by
Having returned a cow
with my horns clipped,
I chew my straw sardonically,
as my sad-brown eyes survey
the undulant fields.
The cow herd pats my neck,
looks across the open field,
and asks me, a mere cow,
with a casual disregard,
“What’s this?” then walks away.
I have no language to unlock
this moment from time now.
Each song ends with desire,
a flutter of a solitary bird
falling from a tree.
(August 10, 2022)
Despite how long I look, spring
rises from autumn’s ashes,
unseen for mockery’s edge:
a flower from bud to bloom.
(August 10, 2022)
by
I crawled to earth
gasping for air;
I am no more now
than who I once was.
I’ve maintained myself
in memory’s traces,
tucked between the hours
and the tired minutes.
Centuries passed slowly,
like summer afternoon
shadows thicken over
slovenly trimmed lawns.
(August 6, 2022)
by
to throw into the fire
the better part of you
your heart as sacrifice
to the life desired
secure in the arms
of your clarity
like a child held
tight against the night
secure no danger lurks
beyond the fire’s edge
where the shadows flicker
with insidious pleasure
(August 4, 2022)
by
My voices echo within a labyrinth.
Scraps of some other’s stories without form
return as someone else’s dark whispers
where all our monsters are of my making.
My lies breathe wetly in the dark where
I take up my veins like a woolen skein
to braid these lonely secrets from my heart
to some broken cross I drag though the night.
There are not any guides to trace the way,
no straight lines to unravel obliquely
as if some kind of redemption were there
waiting for love and forgiveness for all.
Hope is the final lie, the last true lie:
the sun breaks over the trees without us.
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)
by
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)
by
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)
by
“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)
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