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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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acceptance, happiness, life, middle-age, poetry, ways of knowing

I don’t have adventures planned:

no summer in Spain, nor trips

to the mountains, nor studies in Belize.

I lead a boring life of little remark:

wake into the dawn with coffee,

and the twit-twit of cardinals

flitting from chaste tree to oak.

Only the demands of the cats

insistently curling about my feet

disturb my day with their soft

purrs as they settle into sleep.

Books, writing, planning meals

fill the hours with the slow comfort

of quiet contemplation and love.

(June 25, 2014)

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autopsy

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fate, happiness, life, lost, poetry

I’m not sure when I stopped being happy

joyful moments deluded me for years

with their soft afterglow into belief

that the dark was a mere fleeting shadow

“just the other day – -remember – – the light

danced across the fresh puddles in the street”

but that well became another dry hole

the psychedelic plunge into Dante’s

multi-foliate heart wilted like roses

scattered dryly across the crackled ground

a constant worry coupled onto blame

and recrimination left little for now

beyond tatters to wrap myself within

as I await a final gust of wind

(June 24, 2014)

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Air Shapes

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control, poetry, space, traces, ways of knowing

Breathe in —

within an allowed space:

the air we breathe

bends light,

refracts,

another vision

shimmers.

Belief folds

all around all

like air.

Breathe out —

with speech

a new space,

sounded and shaped,

appears

like frost in air.

(June 23, 2014)

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what is left to write

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borders, doubt, fear, poetry, storytelling, writing

and then there are the secrets I hold

ashamed and proud they are hidden

buried beneath decades’ sedimentation

of cliché scrawled furtively in the dark

my mind a damp cave filled with bones

memory’s savor of meat and marrow dim

my vision grown thin and luminous

faintly glowing like embers in ash

rising wisps of smoke momentarily mar

the stars’ milky path before vanishing

into inevitable night’s bright clarity

erasing the hint I once was here

(June 21, 2014)

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fruit as metaphorical & literal truth

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desire, erato, life, liminal, metaphor, poetry

the seed and juice

pop and run

across my chin

feed me

bitter sour sweet all

(June 21, 2014)

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True and False

by

definition, liminal, poetry, space, ways of knowing

Outside the tree’s

leaves whisper.

I am here

watching

silence.

The window frames us.

Words are windows.

Strip lies from words

leaves silence

in a dead mouth.

(June 21, 2014)

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Explaining Nothing’s Owed of Interest Down a Rabbit Hole

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control, language, life, poetry, power, response

Stein named Ezra the village

explainer an ironically compulsive

need to compulsively explain the need

to explain compulsively yet the question

belongs to the questioner who expects

an explanation as owed though the question

gave nothing to be owed owning only

the question and the added attention demanded

of the question to explain through an answer

embedded in the question redirected through

misdirection and repetition until the expected

explanation is provided without interest

in a personal explanation of the question to need

to explain how not to explain compulsively

one asks the questions as a deflection from

the original guilt and shame implied obsessively

by having to explain at least a little why the

question questions the need obsessively answered

in the explanation provided for free without owing

any implied interest in the answer or question

beyond the power to hide the power in the question

by forcing the inarticulate villagers to explain

(June 21, 2014)

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Dream Journal #17: Vague Social Niceties Clot My Comprehension

by

dream, fragments, interpretation, meaning, poetry, traces

We play a game one wins with the smallest space:

recurring lines drawn close to the edge in chalk.

We lie on the cement drive watching constellations

form from stars into seventeenth century etchings.

Animal control cruises by slowly then stops covertly

to release a grey tabby into a nearby vacant lot.

The party flows between pornography and poetry.

Everyone’s familiar and talkative; I am alone again.

I smoke a cigar in the backyard and speak to no one

in particular until I wake again into your arms.

(June 20, 2014)

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text as flirtation

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communication, conversation, desire, erato, eros, interpretation, love, metaphor, poetry, reader response, relationships

I cannot read semaphore’s flags’

sharp angles and pops anymore

than I can translate my desire

into a clarity across the sea

dividing my heart and yours.

The distance between what I say

and how I long to mouth my words

along your skin with open kisses,

until you whisper your primal name

into the imagined storm’s night,

prevents me from muttering more

than words draped in metaphor’s silk

upon this page for you to decipher

into a singular understanding.

(June 20, 2014)

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How We Go On

by

borders, desire, lost, poetry

where to from now —

again yet again

the question pulls us

laughing into the rain

where to from now —

without past’s consequence

to nag and howl a nerve

into a fractured attempt

guiltless and free

where to from now —

as if life’s plot

can be platted to a page

each contour surveyed

for a coroner’s etched eye

where to from now — perhaps —

just not here — just not now —

(June 19, 2014)

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Room Enough To Be Heard

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communication, conversation, erato, identity formation, language, obsessions, poetry, social construction, traces

after OMT

I am not

Yet another

Voice lost

Among the dust

Gathered in time

Along the railing

Of a choir’s loft;

Come Monday,

Even soft footsteps

Will resound down

The wooden stairs

Into the emptiness

of this country church.

I often hear myself

Sing alone beneath

The constant thrum

Of my heart’s blood,

The omphalos

Of the universe’s

First breath,

Echoing deeply

Within my bones

All the voices

I have ever heard

Like the lunar

Pulse of the sea.

It is not plaintive,

Ululating in mourning

Across breaking waves,

Filled with misplaced

Desire of longing

To be other

Than who I think

I have become

In the eyes of others;

But a soft clarity

Like light, or love,

Stabbing through

The stained-glass’

vague blessing,

washing the alter

as if in blood.

(June 18, 2014)

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To Sleep Perchance

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dream, existential angst, irony, life, paradigms, poetry

even my dreams are mundane

predictable to the point of boredom

I replay the day’s troubles without

pretense of any control or correction

I struggle with multiple lost forms

languishing past due with a dire

need to be stapled then signed

twice by someone unavailable yet

visible one cubicle over to tell me

she has no answers to questions

I have not dared to ask nor

even imagined I could before

it becomes too late to try and

I wake to begin all over again

(June 16, 2014)

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Dream Journal #16: Truth in Fiction

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borders, community, dream, life, paradigms, poetry, social construction, ways of knowing

I step back inside for a moment to call

the boys out to see quickly before the

X-Wings and T.I.E. fighters finish their dog

fight and flee back into the night. The sky

explodes in Technicolor as the ships dip

and slip between the bursting flak. The oldest

boy excitedly notices a neighbor two doors

down hunkering in a roof-top command box,

like in Mary Poppins, firing banks of rockets

into the fray as if archers at Agincourt. Collateral

fire falls into our fire pit in the back yard, and

onto candles laid out on the table, and we gather

around casually discussing our lives, and kids,

and jobs as if nothing unordinary occurs at all.

(June 15, 2014)

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lunar

by

acceptance, borders, liminal, metaphor, paradigms, poetry, time, ways of knowing

I am full tonight—no fear

of the random pursuing wolf.

What’s occluded in the shadows

holds no interest. For now, I am

content with what I know:

a static pattern, like the tidal

ebb and flow of my breath

as I sit peering into the dark.

Again, I circle back to a space

of reflection, to see, however dimly,

across the field I struggle through

during the blind heat of the day

to find redemption with myself.

(June13, 2014)

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poem

by

beauty, desire, erato, eros, metaphor, poetry

With a delicate open and close

of her wings, the butterfly sips

the tip of the flower’s stamen.

(June 13, 2014)

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