I dance across broken ground
with what little grace I have,
picking out patterns in my dreams
as if connecting the stars
to something larger than themselves.
I cannot find my balance:
I wobble to the left, to the right
like a top about to fall—-
with all directions tossed
into the periphery like ice.
Nor can I stand still enough
to learn the silence beneath
the inexorable chatter
clattering about my skull
like bones from a wooden cup.
(February 15, 2022)
by
Emptiness allows entrance and exit
from a space, through a space,
into yet another emptiness.
Walls resist the outside,
hold the inside together,
to create a space. We are
our walls, tracing our lives
with soft fingers searching
for a space to cross through
into something other
than here, like hermit crabs
disparate for a new shell.
(February 4, 2022)
Too many more days to be wished away
with a casual disregard tonight
for me to find comfort in their going.
Too much of a coward to let things go,
I tuck all my worries in my pockets
tightly folded like origami crows.
There are no portents hiding in the stars,
no mysteries to be defined in blood,
no plodding footsteps moving down the hall.
It would be easier to go along,
to do what is expected at my age,
but I do not know what that even means.
I do not know what to do any more;
so, I turn off the light and go to bed.
January 26, 2022)
Along a fire’s periphery, I speak
into residual silence where my words
are heard beneath darker whispers,
and all I desire dissolves into effluent
chatter like the staccato gossip of gulls
gliding near the sea’s vague edge.
As within this morning’s warmth
nestled in tangled bed sheets draped
against our bodies, our words take
shape against the shape of each other’s,
forming, like smoke, loose patterns
which trail behind in subvocal trains.
(January 24, 2022)
by
As if it were easy
to enter silence
enough to hear
what’s said:
my thoughts are mine,
static oppressions,
null constants
like x, or y.
What’s replaced
varies with availability:
her laugh, your
glazed eye.
Something’s said
too quiet to hear.
(January 17, 2022)
by
Of course as seventeen year olds, we thought we were being quiet as the five of us grabbed the watermelons from the patch he had in his front yard. Giggling drunk and high, we stumbled over the rows to the panel van, juggling as many of the melons as we were able to carry each trip. Then the house lights blazed through the open windows, the screen door slammed open banging against the house, and he exploded onto the porch raging. We scattered like rats. “What the hell,” he screamed as if an evangelical preacher come Sunday morning condemning all sinners. Not waiting for the expected shot gun blast to rend the air, we leapt without grace over the rows of watermelons, scrambling into the van that idled nearby. Nate hit the gas before we were completely in. The van’s doors flapped open like mouths panting. We all screamed for our lives, as watermelons rolled out the back to thud like dead bodies onto the moonlit summer street.
(January 15, 2022)
by
stand still
and breathe out
through the mouth
breach the rib cage
cracking bones like branches
shattered in winter’s ice
until the proffered heart
lies still in the cold bowl
as if it were not yours
(January 13, 2022)
I am a good man;
I am not a good man.
I drink too much,
but I feel guilty about it.
I constantly condemn myself,
but do little to make amends.
Remorse is a form of absolution;
my life is compromised by remorse.
Overthinking past possibilities,
I am presently oblivious.
I want to show people my poetry,
yet feel childish when I do.
I vacillate between insecure competence,
and the lies of incompetence.
What do people do with their minds
who do not read or write?
If I were someone else,
I’d be bored with who I am.
(January 7, 2022)
driving to work
the sun shatters
across the fogged windshield
blinding me
with it’s sharp light
I can’t see where I’m going
walking into the building
my mask fogs my glasses
the sun blinds me—
hammers clang and clang
on the black metal gate
I can’t see where I’m going
(January 6, 2022)
by
I take off my glasses
and the world softens;
the edges between me
and the grey walls blur.
I find it harder
to maintain myself,
to pull free of the flood
to swim cross-current;
it’s easier to stop
resisting, to fade fully
into the mist, to let
the water take me away—
my eyes are tired like stones
crumbling on the river’s edge.
by
along the way, so many rules:
each step precisely follows the last
as truncheons crack empty heads
near a garden gate, a cypress grows
as if it knows; as if it knows
what cost due diligence is owed
a word’s sound is not the word:
a lover’s last repeated cry
cracks open the infinite sky
(January 3, 2022)
by
for years anger raged
through me, then crow laughed
clearing the dust from the air
now I see—
in dappled sunlight
through the palace halls
her pale face sings
(January 2, 2022)
by
I toss out a line
in hopes it will pull something
from the dark waters.
A small pebble sinks slowly;
my poetry plumbs myself.
(January 1, 2022)
