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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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  • Open Borders

    by

    borders, community, liminal, poetry
    For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
                –Walt Whitman
    there are no margins
    no edges
    we bleed
    into through
    ourselves
    like slow wisps
    of mist drift
    through silent
    pockets of fog
    we weave
    back between
    becoming parting
    trailing bits
    of each other
    like comet tails
    flow away
    from the sun
    into the stars
    (January 24, 2015)

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  • broken mirror palimpsest

    by

    definition, erato, family, identity formation, interrelationships, poetry, relationships

    erase me
    peel away
    any trace
    like tendon
    from bone
    until I
    no more
    exist
    than morning
    mist
    by mid-day
    until who 
    you are
    cannot bind
    to any part
    of me
    nor any word
    you speak
    holds an echo
    of my voice
    then ask
    the face
     you see
    in the glass
    what remains
    of who
    you have
    become
    (January 23, 2015)

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  • together

    by

    belief, fragments, interrelationships, love, patterns, poetry, relationships, ways of knowing
    we are whole
    even when shattered
    and the shards won’t cohere
    the pattern’s presence
    drapes like fog
    over an open field
    we hold the other
    head to chest
    hand on hip
    beneath the covers
    together against
    night’s approach

    (January 22, 2015)

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  • Two Haiku for the New Moon

    by

    loss, poetry
    The sky grows a hole;
    as if torn from a bolt of cloth,
    the new moon rises.
    #
    The new moon’s promise:
    darkness reborn into light
    like friends long absent.

    (January 21, 2015)

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  • Request

    by

    communication, erato, eros, obsessions, poetry, response
    Are you listening?
    The tap on the wall,
    the pen nib’s scratch
    on the paper here now,
    anything I’ve said at all.
    I long for you here:
    deprived of nuance,
    the surface stripped bare,
    blood pools on my tongue;
    your ache pulses near.
    So with careful charm
    each syllable descends
     along its tensile thread
    to drop these whispers
    seductively in your ear:
    come to me again;
    join my life again.
    Let me hear your voice
    float like my fingers
    across your skin.

    (January 19, 2015)

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  • a lover’s quick note

    by

    audacity, erato, eros, interrelationships, love, obsessions, poetry, relationships
    hidden deep
    in a broken cage
    insecurity flutters
    like baby birds
    upon the ground
    stirring cats
    with the sound
    all our pushing
    back and forth
    away away
    might justly
    mean for now
    not until
    you have gone
    so come back
    talk again
    around my life
    like butterflies
    dancing about
    an open field
    of butter cups
    and I will share
    my vagaries
    for you to hear
    and laugh at
    as if a stick
    poking the tired
    sleepy bear

    (January 17, 2015)

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  • Dream Journal #18: Lost Without You, part 2

    by

    borders, control, dream, erato, lost, perspective, poetry, traces
    he was there too
    intermingled and askew
    to the narrative arc
    sicker more damaged
    grabbing the wheel
    on the rain slick streets
    approaching the edge
    of a bridge over darker
    industrial districts
    the desk clerk kept asking
    his name but he couldn’t
    remember his words
    but I could but wouldn’t
    remember the details
    to support his broken steps
    through the muddy fields
    we both waited on you
    until he disappeared
    for some reason
    I felt responsible
    (January 15, 2015)

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  • Dream Journal #18: Lost Without You

    by

    desire, dream, erato, hope, interpretation, lost, love, poetry

    “No one feels another’s grief, no one understands another’s joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality, they only pass each other by.”

    —  Franz Schubert 

    in this dream I was ill

    some kind of reaction
    as if I were drunk or
    on drugs but ill
    I let slip as I fell
    from the hotel ledge
    the orb I carried
    a symbol no doubt
    for some reason
    it lost its integrity
    loosening its blue
    across the ground
    and was absorbed
    slowly into the field
    the dark windows
    and glass doors
    glimmered
    with rain slipping
    along the roads
    and through the air
    I couldn’t cohere
    I wanted to talk
    to you like now
    I knew I could
    only speak
    honestly because
    all fear had fallen
    away like butterflies
    lifting from a mass
    planting of lantana
    you were nearby
    but I could not find
    your room nor
    remember
    my name
    everyone was pleasant
    and helpful
    except the businessmen
    who needed help
    from no one
    unlike me
    I needed you
    but I was lost
    alone
    in the lobby
    waiting without hope
    for you to hear
    these words

    (January 15, 2015)

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  • Declaration

    by

    audacity, clarity, communication, erato, eros, love, poetry
    Know this –
    I am transformed
    by you
    speechless
    at a loss
    as to what to do
    knowing I am
    a fool
    helpless
    hopeless
    hapless
    in love

    (January 14, 2015)

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  • presence

    by

    community, interrelationships, poetry
    wisps
    of people
    I love
    trace
    their patterns
    invisibly
    ineffably
    like the hint
    of a rose’s
    scent
    curls
    from a hidden
    garden
    about me
    briefly
    then vanishes
    into air

    (January 14, 2015)

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  • After the Reading

    by

    borders, communication, erato, eros, interpretation, obsessions, poetry, ways of knowing
    “Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do.”
    –Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
    as they drove home
    she spoke of love
    he abstracted
    her words with books
    oblivious
    or perhaps not
    to her intent
    she could not say
    the words before
    they came that night
    she told him that
    out of the blue
    as they both danced
    about the truth
    afraid of what
    all this might mean
    he shifted gears
    and changed the song
    spoke of discourse
    instead of her
    or his desire
    eros giggled
    along the edge
    of what they said
    he dropped her off
    without a kiss
    quite inchoate
    like this delayed
    analysis

    (January 13, 2015)

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  • the problem with imagination

    by

    definition, meaning, poetry, traces
    “You know the failing of the sign is in itself a sign.”
                            –Anne Carson, translating Sophocles
    too soon one starts to believe
    that what one has imagined
    has manifested into truth,
    while the delusional armor
    one has donned to protect
    against the daily onslaught
    of the mundane and trivial
    becomes one’s living tomb
    the measure of failure is not
    the measure of failure’s success
    not to be measured, but what
    it attempted to be: the risk
    evaporates into absence
    without love’s completion

    (January 13, 2015)

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  • Mediatrix

    by

    communication, control, erato, poetry, ways of knowing

    “Can he read the signs he is using?”
                            –Anne Carson, translating Sophocles
    if it’s not his but her hands
    which guide him home
    what’s left to understand
    how he wonders can he not
    trust the vision given will be
    able to discern the turns
    between each tightly folded
    question and bring an answer
    back through him into a form
    he can hold for a moment without
    thinking beyond curled swaths
    of breath drawing lines into air
    with epiphanal silence they fall
    from his hands like pebbles
    into dust the soft puffs rise
    leaving small circled pocks
    like runes across cave walls
    or kisses across her skin

    (January 11, 2015)

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  • Losing My Balance

    by

    change, despair, erato, loss, poetry, unstable
    despair
    tightens like ice
    digs deeper
    into the fractured
    earth
    into my fractured
    heart
    the ground’s instability
    troubles my unease
    in trembling caution
    with each step
    away I grasp
    the air for balance
    as I fall farther
    away
    from you

    (January 8, 2015)

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  • Love’s Permeable Spaces

    by

    borders, erato, liminal, love, poetry, romance
    there always seems
    within the seams
    to be more
    something other
    than what I have
    what I am
    some distraction
    to conceal
    the slight of hand
    as if the margins
    between us
    do not exist
    and I fall forever
    in love
    with you

    (January 6, 2015)

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