by
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)
by
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)
by
Look, Sunshine,
the strippers at the club
are like the aurora borealis, but
never would I presume to tell you
the beauty of a jiggling moon.
I have too many privileges to grind
to toss that kind of monkey wrench.
Beauty,
after all, is the truth we pursue; and
never would I presume to tell you
how to pass a lonely afternoon.
(November 22, 2022)
by
This is my story:
a prelude to nothing
beyond this moment.
This is my story
as I tell it today
unrevised, unfiltered.
This is my story:
different than yesterday,
different than tomorrow.
This is my story
I must tell to myself
each day, every day.
This is my story;
I have not told, yet.
(November 16, 2022)
A student tells me
she cannot hear an
inner dialogue.
How lonely she must
be to have silence
as her only thought.
A flame burns without
a flicker, alone
in an empty room.
It illuminates
itself and the walls
along the light’s edge:
nothing can be seen;
there are no echoes.
(November 13, 2022)
“there is no absence
that cannot be replaced”
—Rene Char
She sits in a hole in the room
where time drifts like dust motes
through sunlight. There is no time
anymore for resentment, or anger,
to fester their dark intentions.
Everything fades. The half-life of names
expands absorbing our vague desires
in the absolution memory grants
with each revision. She is tired now.
Patchwork obligations, like cages
without keys, contain her reasons.
In her way, she is dying, as are we all—
an obvious cliche, yet rituals
daily provide us with parameters
where we feel most comfortable.
Life is painful enough. Outside the air
clutters with snow, and rime forms
along the fence line. She watches the door.
Once, long ago, someone knocked, then left.
(November 12, 2022)
by
I am a door,
a window,
a room,
an emptiness—
I am not a wall,
but a space.
(November 11, 2022)
You ask what I want.
I have no answer
that is not abstract:
Happiness, less drama, less stress;
no flagellant memories
laced in guilt and blame;
time to think;
time to move about the house;
time to take for our life.
time to remember:
who I am;
who you are—
to find ourselves
together again.
(November 9, 2022)
“To see a world in a grain of sand/and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour”—-William Blake
An eternal pause
which opens in a moment
then vanishes
(like a leaf fall breaks
the still flow
of the autumn air;
or a stutter step
in a dance
almost breaks rhythm;
or a match flares
an aura briefly
as the wick takes flame)
is where we are,
always.
in the dream this time
I wrote a line to start
then again inevitably
I woke to remember
nothing but the sense
that something had left
something consequential
something now absent
like the vacancy we fill
each time we move quietly
through an empty room
something that’s always there
outside the dream I write
myself through the delusion
that I have something to say
beyond my mundane day
beyond my awkward cliches
beyond my last glimpse of land
where gulls screech to the wind
their sneers of mockery and desire
where I’m stripped of my words
and left alone with what I am
a tongueless mouth gasping
for air beneath a dying sea
(October 20, 2022)
by
Mist moves through the trees
which loom overhead.
The why of my way
trails vaguely behind,
catching on branches
like tufts of soft fur,
clinging to the briar.
The negligible
wind falters then dies;
and, the air thickens
as the earth reaches
for the distant sky
like a supplicant
to an absent god.
My cliches wander in
with a negligent ease.
They have no compunctions
with rude visitations.
Like a tabby stalking
a yard of a neighbor
who fed her once
years and years ago,
they simply stray from
the page’s periphery:
an easy image
returned to repeatedly,
providing a brutish clarity
to a violent mendacity.
(October 6, 2022)
He sits in a wooden chair
in the center of a locked room.
The chair is bolted to the floor.
The room is bare, but for a light
hanging above him like a sword.
The light is dim, without a shade.
He is not wearing a blindfold,
but he might as well be—
for there is nothing to see
beyond the industrial gray walls.
No one has come into the room.
He is not sure how he arrived,
only that he is here now, alone.
If he listens he can hear his breath
otherwise the room is silent
as if all sounds are absorbed
into the walls before they enter.
he sits with his back to a locked door,
or what he assumes is a locked door,
for he has not attempted to open it.
Every now and then a light flickers
beneath the door as if a warning
to him in a code he cannot fathom
even if he were able to see it.
The room is cold, not overly so, but
enough to cause his nose to run.
He would like to wipe his nose
but his hands behind his back are tied,
as are his feet to the chair’s legs.
He doesn’t know how long he has waited,
nor how much longer he must wait,
nor what he is waiting for exactly:
just that he waits in a chair, alone,
in a room; and, he is just like you.
(October 4, 2022)
The Earth is not dying,
we are—
Life’s conveniences ease
us quickly toward our death.
(October 4, 2022)
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