there's got to be more below the surface
The fences were in need,
as always, of repair,
not mended like Frost’s,
but more of a courtesy
to recognize an accord
with a tone of enmity
slipped in like mortar,
or a knife beneath bone,
as an acknowledgement
of a division where X
does not equal Y,
even in the abstract.
(July 27, 2022)
Late at night when you cannot sleep
and you step silently through the house;
or lost in thought driving to work
and you do not notice your normal exit,
then the niggling whispers gain a clarity
that cannot be partitioned or pardoned.
No little boxes filled with secrets to be
placed locked in other larger boxes
appear to safely hide your face within.
When all your variant stories disentangle,
and fall away like petals on a dying rose,
how do you begin to confess the lies
manifested through accidental negligence?
How do you begin to open the sarcophagus
you have for so long hidden within? How do
you even begin to begin to live again?
(July 23, 2022)
There is no truth to face;
these circles are closed and reflexive.
War is endless: we walk blindly
through one blooded field or another.
Nothing matters. Her one endless song
is too full of flowers and mockery.
*
I float between sleep
and dreams of sleep.
With no other joys,
no other pleasures,
I sink beneath
waves of dry tears.
(July 18, 2022)
I talked too much, saying little.
Then a decade of unbroken silence
followed without your laughter.
Yet, I still felt the silent trace
of your fingertips along the length
of my bare arm, as you spoke.
Our intentions were never clear.
Then we left, each to our ways;
and, I became a ghost to you.
(July 10, 2022)
Summoned from Shaman Mountain
as his lover for the night, she steps
lightly from dream rising on waves
surging from a storm. The flowers
give way beneath the plum tree’s
branches; and, the scent of narcissus
lingers like the moon before the dawn,
as she wraps her thighs around his hips.
(July 7, 2022)
“If I knew what I was doing, I’d be doing it right now…”
—Radney Foster
Another morning sun trickles
through the cottonwoods. Today,
I have time to write. Instead,
I watch the cardinal pair twitter
from branch to branch, fluttering
like drunken dancers in love.
I have nothing to say; yet, today
that is enough. The cottonwoods
slowly clatter in the soft breeze,
while the grey cat purrs at my feet.
(July 1, 2022)
Each day I shuffle about the house
lost within the duties of the day.
I wonder: all these poets with their advice
full of absolutes and disdain for others—
when do they find time to write;
to sit alone with their words;
to scrape the burnt rice from the pan?
(June 30, 2022)
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