subtext

My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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What’s Left

by

acceptance, alone, erasure, erato, eros, life, lonely, loss, love, melodrama, poetry, response, sonnets, time, traces

I hold nothing

But your absence,

An empty shell

Dry and chalky.

My words fracture,

Then flake like plaster

Cast fakes decaying

Over time into dust.

Residual layers formed

And held under pressure

Coat the landscape

In an amniotic cowl,

As love’s stark remnant

Lingers in the dark.

(October 15, 2017)

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A Mirror Sees Only Itself

by

interpretation, interrelationships, paradigms, poetry, reader response, reading, relationships, sonnets, ways of knowing

“my nature/is a quagmire of unresolved /confessions”

–Robert Creeley, The Door

I resist autobiographical

Interpretations others imply

When they ask about my work.

I do not write to you, nor

Even for you. I am no

Placebo to numb your pain;

No multi-car pile up

To drive by relieved

That it is some other;

No prurient desire to linger

Over, dripping hunger

Like an open wound.

Yes, I write this; yet, you

Come only to see yourself.

(October 12, 2017)

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to lost friends

by

change, charm, friends, liminal, lonely, loss, other, relationships

“some sunny day”

vera lynn

I hope your life is true

And you are happy as you are—

I miss you, with your explosive

Laughter, and intense sincerity

(October 12, 2017)

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Memory’s Indifference

by

change, delusion, dream, erasure, erato, eros, interrelationships, language, life, liminal, loss, memory, patience, poetry, relationships, sonnets, traces

“You have not made me suffer,

merely wait.”

–Pablo Neruda

in the ignorance of dream

we walked almost

as if together

like empty mailboxes

for unwritten letters

wait with purpose

we wait within

our wandering

neither lost nor found

to say merely abandoned

presumes an aspect of ignorance

absent in silence

where we were where we arrived

remains indeterminate

(October 11, 2017)

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eros in retrospect

by

beauty, desire, erato, eros, life, love, lust, poetry, romance

on the bed asleep

she lies face down

early-evening’s

half-light filters

through the blinds

lacing her bare skin

with a cool sheen

he cannot describe

(October 10, 2017)

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Silt

by

despair, dissatisfaction, existential angst, fate, life, poetry, sonnets, tension, worn

I wake into unease

Generic and vague

Yet near enough

To feel its breath

Thick and hot

Along my neck

I don’t know

How to extract

Laughter

From this

It bears down

Equally over all

A slow accumulation

Of sediment

(October 7, 2017)

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Uneven Ground

by

broken, poetry

The moon’s torque turns

Toward another tangent.

I step and stumble drunk

Over uneven ground.

The moon is so far away,

While I am here

Watching the blood pool

Beneath this broken night.

(October 9, 2017)

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A Moment of Balance During an October Commute

by

life, nature, poetry, work

The ghost of a harvest moon

Floats like parchment paper

Over the pale western horizon.

The sun blasts the sky in blood

Reds and orange behind me

As I drive to work in a rush.

(October 6, 2017)

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Enacting My Age

by

acceptance, aging, change, haiku, life, poetry, process, worn

A breeze sways the trees.

Summer slips to memory

As leaves start to fall.

(October 5, 2017)

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Even in the Dark

by

abstract, change, dissatisfaction, life, poetry, sonnets, tension, transition

Each moment’s an agony:

Vague, indecisive, filled,

Like cotton in a wound

With self-abnegation.

My thoughts fester, without

Care, without direction—

A viscous ooze tucked

Within damp crevices.

This is not self-pity,

Nor bragging as complaint—

I live in the landscapes

Which surround me today.

Where I’ve come to stand

Is where I must begin.

(October 4, 2017)

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until a fine paste

by

abstract, broken, existential angst, frustration, life, poetry, sonnets, tension, tired, unstable

time and lost desire grind

with relentless imprecision

as the night’s flailings

attempt to toss off the day

muscles along my shoulder

blade cleave my neck

like a well-honed knife

through a lump of raw meat

hard and tight they bend me

like a crumpled can until

so misshapen and abused

I forget who I used to be

the pestle pounds a paste

in the mortar’s shallow bowl

(September 29, 2017)

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My Ignorance

by

abstract, clarity, doubt, god, hubris, humility, poetry, thinking, truth, ways of knowing

Certainty, like god,

Is a comfort denied

Those uncomfortable

Enough to doubt.

I know to say

I know’s a lie,

And truth exists

Only as arrogance.

There are no words,

Nor silent sighs,

To bridge the gap

Between then and now.

What was said’s said.

What’s known, unknown.

To claim my ignorance,

I know, must be shown.

(September 27, 2017)

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Regret

by

alone, change, despair, erato, life, loss, love, memory, muse, poetry, regret, worn

Until I can step through

The hole I leave behind,

I scoop handfuls of dust

From my heart.

(September 27, 2017)

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Knowing Where One’s at is Too Much, and Not Enough

by

abstract, change, definition, fate, poetry, sonnets

I locate myself, a miasma

Of diffidence, pinned close

To the cork beneath display

Glass: a frayed diorama

Too tired to not repeat

The same accusations again,

As if change can change any one,

As if transcendence will mend.

Like a raven’s slow-arced descent

Along the edges of a dead field

Fluttering from bone to wet bone

Questions become irrelevant

as the answers circle back

To echo half-articulate moans.

(September 26, 2017)

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doggerel puzzle box

by

abstract, change, narrative, poetry, sonnets, surrealism

Split seed impeached

through unquenched desires:

no Noah hammers

this obsessive dream;

stars cloud the dark

horizon with cold light.

As one narrative

resists revision,

a tourniquet cannot

staunch the open wound.

Blood becomes another sign,

another way away;

until, an until fails,

and all’s lost to dust.

(September 23, 2017)

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