
there can be
no simile
for a snowflake
other than itself
(December 28, 2022)
there's got to be more below the surface
The time devoted to it:
futile prayers to a dead god,
or mere self-indulgent pap?
Either way—not much more:
no moon; no red rose;
no stolen kiss in the hall,
just thread bare cliches
to drape across trite sentiment,
like chairs in abandoned rooms.
(December 13, 2022)
Silence and echos suffice
for few needs remain.
They do not speak through us.
Although we speak of them
in convoluted circles
with misplaced words,
and tangential voices,
as if we somehow knew more
than them about the language
required to navigate the stars.
(December 9, 2022)
Even without the spoken word
as transcript, I fall through
context as if from a tree,
cracking branches and ribs,
finding solace in dislocation.
Alternatives are pointless
to parse, being unspoken.
Yet, a story’s happy ending,
too often, exists elsewhere.
Negotiating past conversations
into a tremulous present,
I am always somewhere else.
Rarely, am I here:
outside the tangled bramble.
(December 8, 2022)
To rebuild the fables
after they have fallen
requires patience
to find what persists
in what remains.
A mother whispers
a song above a crib;
an old man remembers
his first taste of love;
we speak to each other
slowly across the night.
Within memory’s spaces
simple words are spoken
night after night after night.
(December 6, 2022)
like notes in a tattered Stravinsky score
starlings stand on taut electric lines and
murmur about the secrets of the world
as if a sheet the wind has snapped free
from the line out back they lift as one
and shimmer across the crisp morning sky
(December 5, 2022)
I am the books I have not read—
perhaps begun, or perhaps not, then
abandoned like a sack of kittens,
to stack on side tables until relocated,
years later in a flurry of decluttering
before a holiday, to a shelf where
the petulant spines whisper, beneath
the dust, their clucking disappointment
with lost possibility, and false claims
of the myriad loose threads which lead
directly from the maze I only thought
of entering, when instead I opened a book.
(December 1, 2022)
1.
Where are you going?
You’re already here.
Now, let that go—
but stay
without
staying.
2.
It is easier
to be the authority
and pronounce
bits of bated wisdom,
as if you know
anything more than now.
3.
Listen, you are here:
the pulse of wind through the trees;
a loud distant sneeze.
(November 30, 2022)
I wish I were drunk,
but I am not—
There are no soft edges left.
Rage waits. Boys, with guns
bigger than them, walk
casually into classrooms
and churches to kill.
The house is cold;
the Mexican blanket is not enough.
Plague festers the air; and,
we breathe deeply. Savoring
the fear, we watch the street
humming darkly to the wind.
Again, we say what’s been said:
the same muttered rituals,
with the same fruitless results.
The world is broken, and I am
tired of this sober life.
Bit players, we dance awkwardly
in the blurred background
without lines to speak,
nor character enough to change.
(November 29, 2022)