I do not know
what it is
I do,
nor if what I do
is possible:
a girl, in creative writing,
says she knows
nothing
about love. Yet,
she writes
a love poem;
so lovely,
so simple,
so honest,
that I believe
in possibility’s
incremental
transcendence
in that moment.
(December 2, 2019)
I am from a poem
I have yet to speak;
words puzzled together
which will absolve me
of a last explanation,
one last precise detail
to bend my lived framework.
.
Useless without function,
my life is a broken gun
displayed beneath glass.
My past wears me
like skin stretched tight
across an empty drum.
(November 30, 2019)
The ghosts have returned home
slipping between the day
to day conversations
holding our silences
in locked yellow boxes
without a trace of air
.
I would say I’m happy
to most circumstances
with my small discontents
not sad enough to search
for bits of joy scattered
across a field like grain
weeks after the harvest
was gleaned by dark sparrows.
(November 30, 2019)
In downtown Baltimore
Years after he died
Lou Reed sings from the sound system
Of this corporate hotel lobby.
This is funnier
Than it should be.
I am almost sixty years old,
Attending an English teacher convention.
Back in Austin, hours later,
I casually toss herbs into the mortar,
And without thought, begin to grind:
“I don’t want to know…
All the streets you’ve crossed
Not so long ago”
(November 24, 2019)
Like remnant threads
lifted from the floor,
I collect shreds of shadows
from my heart. Then later,
when the room’s dark,
and the nights grow long,
I pack them tightly in a jar
and place them on a shelf.
Some nights, I’ll rise from
sleep into the dark, and sneak
a slice of one from a jar;
And in an ecstatic occlusion
to shroud what I’ve become,
I dance bodly beneath the moon.
(November 22, 2019)
by
My commute is long;
my mind wanders
lost along the way:
miles pass,
and the exit
is almost here.
(November 19, 2019)
Our words hold close,
unhinge, this dream–
a singular
translucent dawn.
Narrative fragments
float around a room,
flotsam and jetsam
without back story,
without connection
to a set array
defining truth, lies
into difference.
An organic flux
tendrils arabesques
along fractal lines
until we shatter.
(November 11, 2019)
by
I read with difficulty,
poets I once admired,
not seeing anymore
the simplicity I once saw.
I worry stones smooth
between my fingers,
as if patterns emerge
through a force of will.
There must be something
more than what is here.
Certainties tremble, then
fall like ash into dust.
I’ve come to know less
than I have ever known.
(November 8, 2019)
by
When I read a poem, the voice
of another being is enough.
Someone extant in the world
who for this moment speaks,
resonant with each leaf,
with each burgeoning flower.
I do not expect epiphany
to fall from Spring’s mouth
for that would not be true;
truth grows in retrospect,
a mirror to distort the past
reshaped to an image more divine.
All gods are just us
without desire for more.
(November 7,2019)
by
I tell a story:
I am a part
as are you
being pulled
apart, each
part one.
The horizon’s shadow
flees before
I write this line,
a demarcation–
this path
versus another,
which word
takes us where?
(November 5, 2019)
by
He sat by his pond content
with the depth of his longing.
Then one day, she dropped in
laughing her way into his dream.
He thought he heard a splash,
and a glimmer near the bottom.
She played along the pond’s edge,
waiting for what he might bring.
When he returned to the surface,
the forest was dark and she was gone.
The castle was so far away—
and it was just a toy after all.
He sat by his pond discontented
with the depth of his longing.
(November 4, 2019)
if change will happen it will
happen now whenever
it happens so simple
–
yet still fear stays
the turn in the dance
the conversation the poem
–
where change shifts without
the moment noticed within
light which drifts through a window
–
or rose petals scattered
across an afternoon floor
oblivious as a sleeping cat
(November 1, 2019)
by
A little more than a month ago, one of my work mates proposed that she, a math teacher, and myself write a haiku a day for a month. After 37 haikus (I wrote more than one some days), I am going to stop the exercise. I think that my fellow English teacher proposed the undertaking in order to make her write everyday. I do this already, so it did not motivate me to write. I did find it a calming activity most days: a time to stop and think about what was in front of me either physically, mentally, or spiritually. However, it also deflected my attention away from other poems I had been working on. Usually I post about 15 or so poems a month (sometimes even pushing to 20). In October, because of the haiku event, I posted 38 new poems. I like haiku, and like writing them. Usually I make up parameters for my writing in an arbitrary and random manner. During the exercise, I used the traditional 5-7-5 syllable count, although I have in the past ignored that stricture focusing more on the brief flash of attention than on a numbers game. Figuring the syllable count is more of a guideline than a law. I don’t plan on giving haiku up; I’m just not going to sit down each day to write one. I have always written in small snatches of time, never having the leisure to write for extended lengths during the day. So, haiku, and imagism, lend themselves well to going from start to finish in the brief time I have to write. However, I also like spending time in my head as I go through the day, thinking about a longer piece. Therefore, as I stated at the beginning of this ramble, I am going to end my participation in the project. Thanks to all of you who read and liked the work I have posted over the last month.
(October 31, 2019)
by
then his breath expands
his silence into the room
nothing more to say
(October 31, 2019)
by
A cold morning breeze
curls through the sycamore’s leaves;
the sky’s a crisp blue.
(October 31, 2019)
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