Someone has already been here
Always, even if you are still
Unaware of her presence.
You are never alone, even
When you are alone, in awe
On a mountain cliff’s edge.
Someone has been here—
Even if only in imagination
Someone has been where you go.
Everyone you have met—
Everyone you have read—
Everyone, even the slightest touch
Has always already existed
Inside you now, and forever.
(October 26, 2018)
by
There is nothing here, she says
holding out her heart.
He demurs in silence and
refuses to speak his part.
No matter, she improvises,
each stone’s cut smooth…
…and takes its place, he smiles,
like fate into its groove.
There are no walls, she says,
when nothing’s to divide.
The walls are real, he says,
everyone has something to hide.
Again, she offers her heart;
and, he has forgotten his part
(October 21, 2018)
by
I have a sarcophagus
To hide within:
No key holes
Through which to spy,
Nor allow spider
Silk strands of light.
I keep secrets
From myself there.
Under interrogation,
I will not confess
What I know—
When I am alone,
And frightened,
I go into its dark.
(October 17, 2018)
by
He picks up a rock,
He puts it down.
He picks up a rock,
He puts it down.
He tells himself:
Don’t pick it up;
He picks up the rock,
He puts it down.
He tells himself
He is stupid—
He tells himself
Not to say such things.
He tells himself
He is stupid
For saying such things,
Then says them again.
He tells himself
Don’t pick it up.
He picks up the rock,
And puts it down.
(October 15, 2018)
As laconic waves lap the shore,
Children’s laughter catches the breeze;
And seagulls’ cries pierce the sky.
In the moment before it happens,
No one notices the clouds overhead
Casting shadows on the ground.
Recently, I saw an old photograph—
A typical summer beach scene:
Two young blonde women lean over
A railing in modest bathing suits.
They look out over the crowded beach
Toward the soft clouds on the horizon.
Everyone seems happy. Everyone
Exists in the moment, oblivious
To the candid moment they are in.
The caption reads: Germany, 1936.
It could have been any day;
It could have been today.
*(historical note: Dachau opened in March, 1933)
(October 15, 2018)
by
no dragons burn and pillage
even when lost in metaphorical
forests. the children’s screams
in the candy houses next door
are real enough not to be just
symbols in a jungian melodrama
analyzed casually over a cup of tea.
there are no stories to hide within.
the steel-eyed king and queen
handing down impartial justice
never existed anymore than the gods
who were used to justify raw power.
Whereas the black-helmed men
with polished shields and truncheons
still freely move down city streets
searching for someone else to kill.
(October 12, 2018)
“go in fear of abstractions”
–Ezra Pound
In evening’s corners,
As Dark stalks the streets,
Times’s serrated silences
Gnaw even king’s bones,
Content in the certitude
Another mundane day has,
Once again, passed unmolested
Into Memory’s vague grasp.
No need to fear, abstractions
Are ubiquitous as starlings
Murmuring along the eastern hills.
They pulse and turn back on us
Like cold-clotted blood,
Until we can no longer breathe.
(October 11,2018)
by
hands cupped beneath
the water wait,
like still bells hang
about to sound
the sky’s dark depths.
spaces open
where there were none
like hope rising
with a new moon
above the trees.
out of nothing
a shape’s contained;
out of nothing
a world’s remade.
(October 9, 2018)
by
Not from any petulant resentment,
Nor a lack of matriarchal love, but
It does not bother me much now
That mom died a decade ago.
Worry distracted her and kept
Her distant. She wanted me
To be something she wanted
To be, without regard for me.
Her love, no doubt, was sincere,
But was obligated, and entangled
With obligations in return with
A thousand hair-thin lines to untie.
Like rags, I wring my hands, like her;
And wish, like her, I was someone else.
(October 8, 2018)
by
He pointed out the apple.
She naively bit her lip, but
not her tongue, and said
Wouldn’t that be wrong?
Who says what’s wrong,
he said, then laughed.
If one is good, and one
bad simply in saying,
should the word hold sin,
or the one who speaks
into division? Do words
so stage our reactions,
or are our words an apple
offered up in innocence?
(October 7, 2018)
along all molecules’ edges
and between the atoms’ swirls
in the oxygenated blood
slipping beneath the skin
in all those words never said
and in the silences we hid within
(October 5, 2018)
My poem “Today’s Lesson” appears in Shantih Journal with many other fine writers. Check it out.
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