A moment
Caught in anxiety—
A wasp’s anger
In amber’s eternity,
His breath left in exhale
Like a lover’s secret
Whisper as she leaves
Before dawn
(April 13, 2017)
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Secret Cults of Conversation’s Silence
by
I exist in the telling:A story to puzzleOut, a shadowedCharade—inarticulateAnd vague. LimitsMask, lines form—Like walls a room;An emptiness becomes,From nothing, more.Hold this here, a cruxTo hang a cloth upon,A transubstantiationOf me into you.(April 12, 2017) -
Puzzled
by
“Words turn on the mischief of their telling”–Ann LauterbachAs a child, as still now,I played with tanagramsArranging, then changingThe blocks as arrayed.From such simple set shapes,More complex could evolveWhile holding anew theirSimplicity; as if,What one can expressCan also be said so,With as little effortAs several small wordsArrayed upon a page.I’m the shape of my words,Reshaped then, then again.(April 10, 2017) -
A Comfortable Death Waits Here On Death
by
It’s easy enough to plod alongThe path I’ve plodded along nowFor years and years and yearsIt’s a comfortable road clearOf brush slow graded curvesNot too steep anywhereBut not much new to see whichI haven’t seen before todayOr before the before of todayThe flowers are lovely this yearAs they always are in springYet such pleasures aren’t enoughI no longer care to walk hereIt’s too easy to die here(April 7, 2017) -
Another Day Broken
Along the edge of the cup,Like several of our cupsAnd glasses, there’s a chipCaused by the benign chaosOf the house: overloadedDishwasher, dishes piledNear the sink waitingLike many things waitFor attention, for careI don’t know what to say,What to do anymore nowThan anytime beforeI hold the cup, feel its warmthTake a sip, and think of you(April 6, 2017) -
What’s Not Spoken
the silence’s thickand uncomfortableone’s aware withoutreason without beliefof the beastwithin a cavecoughing bloodinto the bowloffered to youand you’re afraidsomeone’snoticedand it’s youunable to speak(April 5, 2017) -
Pleasure of the Text
It’s a matter of control: the readerThe writer, and the text. All must submitTo the desires of the other’s meaning,And the bonds of our understandings.Such are the clichés of the written word.One simply has to provide a few hooksTo tie the readers to a narrative,And then drive them along beneath its whip.In this poem, you are a trope to be used—I lay you on the page aware I’m wrongTo take you in such a way, yet I doKnowing only here do I have control.We give ourselves up to the word’s power,And willingly lock the chains at our feet.(April 5, 2017) -
Peine Forte Et Dure
“Nietzsche has observed that ‘truth’ is only the solidification of old metaphors”–Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the TextI read Emerson said wordsWere fossil poems—a sedimentOf language, calcified meaning.Here we build what we knowUpon metaphor’s understandings,And interpretation’s violence;Until our truth solidifiesWalls to define us, and crush,With its gravitas, those who oppose.I resist my own clichésEven as embracing the warmthOf their epistemological ease.All the while the rock pile growsCrushing my heretical heart.(April 4, 2017) -
Improvisation on a Common Theme
Bourbon becomes the answerThese days; so muchSo, I have forgottenThe question.Should I beWorried?—and thusThe heckling Nag crows—“Let me sip the succulent eye.You may forsake one—For a greater sight.”Certainly no parallaxNeed be sought,When secure insideSuch a truculent vision.(April 1, 2017) -
Vanishing Point
by
I am a screen to myself—A turn away from a wreck—A blind vision of who I am.I make lists and admonitions,Pile them about the house,Then scurry one to the other.Each sounding comes back to meHollow, vacuous, vaguely definedAs boundaries too close to skin.I tear off my clothes.My flesh burns and burns,Until bones swirl into ash.Silence surrounds what remainsHiding nothing from nothing.(March 30, 2017) -
The Parts of Memory We Remember
Small breaches to hang a life uponMove through us like metonymy.Moments detached from momentsTake on a grace beyond origin,Swirling with a nonchalant elanAround our feet in a fleeting danceOnly a shaman attuned to the worldCan truly disaggregate.Yet, here we are, nevertheless,With inarticulate desire clottedIn our throats, frantically revisingA mosaic as it crumbles into dust.We are the sibyl to ourselves,Speaking a language we cannot divine. -
Divine
“What is divinity if it can comeonly in silent shadows and in dreams?”–Wallace Stevenseven in day’s transparencythe divine’s pervasive naturehides well enoughfrom myopic’s like meeven as glass in its claritybends light to shatter unseen colorsacross a distant wallthe ubiquitous breathes unnoticedeven now as I write I thinkof you somewhere otherthan here where you’ve never beenextant only in shadowed dreamsthe divine like desire resistsacquiescence in order to exist(March 28, 2017) -
oppositional culture
I am the otherme inscribed against your skinnot me yet not youmy difference is a lackinside your definition(March 24, 2017) -
speaking into the abstract you
by
my shadows are not dark enoughto hide within or to disguisethe simplistic aspects of desiremy words tremble between my fingerslike dust rising around foot fallssoft redolent explosionswhich burn doubt into my wallswith an honesty too often obscuredthrough other expectations than truthas if the loose clothes draped over meare not quickly transformed to tight skinuntil how I am seen becomes who I am(March 22, 2017)
subtext 