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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

  • This Writer’s Beginnings: EarlyYears
  • Bread Loaf Influence
  • Rock and Roll High School
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  • within his obsessions truth bends

    by

    erato, eros, obsessions, poetry, response
    each letter he wrote he meant her to read
    yet could not tell her each one was for her
    like now as he fashions this new response
    to an overture she did not intend
    he fancies her holding these lines to her
    mind and knowing the true conversation
    he imagined had gone on between them
    so entangled in his troubles of love
    he cannot discern a separation
    between one skein of yarn and another
    in order to knit a coherent tale
    where the nothing which flows between them both
    solidifies into a mutual
    understanding of truth and his desire
    (September 6, 2014)

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  • Listening to Desire

    by

    erato, poetry, relationships, ways of knowing
    “Tis not so sweet as it was before.”
                            –William Shakespeare
    How, he wonders, is the manipulative
    hand at work on the rosined strings?
    She says one thing to another who knows
    nothing, yet says the right thing to him,
    but not  what she intended. He laughs
    at his paranoia, yet worries the truth,
    one bead between his tangled fingers,
    as if each tense fret sounded one
    note through infinite manifestations.
    It’s a proper fit she says to the other,
    a jibe at him she only hints toward
    in a snide attempt to convince herself.
    Such are the turnings I have fallen to,
    broken strains of a discarded love.

    (September 5, 2014)

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  • No Other Whole

    by

    borders, definition, life, liminal, poetry

    “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow?”
                            –Carl Jung
    He takes another step and slips
    into shadow, absorbed into air
    as if inhaled by the darkness.
    One side refracts the other?
    Just because a line is drawn
    creates a definition of two?
    Somewhere he read Picasso said
    in answer to a query: the first
    line on the page is the hardest
    to draw. He imagines himself
    in the demarcation he creates
    like dust furred among crevices
    in a wall, particulate traces
    of an inarticulate breath.
    (September 4, 2104)

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  • Worn

    by

    definition, dissatisfaction, life, poetry, sonnets
    Dead grass defines
    the shades’ edge;
    afternoon stretches
    shadows across lawns;
    down wooden halls
    slow footsteps clack
    as sunlight sifts
    through screen doors
    and faded sheers.
    With exhausted rage
    summer ends:
    I’m tired, so tired;
    and so much

    still to be done.

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  • without end

    by

    acceptance, life, poetry
    “The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout
    nature this primary figure is repeated without end.”
                            Ralph Waldo Emerson
    I see
    within
    the trapped
    circumference
    of an eye
    a vision
    circumscribed
    upon
    a watchful
    ever-present
    optical illusion
    which shadows
    still clarity
    like a hand
    lightly tapping
    one time
    and no more
    the cold surface
    of a pond
    each of us
    awaits
    the executioner’s
    rough
    circle
    to pull
    our life
    tighter
    upon a
    center
    like an iris
    opening
    to light
    paralleling
    the pattern
    of the earth
    planets
    sun
    and stars
    if only
    in the slow
    moment
    it takes
    to exhale
    (September 2, 2014)

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  • prudence

    by

    communication, erato, eros, poetry, sonnets
    “The carefulness was wearing us out.”
                            — Jeannette Winterson, Written on the Body
    always careful he watches
    along the margins his emotions
    as he dances about a direct
    confession where he might
    stumble exposed into the abyss
    of his long-unvoiced intentions
    yes he writes again of her
    along a poem’s soft ledges
    where he’s free to claim her
    as love’s figured abstraction
    translated to a faceless pronoun
    rather than warm lust’s perfection
    so much safer to stand in shadows

    reflecting dreams on empty walls

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  • fade

    by

    borders, definition, interrelationships, liminal, love, paradigm shifts, poetry, relationships
    my edges blur
    like street lights
    in a cold drizzle
    late at night
    auras fade from
    a fractured
    center of light
    until I’m unsure
    where I leave off
    or our image begins
    each compromise
    slices layered bits
    of my periphery
    in long swathes
    like a plane sliding
    along the length
    of an oak plank
    the thin wooden curls
    falling through arabesques
    to the uncertain ground
    until what I wanted
    and your desires
    obfuscate beyond ourselves
    into something other
    than the shape
    I still hold as true
    (August 31, 2014)

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  • Flotsam

    by

    dissatisfaction, existential angst, liminal, poetry
    The ocean pulverizes
    the shore calmly
    into submissive
    waves of sand.
    What resistance
    do I have
    to offer
    beyond the fractal
    pulse
    of these words?
    I wonder and wander
    about and between
    my head and heart,
    surveying bits of love
    with a gull’s cocked eye
    as she hovers atop
    her plunge
    in an apogee
    of commitment
    before being engulfed
    into the wave’s
    watery dark.

    (August 28, 2014)

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  • Thresholds

    by

    borders, definition, existential angst, poetry, sonnets
    Yet another room to enter or not,
    to take on the aspects of these walls
    as my own concurrent edges.
    A hermit crab scuttles about
    the shore searching for a different shell
    to transgress its tighter boundaries;
    the similarities of space and place
    belie the tangential differences
    which skew the narrative away.
    Such are the currents to the day:
    I drift along the surface of my thought
    while being pulled farther out to sea.
    Each moment unfolds yet another
    cloak to drape my emptiness within.

    (August 27, 2014)

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  • Elective Surgery

    by

    erato, eros, loss, poetry, power
    Without thought
    he hands her the knife
    knowing the lie
    glistening in the dark;
    the cold kiss
    of each word’s
    sharp demarcation
    as it’s tongued
    across his throat
    cuts
    a wet rose
    from his heart.

    (August 22, 2014)

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  • without cause

    by

    existential angst, fear, poetry
    Anxiety claws
    into my chest
    as grass
    sends runners
    quickly across
    the earth; root
    tendrils thirst
    between grains
    of dirt like schools
    of fish fleeing
    the shark’s slash.

    (August 21, 2014)

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  • double exposure

    by

    communication, erato, eros, poetry, response
    shadow sifts upon shadow
    transient bits of light
    flicker between the two
    like morse code taps
    on prison house walls
    are you there
    listening in the dark
    or do I hear
    my echo’s emptiness
    returning what
    I wish to hear
    come to me
    with your song
    a slow exhale
    focused and clear
    so I can play
    my fingers
    across your lips
    like a blindman
    reading braille
    able to see
    which words
    are yours
    and which
    are mine

    (August 21, 2014)

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  • upon misreading her poetry

    by

    erato, eros, interpretation, poetry, response
    he imagined himself in the soft
    lines of her voice as they rose
    from her poem sleeplessly
    briefly yielding before her charm
    like a bird fluttering before glass
    he sensed a distant heart’s path
    then turned  before he crashed

    (August 20, 2014)

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  • an empty space

    by

    erato, eros, memory, poetry
    He stands
    in a doorless
    entry
    about to leave;
    traces of her desires,
    like memory,
    pull gently
    on the reins
    leading him back.

    (August 20, 2014)

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  • In the Blood

    by

    life, metaphor, poetics, poetry, writing
    I write so I don’t
    drink as much. Instead
    I chase my darker days,
    like a baying hound
    calling his blood lusts
    from ridge tops in the dark
    finally trapping the feral beasts
    in trees or  dry gullies,
    to ask violent questions
    of answers I do not want,
    rather than drowning myself
    like a desperate rat,
    in pity and bad bourbon.
    (August 16, 2014)

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