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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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  • Wisps

    by

    communication, identity formation, liminal, love, meaning, metaphor, obsessions, paradigms, poetry, romance, social construction, thinking, ways of knowing

    1.
    Wisps
    like smoke from a cigarette tip
                            his hand on the bar
    ice settles in the glass
                he coughs
                            clears his throat
                                        and starts to speak
    2.
    my clichés clot
                across the veins
                            of my life
    my clichés clot
                like spilled blood
                            in the snow
    my clichés clot
                my speech
                            with a swollen tongue
    my clichés clot
                all with whom I interact
                            everyday every day
    my clichés clot
                until my heart
                            thickens in disgust
    3. Just Saying
    Not that what I have to say is urgent,
    or even all that amusing;
    but it is what I have to say,
    and that becomes my reason to speak,
    and that becomes my urgency:
    for what I long to say to you
    is, amusing enough, all that I can
    do to show how much I love you.
    (May 2012, work in progress)

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  • Truth Table: as, if, then

    by

    meaning, poetry, ways of knowing

    an ongoing possibility
    a similar proposition
    a difference instead
    to reinforce our now
    as we go along here
    a way opens away
    close by this time
    but still askew to here
    if a compliment
    lies across the table
    as an either/or
    or as a truth
    to be distracted
    then seen as an art
    by what’s reflected
    tangentially to our heart

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  • A Question of Ritual

    by

    communication, conversation, hope, love, metaphor, obsessions, poetry, romance, sonnets

    she lights candles in hope
    she may ignite a passion
    a belief in form fulfilling
    a desired denouement
    yet her solitary act fails
    to come to a conclusion
    he listens to her confession
    her questioned complaint
    he wants to take her
    in his hand offer his help
    yet what succor can he give
    what disavowal of his faith
    together they play their prescribed part
    separate each comes to their own heart

    (May 2012)

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  • Three Attempts at Speaking in Tongues

    by

    communication, liminal, love, meaning, metaphor, obsessions, poetry, reader response, romance, ways of knowing

    “… in order to translate one must cease to be.”
    –Mark Strand           
    1.
    a metaphor is
    a translation
    this open hand
    a form of words
    fossil poems
    emerson said
    diatoms
    to abrade
    my soul
    a metaphor
    for the voice
    I translate
    me to
    you
    2.
    a figure moves
    across a square
    head down
    troubled by all
    the day to
    day travails
    to a sound
    or a thought
    his head rises
    with the sun
    and he’s translated
    into himself
    3.
    he vanished into a story
    he told about himself
    to others when nervous
    or in awkward situations
    or when despite his caution
    he realized he was in love
    for he knew whatever he said
    she would only hear what she heard
    and he could slip safely between
    his simple plot and darker intent
    (May 2012)

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  • Prepositional Spaces

    by

    communication, life, love, meaning, metaphor, poetry, romance, ways of knowing



    “I think you are confusing subject and object, she said
    Very likely, said Geryon“–Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red


    love flows like air
    about you
    the way a cat
    chases bits of light
    about the room
    unlike
    the sentence marching
    from margin to margin
    privileging
    what comes first
    subject predicate object
    lined up like roman soldiers
    instead of air
    about leaves
    as it becomes the tree
    I hear at night
    or
    how the cat moves
    about
    outside
    the house
    between
    the shadows
    of the moon
    (May 2012)

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  • Ontic Grace

    by

    dream, god, life, liminal, love, meaning, poetry, romance

    Sleep’s languor, always already there, 
    embraces us as we lie together,
    warm skin against skin, our limbs
    entangled like roots beneath the ground.
    (April 2012)

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  • Hints and Echoes

    by

    dream, hope, language, life, love, meaning, metaphor, obsessions, poetry, romance

    what if there is rhyme and no reason
    I hear the words I say
    I hear the words you say
    a familiarity without relations
    shadows interlaced in nearby shadows
    despite a pattern no sunrise tomorrow
    an image arises with the promise of a kiss
    a wet exhumation of half-buried desires
    anomalies enact a breach in the dream of now
    an errant moon pulls away from the embracing earth
    a glass trembles a resonance into destruction
    our language shatters like waves over rocks
    (April 2012)

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  • Eating a Strawberry

    by

    eros, poetry

    Moving the leaves aside
    to take the fruit
    between her fingers,
    she gently tugs the berry
    along the stem.
    She rolls it in her hand
    feels the slight heft,
    the earthy warmth;
    then taking it to her lips,
    she bites into the tart flesh
    with an intense hunger.
    (April 2012)

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  • Tendrils

    by

    life, love, meaning, poetry, romance, social construction, storytelling

    A part and apart.
                –Michael Palmer, “Notes for Echo Lake”
    even in our house
    the life we share
    sometimes diverges
    like idle thoughts
    the stories we live
    together are filtered
    through ourselves
    and are transformed
    still inside our home’s
    warmth differences
    are closely twined
    like a morning hug
    we step outside alone
    to the street maneuvering
    between the wind and
    the world’s conversation
    and again we change
    and become our self
    outside the one we are
    when not  each other

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  • Sleepers

    by

    acceptance, community, life, paradigms, poetry

    “knits up the ravelled sleeve of care”
                            -William Shakespeare
    we put on these strands of gossamer
    soft webs woven by others
    we wear them as our own
    comfortable without struggle we wait
    cocooned in a rocking hammock
    relaxed and patiently oblivious
    to the multi-eyed knitter watching nearby
    (April 2012)

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  • Inquiry of a Dream

    by

    community, poetry, social construction, ways of knowing

    they stood around a box
    which lay upon a table
    the box was polished maple
    with two sides open
    like a diorama or
    a model of a stage
    each poured a handful
    of white sand in the box
    X made one pile off to the side
    Y placed small piles diagonal to the walls
    Z strew the sand randomly like fairy dust
    they observed the box
    and surreptitiously each other
    Y then methodically scattered four
    small cylindrical rocks
    around her piles of sand
    X chose a large round stone
    and laid it on his sand pile
    like an egg on a nest
    Z took a thin flat oval stone
    and set it teasingly on top of X’s
    Y watched what was there
    for a moment
    and walked away
    pleased
    Z laughed
    danced in a circle
    then cried
    X wondered what it all meant
    (April 2012)

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  • Fatal Vision

    by

    family, life, poetry, storytelling

    Within the first hour of my father’s death,
    a woman I’d known since I was a child,
    who exposed us to the tarot pack;
    attempted séances at her kitchen table;
    talked telepathically  to her cats;
    and who ten years later killed herself;
    followed me around my house like a ghost.
                “You should talk about it, Kelly.
                It’s not good to hold it in.
                Tell me what you saw.
                What were his last moments?
                You should talk to someone.
                I’m here if you need to talk.”
    This morning I woke thinking of her,
    and her soft almost whispering voice
    chanting across the house as she followed  me 
    who, at seventeen, had just, minutes before,
    watched my father drown in his own phlegm.
    I woke thinking of her, twenty years later;
    and I wondered what she saw that day
    alone on the bathroom floor; what did she see
    as she placed the gun barrel in her mouth?

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  • To Beauty

    by

    life, love, metaphor, obsessions, poetry, romance

    I’m too worn and frayed
    too tattered along the edges
    to tie myself to you today.
    (April 2012)

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  • Sunday Reading Rimbaud With Friends

    by

    hope, life, literature, poetry, romance

    wind flirts with the treetops
    flitting through sun and shadow
    to flip the pages of this book here
    then twirl the poem’s lines into air
    as if to say read this moment
    look up and embrace the sky
    dance a tango with the day
    as if she were your only lover
    (April 2012)

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  • Eros Eavesdrops Nearby

    by

    communication, conversation, dream, erato, eros, hope, life, love, obsessions, poetry, romance

    he holds his heart in his hands
    blood drips from his fingers
    to the table between them

    she speaks of various things
    of interest to her oblivious
    to the slow offering he tenders
    he stutters out half replies
    to keep her conversation
    close to keep her close
    she wonders how he could mean
    those words so casually written and
    if he meant them as he could say them
    he wonders if she sees his heart
    with its stark bloody expanse
    and if she is repulsed by its nature
    she holds her hands out like delicate
    butterflies fluttering over flowers
    afraid that what is offered is not there
    both listen close to each other’s voice
    desiring more meaning to breathe
    than their covert hearts can bare 
    (April 2012)

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