by
—five of pentacles, Rider-Waite
With nowhere to go,
we stumble past the church.
My crutches sink into snow,
your tatters clutched close.
The only warmth is within,
not here. The glass stained
roses bloom, and apples
ripen just out of reach.
Compassion for yourself
is not enough. Be happy
with our fortunate life,
but be aware, beware:
snow falls over the city;
night grows ever nearer.
(July 6, 2023)
by
—three of staves, Rider Waite
You are here
on the rock
of yourself.
You pause
at the break
of three roads:
one brought you
here, one leads
across the sea,
and one
to the far
mountains.
You lean on
a flowering staff,
indecisive
for a moment,
then stumble
into your self:
The world dizzy
as grackles
rise into the air.
(July 4, 2023)
by
He had no stories
to tell, no reason to speak:
what he was was not.
It did not matter.
All those years simply vanished
like day into dusk.
The day’s regrets rose,
a wealth of embarrassments,
to trouble his nights.
His sense of purpose
(marginally important)
Spun away like stars.
Until there was nothing left,
but blank pages to be read.
(July 2, 2023)
by
If I hold cliché in my hand
like an apple, will I fall
to its seduction? Dare I bite
the peach, perhaps an avocado,
or pursue the nubile temptress
dancing a bare finger’s tip
out of reach? It’s laughable
to think I might escape it.
The original roots still leach
the metaphor from the soil,
while I root about like a pig
snuffling for elusive truffles.
Each word I speak is mine alone;
each word I speak has been said before.
(July 28, 2018)
Source: subtextures.wordpress.com
from the street below
car headlights cast shadows
across our bedroom ceiling
like an owl skimming across
an open moonlit field
searches for frightened mice
(June 20, 2023)
For a moment, while dreaming
I sat up: I was sitting up as I
dreamed what I was doing.
When asked what I was doing,
I knew enough to know I was
dreaming and doing at once.
And I laughed, I remember now,
at the absurdity, then fell back
into the pillow and the dream
without ever waking.
Rivers, at convergence,
often hold their integrity
flowing together without
merging for miles and miles.
Where am I in any of this?
The rivers, the bed, the laughter?
(June 18, 2023)
Within history’s shrinking confines,
poppies bloom in burning fields,
and a horned lark chitters in the grass.
Nothing I say can change any of this.
Days hinge on days. They open and close
like doors, any of two different ways.
Above, contrails crosshatch the sky
like satyrs’ claws down her back
caught in spasms of a darker lust—
and the new book snaps shut, unread.
Nothing I say can change any of this.
(June 9, 2023)
The setting sun graces the trees
at the back edge of the yard.
Time means less than it once did.
The shadows across the grass
mirror the trees’ branches
stretching toward the sun.
Here is where metaphor
should shift the light
turning a key like a prism.
Yet, there is no reflection
in the dusk, only a foreshadow
of an unforgiving night,
where all transgressions are called
to account as leaves fall like stars.
(June 8, 2023)
by
I am my horizon.
I cannot see beyond
the emptiness between
this center and the edge.
My bones ache;
my toes are numb.
I weigh my troubles
like raw meat,
balanced against friends’
couched complaints.
These mundane cliches
clot us together,
like blood seals
an angry wound.
(June 3, 2023)
“Looking for truth but finding only memory.”
—Charles Bernstein
Not a storm
as much as
a ritual cleansing—
where bits of dream’s
detritus are
disentangled,
like branches snapped
and scattered
across the forest floor.
We tie twigs together
to bridge the days
across our broken night.
As delicate as a step
onto a stone
in a cold stream,
we wake into memory
flowing through
a metaphoric forest.
We pretend today’s
the same
as yesterday;
the stone
we stand upon
is dry;
the stream
is still
the stream;
that we can still be
all that we
might have been.
(May 26, 2023)
The years and days, important with tears,
blur to inconsequence; the exegesis
of the way conceals each stillborn
turning. The varied strands spun
upon the wheel to a single string
sing in chorus as if fate, not chaos’
echoes scoop meaning from the air,
like twirling bats justifying the walls
we lean against, exhausted by it all.
(May 13, 2023)
He filled his pockets with stones
to devour alone late at night
when no one near need hear
his tangential confessions.
With so many pockets of guilt
to tuck his scattered bits
of complicity, years crept
past him like mountains,
always present, gnawing
at the horizon’s edge.
He woke into a remorse—
a complex rendering
each day of a single act
no one else remembered.
(May 9, 2023)
by
I leave what I have done
for thirty-four years;
and just like that,
a piece of me falls away,
like glaciers calving
into an empty sea
to be absorbed
slowly, without notice.
(May 1, 2023)
by
I am
a cup of rattling bones,
a bag of dried blood,
a parched whisper.
I have lost most
of what I knew,
but have no idea
what that was.
Memory does not
parse the past;
it provides
a thin palimpsest
to cast over
the ocean’s skin
before sinking
beneath the weight.
(April 21, 2023)
My hands are my mother’s hands:
wracked with worry, the veins
thick below the skin, soft
like earth worms in loam.
My hands are my mother’s hands:
holding my face, stunned
that I am still alive, stunned
to walk through another day.
My hands are my mother’s hands:
kneading the bread dough
for one more Thanksgiving,
one more meal together.
My hands are my mother’s hands,
empty like bones in the ground.
(November 28, 2021/ April 17, 2023)
