Morning’s light kisses
The edges of the elm’s leaves;
I wake to your arms.
(November 23, 2017)
-
Prism
My eyes fragment the light
Refracted from the things
Of this world. I sit here
In the dark teasing bits
Of wet flesh from my chest
Like a raven feeding
On the eyes of the dead.
Little is left to us—
Shadow’s remnants echo
Between deep-patterned sighs
And ritual’s gestures.
Meaning reflects desire
As kaleidoscopes spin
Off ordinary hopes.
(November 23, 2017)
-
Adrift
I wander day to day
Listlessly waiting
For distraction to break
Boredom’s terror,
But nothing comes—
Not a note to fold
Into tight patterns then
Tucked into a pocket
To find months later
Blurred like nostalgia,
Not a note to whistle
Alone and a bit off key.
So, I mask the silence
In mottled memories.
(November 19, 2017)
-
Throb
“There are all these voices in your head, all these feelings for people who are no longer a part of your immediate present, all these places you used to live. They keep coming back and doing battle with the adamant present.”
–Lewis Warsh
In perpetuity,
The adamant present
Insists on being
Recognized:
Who are you?
To Whom do
You speak?
I stand
In the difference
Between heart
And mind,
Opening and closing
Like an eye
Blinded by the sun.
(November 17, 2017)
-
Memory’s Ambiguity is Not Enough
by
the scraps left
of them fall
without remorse,
as things
of this world
fall away,
like glaciers
calving
into the sea.
she writes
a condemnation
of ill-mannered absence;
he writes
a lamentation
for what wasn’t there.
nothing completes itself
from bits
of memory
like smoke
into air:
one moment
a shape hovers,
then is gone
without
consequence.
(November 15, 2017)
-
humility’s grace
by
it does not matter
how you perceive
you are perceived
nor what nets
you are filtered
through like krill
I hold myself
tenuously at best
as a totality
which fragments
with a touch
into dust
we are all
inconsequential
(November 12, 2017)
-
It’s Being
by
“It embroiders us with error.”
–Christian Bok
as error
becomes change
warhol’s prints
print awry
a chance shifts
with each pass
its being’s
okay then
as so you
each morning
wake anew
yet again
to sleep deep
into you
until all’s
written out
and what was
said is said
as always
an old tale
only heard
in passing
(November 9, 2017)
-
Still
Time awry alters
Into tempest, and time’s
Always awry
Too fast, too slow
No traces to rein
A confluence
In this forest
Decades puddle
Like distance
Down a dark
Trail, clarity
Muddled
Each step echoes
Into itself
(November, 6, 2017)
-
All Fall Down
by
Four haiku with a tanka couplet
The last bits of blood
And flesh licked clean long ago
By a parched dead tongue;
The dry wind scatters
Sand across the blasted sky.
No one sees the bones.
What are words, but dust?
An unwritten love letter waits
On lovers to wake.
The bed’s rumpled sheets
Lie tangled across the floor,
Seaweed on the beach.
Unrelenting heat pulses
Well after the setting sun.
(November 5, 2017)
-
Around the house.
-
Fairy Tales’ Charm
They wait smugly to tell you
Who you are, who you’re allowed
To be; they speak your new name
Like Rumpelstiltskin to control
The way you see your own skin,
The way the story must end.
Each word that’s spoken provides
A direction, a tangent,
A torque to turn with finesse
The driest straw into gold:
The way the story must end,
The way you see your own skin.
We are no more who they say
We are, than who we say we
Are. We Cower in our caves
Trading tales like bits of flint.
The way the story becomes
Begins within our own skin.
(November 4, 2017)
-
In Occluded Light
I’m worn,
Exhausted,
Without laughter.
Each moment haunts
Anxiety’s edge,
And waits
With a studied
Grace, for chance
To become propitious.
Hold me here
To outwait
The passing fear:
The troubled night,
The knife at my throat.
(November 4, 2017)
-
Fate
Presumptuous tropes
Slip like ropes around my neck.
We are never free.
(October 31, 2017)
-
Place Holder
so studied
in his circumstance,
each vibration sings
into a new key
like kisses
yet to be
as the combination
of the small
falls like tumblers
in a lock
and all we ever were
becomes fractured
yet secure
(October 31, 20170
-
Position
by
“We live between walls.
We inhabit conditions we term chance,
Sequence, and agency, this is a place where things
Happen, we can say “on that date things.”
- Lyn Hejinian
and things do– daily,
happen, but only just
out of site, some else
not you, not me, not
a place nearby, only
just away unnoticed—
still, close to claim
a space, not your you,
but some other coheres
as now, then, the same
depends so much
upon another word
as sound to change
a difference only
just enough to care
which box where
you’re shoveled
with other things
until gone and things
do daily without you
(October 31, 2017)
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