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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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a mandala

by

acceptance, attention, poetry

A heart unfolds

bending through anger,

foolish lust, and tears:

a kaleidoscopic twirl

like ravens rising

as one from a dead field,

swirling above bare trees

before settling again

across the ground

like dust falling

upon a corpse’s lips.

(November 9, 2014)

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and again

by

clarity, desire, love, poetry

light coats the wet grass

the full moon leans into me

your bare skin glistens

(November 8, 2014)

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love

by

erato, eros, poetry, traces

“that thing not shadowed”

–Susan Howe, That This

any one

any where

adrift

on air

a feather

hangs

as on

a thread

with less

time

than thought

then twirls

away

on wind

like laughter

or remorse

(November 7, 2014)

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enclosure

by

fate, lost, poetry

I write into my emptiness

No motion

no light

no choice

simple

acquiescence

close the door

fill my silence

the woods rattle closer

(November 7, 2014)

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Listen Close

by

attention, poetry, silence, ways of knowing

“Can a thought hear itself see?”

–Susan Howe, Preface to ‘The Gorgeous Nothings’

To speak of someone

is to speak of myself

in the dark, yet still

turning, find no echo.

I am no more myself

than I am some other.

I think I hear footsteps

following, roughly

pulled and pushed

through my hesitant

misunderstandings;

what I see is shaped raw

like blooded words

upon a tattered tongue.

(November 3, 2014)

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Gratitude

by

clarity, erato, gratitude, life, poetry, response, time, traces

Within the unfolding

flowers, I breathe

a resonant scent

which rises to me

like an unexpected kiss.

Yesterday, I found,

tucked in a volume

of Akhmatova,

a note you wrote

to me years ago.

As most of life,

the matter was trivial,

an acknowledgment

of something I did

which mattered to you.

Your words opened to me

as a final fall flower

opens into the frost,

a last flourish of hope

at winter’s charred door.

We rarely know

how we are touched,

or how much time

will pass us by

before we even notice:

beauty pulses about us

nearby like butterflies;

and within these spaces

of love, we grow into

our truer hearts.

(November 2, 2014)

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Constellated

by

hope, poetry

hope waits

along my edges

almost visible

like a bird flitting

from branch tip

to branch beneath

moon-mottled leaves

I used to know stars

by sight sagittarius draco

orion the bears

of course

but the sky’s darker now

I’m unsure about most

of my life’s smudges

unsure of the connections

between what remains

still I sift patterns

like tattered lace

threading stars

or bees dancing

between flowers

(October 30, 2014)

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Patience is Without Time

by

poetry, time

When one’s flesh is on fire,

one does not pretend

truth waits outside

a clock’s cold compass.

I wait through

the last minute,

watching

the length

it takes

to die in snow.

As if life ends

when one stops

thinking,

or turns upon

a definition.

(October 28, 2014)

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of course

by

conversation, loss, memory, metaphor, poetry, traces

“If some longing goes unmet, don’t be astonished, we call that life.”

–Anna Freud

bits of matter

and they do matter

alive and tucked

into the lines

traced now

by soft fingertips

like a child

learning to read

follows the letter’s

sound which once

echoed the claw’s

scratch across

rough cave walls

or whispered

conversation’s

viscous flow

about a fire

grow

unremarked

from metaphor

used to explain

how we run

along different

routes the same

course like streamlets

slipping along

estranged paths

about the same

rocks until

they circumscribe

our hearts

with new words

for love’s tattered

remnants

of memory’s

more stable day

(October 28, 2014)

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Write Into Myself

by

definition, paradigms, poetics, poetry, unstable

Can I separate the strands between us

as easily as one unwinds the marred

tapestry’s pattern, a simple unraveling

of time, until all that led us here is

but a heap of thread upon the floor?

Can such questions approach an answer,

without putting, once again, pen to paper?

What if I could write the correct phrase,

the right words to square all my edges,

or compose a flowing sentence to justify

all that others demand of me, would I then

be free of all the measured space defined

within some other’s cramped, palsied hand?

(October 26, 2014)

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a constant low-level anxiety

by

existential angst, fear, irony, poetry, unstable

at the window

the persistent clack

of a harpy’s claws

wakes me

into a brighter sun

my shoulders tense

anticipating

before the feathered

shadow forewarns

the sudden

shriek and strike

and I’m lifted

into air

my hands grasp

into nothing

as I’m dropped

trailing my intestines

like red ribbons

across the tattered

sky

(October 26, 2014)

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stasis

by

acceptance, dissatisfaction, fate, poetry, unstable

he

hoards

bits

of repose

found

tucked between

distraction’s

bullying laughter

and his cowardice

which accepts

it all

(October 25, 2014)

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Bacchante’s Last Dance

by

acceptance, eros, fate, life, liminal, poetry, ways of knowing

I will not see another day.

My arms, heavy as stone,

embrace the hollow air;

if I lift them up,

as in a dance,

they will break and shatter

across the ground.

A shuffled step will have to do.

My sandals send puffs

of dust into the air.

Embers pulse within

the crumbling fire.

The others have fallen deeper

into the wood trailing

laughter into moans.

The wind caresses my hair.

Dawn whispers her song

into night’s vanishing sky.

(October 24, 2014)

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Sourceless Tension

by

existential angst, fear, poetry, tension, unstable

Vaguely omnipresent,

it emanates

and radiates

at once

inside and outside

everything

and myself

like the universe’s

low hum

beneath millennia

of ontic threat;

it leaks

between

all permutations,

flowering

between our arms

like morning glory

tendrils

turning

toward the sun.

I hold myself

along the edge

of permeability;

neither a part

or apart –

a transition

disintegrating

obscurely

like the last

flourishes

of a solar flare.

(October 20, 2014)

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Dad’s Last Breath

by

change, clarity, family, poetry

From decades of Tareytons,

his breaths usually came

quickly ragged,

one upon the other,

like the rough scales

layered along the length

of a red bass’s

slick body;

but this time,

his lungs grasped

desperately after

the exhale’s rasp.

Like a swimmer

tired and falling

beneath the relentless

pulse of the sea,

he gasped at an air,

which was not there

for him

anymore.

(October 20, 2014)

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