
    and i
    can do nothing
                            to help
                but hold you

    (December 19, 2014)

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  • Anguish

    by

    change, despair, dissatisfaction, poetry
    Mornings
    as you shower
    before work,
    I hear you:
    frustration
    ripping through
    wet lungs,
    such deep sobs,
    as if your heart
    were evaporating
    into steam.

    (December 19, 2014)

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  • Power’s Flow

    by

    communication, control, poetry, response

    You ask another question
    to control what I have
    to say, in a mannered
    way; for to be impolite,
    would be to cede some
    small slice of doubt
    into the staid provenance
    of your steady gaze.
    If honest, I simply must
    sidestep your thrust,
    move past the assumption
    targeted toward my heart,
    and answer with a word
    so clean it slides through
    your emptiness to excise
    all of you in me I despise.

    (December 19, 2014)

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  • Echoes of my Father

    by

    acceptance, aging, change, life, paradigms, poetry, time, traces
    my shoes
    badly tied
    laces dangle
    I shuffle
    through the dark
    tired and aging
    becoming you

    (December 19, 2014)

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  • Stock Answer

    by

    acceptance, control, language, poetry, power, traces
    best to be quiet
    especially after a drink
    or three
    sit back watch yourself
    silence your voice
    your judgmental wit
    when questioned
    listen
    for the traces
    being tied
    the harness the blinders
    which will lead
    inevitably
    to an answer
    their answer

    (December 18, 2014)

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  • mirrored

    by

    attention, control, interpretation, memory, poetics, poetry, sonnets, tension
    Everything I see reflects,
    and refracts, what echoes
    can only seek to say:
    a partial phrase unparsed,
    a face in studied pose.
    So, I turn, and return
    again, to words I’ve said,
    or heard, with hope such
    seed will grow and flower
    more than my vain need;
    yet, know the crows, who caw
    from fence and field, watch
    with darker eyes the shadow
    twine and twirl about us all.

    (December 17, 2014)

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  • Eros Always Dances on the Edges

    by

    communication, erato, eros, love, poetry, relationships, romance, sonnets
    Out of deference one demurs
    to polite overtures with intent
    hidden in the folds of a teasing wit;
    such subtleties, usually reserved
    for would be lovers, or ancien regime
    French aristocrats sipping cognac,
    are not the best patterns to inscribe
    the confession of a reticent heart.
    If one whispers to an absent lover
    has one really transgressed at all?
    And if I think of you, as I do,
    each day after so many years;
    yet do not act beyond these words,
    can I still say, I am in love with you?

    (December 15, 2014)

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  • Commute

    by

    change, poetry
    a smudge of starlings
    murmurs through the morning fog;
    night slowly disrobes.
    (December 12, 2014)

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  • a patchwork god

    by

    communication, control, conversation, poetry, storytelling, traces, ways of knowing
    entering the dark
    the ground we walk
    upon fragments
    like lake ice in spring
    epistemes multiply
    like white blood cells
    frantic to fill
    the fractaled rabbit holes
    lacing the I between you and me
    a corset of stories to tell
    late into the night
    around a fire
    surrounding a view
    no one sees
    as frogs
    a cacophony
    sounding one voice
    croak out their songs
    beneath multitudinous stars

    (December 11, 2014)

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  • Dustings

    by

    attention, doubt, erato, memory, poetry, traces, ways of knowing
    All manner of imprecisions
    among my daily sloppishness,
    another line erased;
    scantlings brushed away.
    I’m never quite sure
    if what I thought happened,
    or if I rewrote enough
    the palimpsest’s vanished.
    Causation was no more
    than a butterfly landing
    briefly upon her book
    as I fell into her eyes.
    Even now as I write,
    the strands dissipate
    loosening my hold
    on the storyline:
    if anything bloomed
    it faded beneath
    my vague meanderings
    and memory’s dust.
    (December 8, 2014)

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  • What Am I Afraid Of?

    by

    despair, dissatisfaction, doubt, fear, life, poetry, response
    of what I am
    leaking into what
    I hide within
    so that I am opened
    of failing to be
    who I need to be
    for the people who
    need me to be me
    of becoming my fears
    in such a manner
    I am broken like
    a sack of sand
    of never being more
    than a frightened fool

    (December 7. 2014)

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