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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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  • speechless

    by

    communication, dream, liminal, love, metaphor, poetry, romance

    wake to me
    wake to your
    voice cry out
    upon my tongue
    as if I
    spoke through you
    word for word
    all your desires
    wake to me
    upon this page
    hear my voice
    at your ear
    as if I
    spoke your name
    in a whisper
    through the dark
    (May 15, 2013)

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  • pulse

    by

    communication, erato, eros, life, love, metaphor, oblivious, obsessions, poetry, writing

    with
    these words
    with
    my words
    I have tried
    to speak
    to you
    in earnest
    stripped
    of the drapery
    and chintz
    in metaphor
    knowing
    each word
    as a veil
    must be slipped
    like silk
    off of skin
    to expose
    the throb
    of the heart’s
    pulse
    (May 15, 2013)

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  • Always One Question

    by

    borders, conversation, meaning, metaphor, poetics, poetry, relationships

    like
    a cat half-asleep
    on a couch
    I watch you
    with one eye
    wary
    what is your intent
    (May 14, 2013)

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  • 27. Speaking in Tongues

    by

    communication, community, conversation, language, meaning, poetry, social construction, storytelling

    May 14. 1995
    What I say and how I say it – –
    Listen to me to know me.
    An open mouth exposes more
    than a person’s smile hides
    yet hides more than a smile shows.
    My word – – cat feet on a ledge.

    (from My Book of Changes, 1994-995)

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  • each of us a patterned grace

    by

    meaning, metaphor, paradigms, poetry, social construction, ways of knowing

    then within each
    construct within
    each design within
    each construct within
    each design within
    a baroque filigree
    unfurls in each
    impermanence a
    patterned flower
    designed within each 
    piece like a piece
    of jewelry which
    adorns each of us
    like an accident
    or a determined fate
    constructed  within
    a design within
    a construct of grace
    (May 13, 2013)

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  • 6. Improvisation

    by

    family, god, memory, poetry

    picture by Quinn Fergus Gryphon Neal

                New Orleans, July 2005
    In the cobbled grey streets slick with rain
    Lilith slipped her shoes off and
    Walked bare foot across wet stones
    Near the St. Louis Cathedral
    As she slapped her feet
    The rain still swirled
    Lightly dancing the afternoon sun
    Like glitter through the air
    The world widened like an iris in delight
    Gathering the light from my darkness:
    In that
    I live forever still
    (January 2010, from Visions of God)

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  • entering college

    by

    dream, hope, love, poetry, relationships

    to Lisa, 1978
    there is so much
    I want to know
    about everything:
    art,
    books,
    music ,
    wine,
    your lips.
    (May 11, 2013)

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  • Lilliputians and the Post-Modern Dilemma

    by

    irony, literature, metaphor, mythic, paradigms, poetry

    to construct a vision
    free from fear
    where any order
    like syntax can
    contain and does
    the little chains
    tying you to the floor
    (May 11, 2013)

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  • to have empathy is to love

    by

    conversation, dream, hope, language, love, poetry, relationships, ways of knowing

    he listens for her words
    she has not said
    but  he hears
    within the crevices
    of their conversations
    like echoes
    at a cave’s mouth
    whisper the secrets
    of the earth
    for he hears within
    his thoughts
    her irradiances fall
    about her as she moves
    between sentence and space
    like snow slowly shaking
    loose from the maples
    they walk past
    into their nights
    (May 11, 2013)

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  • Too Much Noise

    by

    desire, hope, love, poetics, poetry

    I need a silence to absorb
    the noise of all the others
    to regain myself in a quiet
    my words can be heard through
    so my mind slides back a bit
    for a better parallax to see
    the convolutions of my thought
    contort about this vision of you
    (May 10, 2013)

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  • slivers of silence

    by

    fragments, obsessions, poetics, poetry, writing

    “What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality.” – Max Beckmann
    the real is hard
    to move past
    she is always
    present waiting
    for our scurry
    from time
    to time
    to subside
    so she may
    manifest
    like a glint
    of light
    off a sliver
    of glass
    a flash
    of coincidence
    of the angle
    of your head
    and the time
    in our day

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  • Into the Outside

    by

    acceptance, life, metaphor, poetry

    Perplexed
    in an empty classroom,
    a sparrow flew
    from wall
    to wall
    wanting
    a window
    to escape,
    like my thoughts,
    into
    a more
    comfortable
    world.
    (May 9, 2013)

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  • If In Dream Lies Reality

    by

    dream, poetry

    “the only realism in art is of the imagination”
                            –William Carlos Williams
    then I’ve lived a libertine’s life
    without the emotional drain
    a thousand thousand nights over
    for when you speak of the mundane
    trivias which comprise our day
    my mind watches your lips trail
    down my imaginary chest until
    we fall giggling like teens into bed
    but our imagination cannot save us
    our mind’s a negative space of the world 
    either too soon or too late we learn
    never are we where we think we are
    for even in imagination lives rebuke
    for every action inaction and thought
    feeds our self-eviscerating scold
    (May 8, 2013)

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  • How We Go On

    by

    acceptance, family, life, love, memory, poetry

    to Hope and Baukje
    They are such a part of us
    it becomes unbearable
    when they die—
    They are such a part of us
    they bear us
    until we die—
    (May 5, 2013)

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  • Dream Journal #9: Afterwards

    by

    borders, dream, hope, obsessions, poetry, romance

    in Vermont the next morning we eat grapes
    she lies next to me on a couch reading
    she rolls over lifting her knees to her chin
    her brown hair tangles about her face
    she smiles open to me like an offering
     again I bend into her with a kiss
    (May 7, 2013)

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