Live Oaks are alive
to each transcendent second:
I will touch the sky!
*
Pay Attention, fool!
Everything is profound:
gnats die in your wine.
(August 11, 2019)
-
Beneath an Unrelenting Sun
“knowing less than drugged beasts”
–Ezra Pound, Canto XLVII
As we cower
beneath an array of bullets,
there is no forgiveness
for not knowing
the shades within shades
of evil. Yet, in this land
without shade, neither knowing
nothing, nor how to sail, nor
to have a sea to set forth upon,
even if a boat were here
in this desolate land
of sated men, and drugged beasts:
knowing nothing is cherished
as a privileged pleasure;
and so, I raise my voice
without delay, and sing
as if I could sow with my voice
in the cracked earth
some salvation from the sun.
(August 8, 2019)
-
Light Erases Shadow
by
The sun sits still, yet moves
perpetually to a new horizon,
a new dawn; this world
moves with us, always here.
Inevitably, moment to moment,
color extracts from shadow,
as morning, refuses definition,
and pushes back night’s advances.
A prismatic god unfolds
around us as you speak; words
divide to nuance and variant,
until blinded, we turn away.
Too much light erases shadow;
we’re defined by what we are not.
(August 4, 2019)
-
Agoraphobia
Outside,
the trees and bushes seem
to vibrate in the bright heat;
as if any moment, they’ll collapse
into their own shade, exhausted.
*
Inside,
they are framed in the window.
I watch them from across the room
from the chair I’m sitting in.
I am cold in the conditioned air.
*
August
has begun. Soon, I’ll be back
at work, teaching my students
to find meaning in the mundane
details which often overwhelm us.
(August 3, 2019)
-
Exposure
by
Another layer’s stripped
away, as through attrition,
until the grain of my skin
bleeds through, a botched tattoo.
Randomly, I pick a book
off the shelf and read notes
from decades ago I left
in the margins, and wonder:
who was I then to write
myself into a text so poorly;
while knowing, I am
no different now.
I am nude on a stair,
descending into myself.
-
Patchwork
I find a narrative,
as I age, hard
to patch together.
I cannot mend
all that I have
rendered, all
I have misplaced
in anger, and neglect.
I have no prologue
to explain succinctly
each switchback
I have turned along.
It’s easier to see
a moment without a past;
easier to mind the flower
as a petal first falls.
What scars I have
are well hid; no
stars to weave
a pattern in the sky.
(July 31, 2019)
-
the decay
by
Bit by bit,
he felt it:
his belief,
his life–
fall away.
He was worn,
frayed, but
no longer just
along his edges;
Like mouths
tangled in
unvoiced lies,
large rifts
opened,
and he was
devoured.
No one was
left to watch
for the last
wet-blooded thud
in the dirt.
(July 31, 2019)
-
Hidden in the Calligraphy
Yielding more
than simple correspondences,
or letters marked in a ledger,
words bend fields
through which we see
distortions and clarities
reflected like sunlight
in a waterfall’s spume.
they reveal and cloak
certainties in our unease
with what we should believe
as true, and what we know
to be a lie as we speak.
(July 29, 2019)
-
Drift Into Absence
by
There was no time
for good-bye.
And, what she promised
would never happen, did:
she was gone;
he was not.
(July 27, 2019)
-
Arithmetic Progression
Here,
Now:
my day,
my days,
my lost ways–
once again
drag me along
singing some song,
as if I can change
the world with a word;
as if I can compete
with the comfort of god:
knowing what will happen next,
knowing why I’m here at all.
(July 25, 2019)
-
stucco
like pressed flowers
found in an old book
the world grows flat
long passages of white
on white– white sand
below a white sky
holding a white sun
a black line defines
the horizon like a closed eye
there’s no sleep in this noise
no rest from the silent mundane
oozing across a glass pane
the snail’s slow slime
becomes the air we traverse
connecting the featureless day
to the homogeneous night
clouds press low like stones
(July 24, 2019)
-
The Commute Between Day and Dream
Lost amid the accusations
and misappropriations
in bars and vague hallways,
he wakes into his troubles
unable to disaggregate
his shadows from the dawn.
Behind him, they trail ribbons
of smoke, curling about his feet
like cats hunting rats,
whenever he stops to think.
From frozen puddles, old friends
and loves rise toward him;
their faces blurred beneath ice.
They then sink away, as quickly,
leaving him to shuffle his fingers
uncomfortably across the steering wheel
as he waits for the light to change.
(July 24, 2019)
-
A Thin Arrogance
As if I have anything
to say, I ponificate
more than I listen;
a silent skull one
assumes is laughing.
(July 18, 2019)
-
A Gleaner Dons a Disguise
by
From bits she left behind,
he pieces himself together:
thousands of shards sifted,
then rearranged to form
fused-glass mosaics
into patterned fascimiles
others easily recognize.
(July 18, 2019)
-
drowning
by
an inch is as easy
as an ocean
to drown, we venture
into waves, unafraid
one is different
from the next and next
rolling vast undulations
toward the horizons
(July 13, 2019)
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