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)
Somedays I am here
more than most:
Thin flesh over fragile bones,
unable to hold a thought
from dream, I wander
from room to room
metaphorically lost
in a house I once knew.
My hand on a window,
I feel the winter sun
briefly at my fingertips,
before the shadow falls
between the bare branches
lightly laced in ice.
(September 30, 2022)
the sadness grew
its tendrils
through the rooms
of their house
casually
laconically
until
it touched
and troubled
their lives
staining all
in a yellowish
brown smudge
as if an old
mattress
tossed to the side
of an abandoned
dirt road
(September 27, 2022)
by
What can I say?
After years
of writing,
I am tired
of my life
as it is;
and yet,
I’m too tired
to change,
or stop.
So, I go on
writing toward night
as if I had
somewhere to go.
(September 22, 2022)
Here we are
at last, lost,
wondering what’s next?
Desperate for a redemption
to justify
our petty striving,
we sacrifice our souls
for a future
we will never see.
While the present vanishes,
a silent effect
to an unvoiced cause,
the gate clicks
closed
on its own.
(September 19, 2022)
by
The rough stones, I stack
in a circle around me,
slowly wear the skin from
my fingers until they bleed.
Nearby, but far enough,
you too build your circle
mixing traces of blood
into the wet mortar.
This is how we live:
each day we wait—
for a new excuse
to slowly bleed out,
then lay the last stone
of our sarcophagus.
(September 19, 2022)
to eviscerate
all that could have been
and all that there was
each day since birth’s cry
to worry the wound
probing the center
as a bee a rose
deeper then deeper
to pin the skin back
exposing the flesh
as if broken dreams
to prurient eyes
to recoil in fear
until a last breath
rises from dry lips
as a final kiss
(September8, 2022)
by
Each day that summer as I walked home from concentrated classes at the University (Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Berkeley all in six weeks), I would wave to an old woman who sat on the porch of her disheveled house drinking coffee, I assumed. Each day for a couple of seconds, we would affirm each other’s existence in the other’s life. One day she called out to me, she wanted my help with something. I hesitated — for I had places to go, people to meet all afternoon. I was afraid she would take more time than I had to give. After I negotiated her neglected front lawn, she held out an old alarm clock, “It’s broken,” she said, “I don’t know what the time is anymore.” I took the clock from her crumpled hands, turned the key a few times, and it started to tick loudly. She thanked me, and I went on my way. The next day and the day after that for the rest of the summer, I never saw her again. Although, now and then, for the last forty years, I think of her, her clock, and the time she took that day.
(September 5, 2022)
by
Pattern’s traces, worn through
repetition, call from dance’s edge;
where shadows pulse like breath,
and flicker leaves against the sky.
I hear only the sharper echoes,
of the little dog at my heals,
whose yips and growls cut past
the surf’s surge far below, but not
the curved contours cloistered
closer to my heart. I am a fool
to trust so blindly in a god,
who allows me to languish
in faith’s certainty, as if
cowardice could protect me
from the final fragile shattering.
The bits and shards scattered
along the broken grounds are
difficult to winnow. I become lost
in a melodramatic reverie
where each memory excavates
a self-abnegation usually reserved
for saints confessing their silent sins.
(September 4, 2022)
