There are no gods
to absolve
vain transgressions.
Stripped bare,
little’s left,
but flesh,
and a sack
of broken emotions:
shame, regret,
hollow laughter–
a thin grist to feed
what ever’s left.
The man remains–
the fool!
(December 30, 2018)
-
Solstice Haiku
The moon through tree’s lace
Illuminates the cracked night
A winter solstice
(December 25, 2018)
-
Chromosome Damage (work in progress, part 3)
by
(41)
The sideways shift and snip
Clatters across the sand.
It’s easier to move out of the way—
Trouble passes, one remains
To proceed with plodding step
Along one’s path.
(3)
Time’s slow arc
(34)
All the variables led here
As inevitable as this morning’s
Sun striking the sycamore’s white
Bark; no god laughs as our choices.
(14)
A left, a right, a yes, a no:
Life’s crushed to binary.
(16)
I close an eye
To see the obvious
Connection: the moment.
(15)
I stumble step across a bridge
Swinging above a crevasse.
(21)
No saints guide us home,
Nor care how far we fall.
The emptiness opens
Like an aura.
(43)
This morning everyone sleeps in
As fog drifts between the trees
Near the creek and the gray sky.
The last brown leaf has fallen
From the sycamore; the solstice
Passed under a full moon.
(30)
Dusk and dawn, progressive
And simultaneous, flow through
The landscape. Yet, we think
Our futile actions have consequence.
(19)
Like you,
Light bends
Along each wave’s edge
Into separate
And singular parts.
-
Orientation
by
I compass my direction,
my life, my time, only
in retrospect; I drift
disconnected, less
flotsam than jetsam,
only arriving here
with some awareness
after events
shuffled past
in worn slippers.
(December 20, 2018)
-
Chromosome Damage (continued)
by
(Work in Progress)
(23)
I caught my breath,
And did not speak.
Is writing equivalent
To speech? I loved you,
In silence.
(42)
Self-doubt’s constant
Caterwauling echoes,
Like now— I mock
Attempts to quiet:
Hush, hush
Little baby hush—
All these scorpions
Are your own, each
Tail-strike skitters
Across skin.
(11)
Memory circles back to savage the corpse.
(42)
If only the dead would remain with the dead;
The past cannot so easily be revised—
I know what I desire to have happened;
Yet a mirror cannot be unbroken.
(12)
I can only see what
I think it is I see.
(4)
A lens warps light.
(38)
We are woven through our day
Despite our proclivities
Or desires. A thread’s easy
Enough to trace in retrospect
As being a part to a whole.
(31)
And here I am
Beneath a December moon
Waxing its way
Across a gray night.
Fate, or circumstance,
Is of no consequence.
(36)
He touches his forehead
To the damp ground
In a patterned response
To appease God’s chaos.
Here things are quiet;
Here one pretends
There is this center.
(6)
She waits, then dons her mask.
(7)
He scurries beneath the rain.
-
Chromosome Damage
by
(in progress)
DNA string against black with clipping path (23)
Lights break auras
As night deepens
The rain. The solstice
Grows closer through the dark;
Grim days shorten.
(28)
Half-way back
To summer’s long heat—
In afternoon hours,
It hurts to step
Outside as if someone
Near waits with knives.
(14)
Patient enough now
To watch all this unfold
Into spring.
(40)
Outside, another cold day:
Most of the leaves have fallen
From the sycamore outback;
Its white bark stands in contrast
To the stark grey sky. Beauty
Lives with our view.
(43)
Nietzsche said, among other things,
We experience only ourselves—
Even when I shift toward you,
It remains me who must see
The shadow which falls starkly
Between us on the floor.
(36)
If no one hears the Eliot allusion,
Does it make a sound?
Or should one pretend
A studied nonchalance
To carry one through the late afternoon?
(39)
Thus, an old ritual snickers
To a close, the porch lights
Turned on, the curtains
Drawn. I feel safe,
Less exposed, contained
With the pattern—
A spider moves toward motion.
(34)
We’ve woven our disparate dreams,
And become subsumed beneath the totality
Like ocean waves rolling upon themselves
Far from shore.
(28)
My anger sits at a distance,
It does not go away—
It whispers discontent
Like whip’s end striking wet flesh.
(41)
Ubiquitous as fear,
The air tightens
Without provocation.
Yet, still we sing,
Sing our song,
As if redemption
Can be gathered
Like bags of wet cotton
Blotched with blood.
-
Whirligig
by
“Desire is a moment with no way out”
–Anne Carson
I parse each moment’s possibility
Pretending the past can be reconciled
With present desires. Memory wears me
Like a palm stone smoothed from idle handling,
Until no difference exists between
Me and what I have perceived to be me.
The unstable threads interlace with all
The lies, the truth, the last dry sip of gin.
The metaphor for myself unravels:
The little that was left unsaid is said,
And the air sparkles with embarrassment.
I have built constructs out of Tinker Toys,
Vast whirligigs of simplistic ideas
To clack and flail in an ignorant wind.
(December 6, 2018)
-
A Present Absence
by
As if braille,
I cannot be traced
Without a quick
Flutter of fingers
Across the page.
Even as I hide
Within words,
My handwriting,
Like kudzu, disguises
My intent.
I don metaphor
And stand still
To cloak certainty
In comfortable
Deniability.
My whispers are
My camouflage—
Hints and misdirection
Like bells nearby
In the dark.
(December 3, 2018)
-
Parasite
I project myself onto a new world
Which is not mine, but simply becomes mine.
These become moments when something happens
And nothing happens. I exist tangled
In marginalia, a handwriting
Stitched upon the edges. Another book
Becomes a palimpsest to my tired thought,
A filter to strain away the slither.
Roman priests examined the intestines
Of animals slaughtered for sacrifice.
To devine auguries in the moment,
When something happened, and nothing happened,
They would take the eviscerated signs-
The clots of blood, the bits of flesh, as truth.
(November 30, 2018)
-
Epilogue
by
abstract, assignment, broken, desire, erato, eros, love, muse, perspective, poetry, relationships, response
“but I was only bruised”
—Denise Levertov
I thought you were a butterfly,
But I was just a construct.
I thought I was an open wound,
But you were not a surgeon.
I thought you were my subtext,
But I was just a shallow novel.
I thought I had healed,
But still I wrote this poem.
(November 27, 2018)
-
Weeks Before Winter Solstice
by
W
“and I am
out with hanterns, looking for myself”
–Emily Dickinson
Despite the lights in the house,
The darkness penetrates.
It assumes positions in corners,
Presumptuous in its domain.
Like lions pace a cage’s confines,
I am lost in loops of thought
Looking for a set of keys
Which will let me inside.
Yet, there is no rest within
Nor without which can comfort
Enough to bring a closure;
Locked in my obsessions,
I worry each item in turn,
Tangled like tumblers at a fair.
(November 26, 2018)
-
How Poetry Works
by
An image like a flower,
something simple, a cliche
even, to distract away
from the slight of hand performed
beneath the mark’s open gaze.
Like now, for instance, you turn
your attention from the poem,
secure in your own slow thoughts;
what you trust to know trembles
as if a leaf in autumn.
Here exists my truth and yours.
I can explain myself true,
in a way that you cannot.
Thus, seeds grow into flowers.
(November 25, 2018)
subtext 