“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)
by
at best—
a bird flits
across the yard
with a divine grace
from bush to tree top
as if each wing-beat,
dip, and glide
were planned
more likely— I wing
each moment; in chaos
I flail, arms akimbo—
a cartoon character
only cognizant as I fall
slowly through clouds
into a soft puff of dust
that pocks the ground
(October 4,2018)
Ritualistically
like fingers slide
along rosary beads,
I worry the minutes,
feel the grain
of the past,
then shift between
decades and days
as if idly shuffling
a tarot pack. I heft
each moment’s density
tasting the cold hours’
iron passage
like blood clots
which slowly drop
from bones
strung across
a killing floor.
(October 3, 2018)
I cannot focus too long
anymore on text
on the flow of sentences
from page to page
or often from word
to word except for
the sounds they make
like small rocks clack
agains a well’s wall
before the ruffled splash
absorbs what small
meaning was left
among the tightly
criss-crossing ripples
(September 29, 2018)
with no cautious
humility
to amend
he steps lightly
through his
incompetence
as if there
were
some place safe
where he could
escape who
he has become
(September 29, 2018)
Am I here?
Can you hear me
anymore?
I am no answer
to your questions,
implied, or stated.
Is this what’s left–
to fade in and out
like a side-show ghost?
Am I here
scratching inside
the house’s walls,
like a rat
slowly dying?
(September 27, 2018)
“Chorus But there is no remembering the human mind.”
— Gertrude Stein
Even in the act,
the mind is not
remembered.
Memory is
remembered
as past.
Yet mind
mediates
creation
of a present
past cast
as memory–
a story still
told today.
(September 27, 2018)
in this vacuous world the air is pulled
from these lungs like a scream on a string
a whirlygig’s motion without purpose
other than to click and clack in the wind
as winter branches break against branches
with a self-flagellating destruction
my words flail against themselves in anger
searching for a simplicity not there
I’ve desired to speak since I was a child
but have been hesitant to raise my voice
above the churning storm outside the door
the constant turmoil conspires to control
like a hand at my throat each syllable
until all I could say is ground to dust
(September 26, 2018)
My poem “Today’s Lesson” appears in Shantih Journal with many other fine writers. Check it out.
