there can be
no simile
for a snowflake
other than itself
(December 28, 2022)
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-
Chronic Doubt about Writing Poetry
by
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)
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No Words Left for the Dead
Silence and echos suffice
for few needs remain.
They do not speak through us.Although we speak of them
in convoluted circleswith misplaced words,
and tangential voices,as if we somehow knew more
than them about the languagerequired to navigate the stars.
(December 9, 2022) -
Brer Rabbit Decontextualized
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)
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How do we Begin
by
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)
-
etude
by
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 freefrom the line out back they lift as one
and shimmer across the crisp morning sky
(December 5, 2022) -
Self Portrait Before a Bookcase
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)
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Dana Prajna Paramita
1.
Where are you going?
You’re already here.
Now, let that go—but stay
withoutstaying.
2.It is easier
to be the authority
and pronouncebits of bated wisdom,
as if you knowanything more than now.
3.Listen, you are here:
the pulse of wind through the trees;
a loud distant sneeze.
(November 30, 2022) -
Set and Setting
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)
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Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
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)
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Yet
by
This is my story:
a prelude to nothing
beyond this moment.
This is my storyas I tell it today
unrevised, unfiltered.
This is my story:different than yesterday,
different than tomorrow.
This is my storyI must tell to myself
each day, every day.
This is my story;I have not told, yet.
(November 16, 2022) -
Vacancy
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 withouta 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) -
Absence
“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) -
Self Portrait as Architecture
by
I am a door,
a window,
a room,
an emptiness—
I am not a wall,but a space.
(November 11, 2022)
