
If I could peel these veins
from my arms and fashion
them into a noose,
then I’d find a dead tree
to swing upon
like a tattered paper lantern
dancing in an empty breeze.
(August 30, 2020)
If I could peel these veins
from my arms and fashion
them into a noose,
then I’d find a dead tree
to swing upon
like a tattered paper lantern
dancing in an empty breeze.
(August 30, 2020)
The words I have
are enough
to tear
my flesh from bone,
to feed
the ravenous voices,
the hundred mouths
which peck,
and gnaw, and savor
my base
foundations
as if blood.
They are enough
for this—
(August 21, 2020)
Briefly light lays lace
across the crepe myrtle’s leaves,
then whisks it away again,
before this sentence ends.
(August 18, 2020)
whose story
your story
my story
some other
someone speaks
some listen
some believe
some obey
here the page turns
hear the page turn
slow whispers
form a deaf ear
control’s the word’s
darkest destiny
(August 13, 2020)
His problem has nothing to do with the train which travels steadily through the night. Everyone is content, if not happy, on the train, reading opinions they already agree with, drinking champagne, eating delicacies imported from foreign countries. They pretend they do not like the food, but wish they could eat as well at home. All of the people on the train are facing the same direction, which gives them all a strange comfort. A few of them look out the windows, but it is too dark to see the trees in the forest. It all follows along so logically, like a math problem in high school where rats scuttle east over well-polished wing-tips at a variable rate of three feet per second. They stop randomly to nibble on discarded bread crumbs dropped with nonchalance by the passengers on the train. Meanwhile the train travels south at a consistent seventy-three miles per hour directly toward the crumbled bridge which once traversed a chasm one thousand feet deep and a mile wide. There is no question at the end that one must answer. However, there is an answer; there is always an answer. No one watches the train fall from the broken bridge. No one hears the explosions as it crashes into the rocks below, or the last cries for help of those who are momentarily still alive.
On a trail nearby the train tracks, a monk moves through the dark as if he has been here before, thinking vaguely of other things. He pauses, peers into the dark, then wanders off along his way. The monk’s tangentially wandering mind is not enough to mark the train’s passing beyond the silence which lingers in the mountains for several hours after the sun has risen again.
(July 6, 2018)
“Why aren’t you bold and free of all your fear?”
-Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III
as smoke
infuses itself
throughout the house
long after the fire’s extinguished
so fear
circulates in silent eddies
flowing like ravenous minnows
nibbling sharply at our toes
.
my fear lies
within doubt
it breeds
in the crevices
in the misunderstood word
in the scene not played out
it’s brood hatches
hungry needing to feed
skittering along memory
like spiders alive to every
web strand’s tingle
it descends to attend
to the fly’s quick dispatch
(July 21, 2020)
Why shouldn’t I?
A wren perched next to a cardinal
like a drunkard on a stool
looking for a bit of trouble:
Am I such an easy fool
to think this wind is for me?
A yes, and a yes, waited unsaid.
(July 21, 2020)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (78)
after the worst of summer’s heat
we’d sit in the grass
beneath the pecan and cottonwoods
away from the radiant streets and sidewalks
the adults spoke of friends
far away or long dead
they’d laugh and tell stories
which we were not a part of yet
we ran wild through the night
afraid of nothing
(July 18, 2020)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (77)
the abstract
takes shape
along an edge
a plane
teased
to a form
more tangible
than shadows
in the grass
beneath the stars
(July 14, 2020)
from a work in progress: “process, not a journey” (75)
with a hand lightly
touching a wall
as guide where
do you turn when
there is no wall
to the left
to the right
(July 13, 2020)