La Mort
Ink, ink brush, dip ink pen, watercolour, graphic ink pen, pencil on 500 Series Imperial Hot Press Watercolor 100% cotton paper .. 77cm x 44cm
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We, the children, left our long shadows of childhood behind like rain-faded chalk on the sidewalk. The cement became root-buckled and uneven as we aged into what we hoped would be our middle years.
For the first time in a...
little blue flowers
that remind me to be myself
Aunt Becky in the grass
in the dirt
the years of not seeing her
death before death
I remember her voice like singing
she could get a ladybug to fly
she could get a dog to zoom happily
and...
Abstract Expressionism | 21 × 29 Cm | On Paper | 2024
Material: Acrylic, Gouache
Hands at ten & two,
late Miles on Bluetooth,
I’m driving north, stopping
again & again
to bury roadkill,
a coyote, jackrabbits
three diamondbacks, even a
young red-tailed hawk.
I’m driving north, where
I once rode my old gelding
around the reservation,
visiting the hogans
of my friends. We’d
drink coffee &...
I saw Gloria Swanson drinking alone in the bar
of the Royal Hawaiian, 1927.
I saw white-gloved men bowing low
outside black limousine doors.
I was there when they dumped sand at Waikiki, a fake beach.
I am here today with the vain and...
When my thirty-year-old nephew told me he had, after a heart rending break up, begun to see some of the women he was meeting on a dating app, I experienced a mix of concern and relief. Also, I was...
I would like to discuss with you my identification with the cow leaning over a fence in this milk carton photo that Darigiold
doubtless wants you to think depicts a realistic dairy farm.
I carry a miniature Bessie and Bambi, two Guernsey...
Prayer
Courage dear heart.
Please have courage even when it hurts.
Please keep choosing to be soft
to be strong
to be still
surrender.
Trust in the beauty
that exists within each lesson.
Keep reaching to the deepest parts
love yourself more.
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and God's teeth aren't so sharp
today
there's a fledgling mockingbird
jumping round, fumbling innocent
on the concrete porch
a big, fat
speaking spider
is trundling up the spokes
of Melissa's old bicycle
observing
intoning
warm wisdom
the soft cuhhhhh of a 737
ascending from Burbank airport
winks its wings
once
at me and the bird and...
There’s a girl—and I say girl—not a woman, but a girl—
who is at the gym. And she is a girl because she’s around
my age. If she was the one writing this, I would be a boy,
but I’m not even...
Look up, now and then
look up, long
like the miner
emerging
from a shift
underground.
The moon, the stars, the dark
the sky, the clouds, the sun
jet trails cross stitching
a blue fabric quilt.
Far, is a charming spell
a soothing embrace
by the expansive arms
of an unfathomable face.
Look...
Maybe
Thich Nhat Hanh
because his eyes are kind
and I think he’s been through shit
or
Krishnamurti—
he’s funny,
and a gentle man
even when he’s annoyed,
and he thinks
before he speaks and once
you get used to it
that kind of silence
is cool.
But not Osho;
the s’es
in his eyes...
hidden
treasure
wants
to be found
eureka
here i am
wanting
to be
found
eureka
now
the work
begins
digging
myself
out
from
under
this dream.
As kids we saw
hundreds of brown pelicans
on pilings
asleep like students
at a lecture.
Wading through Crystal Springs,
we found fossils:
shark’s teeth,
the stapes of prehistoric horses,
leg bones of birds.
We would often row out
to the middle of a lake,
slip over the boat
--and swim,...
a minor goal
can be accomplished
in the throes
of molasses depression.
the flour & the lard
can throw themselves
into a mixing bowl.
buttermilk can blend itself
into the soft pillow
on the counter
awaiting the pressure of
diamond-creased hands.
the last splinters of hickory
can toss themselves into
the wood stove...
Screenprint and Ink - 1 - Self Portrait - 1
Acetone photographic transfer screenprint, black ink, brush, graphic ink pen, white ink, System 3 Screenprinting acrylic ink, Permaset Aqua Supercover Fabric Printing Ink, Acetone wash on Cream colour Somerset Textured...
I don't know if syllables of rain
are stressed or unstressed,
if the winds communicate
in regional dialects,
if there are prophecies
in the sign language of oaks.
But I'd rather wonder
than disavow miracles.
I need mysteries to live for,
faith to make me afraid,
a few masquerading...
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*******
Artist's Note: I've been working on using luminosity for depth as opposed to shading (i.e., darker-lighter). Now I'm finding that a mix between the two (as in the 3rd and 6th piece from the top) provides some interesting interplay.
Journal, today was a long day. I woke up before four in the morning, which, even by spiritual-practice standards, is not normal. My neck was again getting stiffer, a sign of Parkinson's Disease, the brain going on strike. Anyway,...
I went nuts in 2017. Had some kinda bullshit insurance with bold lettering on the card that read Includes Dental! It had a picture of a goofy toothy glistening smiley face below the lettering. Whoopdee do! I had no plans...
She catches him up and tells him how much
they all miss that laconic delivery,
enthusing about the open mic
at the Abbey Café of a Thursday.
He remembers clambering up on stage
too early, too late, the high coming from
how loud the crowd...
Yeah, "needless" is better.
He will be a man. His name will be Needless Farmer.
Needless Farmer survived rot he sanctified every desire he exclaimed price, migration, and glow
he talked to other passengers about this shiny attractive salt prison we all wear
he got to...
Kellogg’s CEO proudly proclaims
his product is trending up
as daylong sustenance for core
demographic—The Poors.
Magnanimous from Boca Raton
mansion, he explains the win-win.
Shareholders can maintain luxury
yachts, and a poor family of four
can ration a 5-dollar, 311-gram box
of glucose-rich grain to survive
an entire...
In a graveyard, facing a river
a break in the trees separates ryegrass from rail yard
where you can wait beside wild-grown strawberries
for the train to pass.
Fifty years ago you wouldn't wait--boxcars served steel mill
coal and raw iron, extracted putrid slag,
buried...
always arrived without warning
dark lunking things
that prowl the edges
of my world
my father always
told me about his bear
a chubby brown beast
that rambled through
trash cans
berry patches
it was summer
in Yellowstone
he was only 17
working as a
look out
at a remote tower
on a moonlit night
he...
In Guangdon Province a young father rises early
for work at Doubleeagle Industry Limited, where
he operates the plastic-injection molding machine.
It is rote, if loud and dangerous work, and he passes
the time thinking of his wife and daughter in Wukan,
how the...
These old streets drive through me;
pieces of sky look like raindrops,
so no one panics when they land.
I think of sackcloth and ashes,
remember all the spent people
who dropped away as rocket stages
or spilled into galaxies like cinnamon,
and I realize too...
Dead man came softly to knock on her door.
He said Don't forget how you knew me before.
Dead man sat down to rest in the hall,
He looked at her paintings hung up on the wall.
He said that the best was the...
The winter folds, sagging like old skin. It dissolves
beneath the rain
tooth-gray sky pulled past tearing,
hole-pocked,
spilling ashy light into the veins
of back alleys. Drenched monochrome,
my boots patterned black-white in static
gathered from salt-flat roads,
pressured by dotted lines and
cold-swelled streetlights.
If there was...
What pointless advice came your way today, Bret and Li?
I hope you did not fail to grasp that:
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. “
( Yo, chemo! )
“Remember to breathe. “
( Because lungs need to be told.)
Here’s something no one will...
Every five years,
the Spirit Animal Society
mandates its members
rigorously interrogate
their own personal growth,
selecting a new spirit animal
if appropriate. My new one
is the Koala, not because it’s
cute & cuddly, which it is
& I’m not, but because it
sleeps 23 hours a day,...
At 15 I would stare
at the spaces between stars
--much as I did when I was younger,
gazing at a Magic 8 ball
waiting for a message,
an answer to an urgent question,
to flutter up out of its darkness.
Will...
This isn’t going to work you know
You’re short and that dog
But I go to your house
Don’t sit so close
You’re pale and this furniture
But I go up to your room
Don’t touch me
You're annoying, the bed is small
But I spend the...
when she came home crying
I knew you were deadafterwards at the market
I would pick
up pot roasts
chickens
a bag of onionstry to judge
what 4 pounds 9 ounces
felt like
I closed my eyes
constructing your fingers
from cabbage
leaves opening slowly
first one leaf
then another
I stared for...
*you wanna eat
*you like sunsets a lot
*your mom said she’d buy your book
* you like to read
* you know you can write a good poem you just haven’t done it
*you slept with your creative writing teacher because you went to...
Yellow-Songs, is a series of 4x4 inch paintings dressed in black wooden frames, using watercolor on paper. The painted circle is employed throughout, acting as a bright container for ideas and symbols.
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metalhead IV
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goddess bone
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Space XI
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Heart IX
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Insectual III
*****
Stick your hands in the memory lake,
feel around until you touch something
gliding past, feel for it again, wait until
you have some kind of a grip then start
pulling—some pieces pull straight out,
close to arriving fully formed, others
need a huge amount...
The day I learned of my student’s suicide, I walked five
miles, the first three to remember him, the last two to feel
his pain coursing from ankles to knees then escaping the
body like a soul finally settled in the crook...
The rain came down all day, great bathtubs full for hours, and that whole bleak
day, I did not get dressed until the sky turned dark and I heard the faint whistle
of the Coastal Starlight Express to California;
it sent a...
Both of us had taken our parent’s cars for joyrides a handful of times before we were old enough to drive. We helped each other to roll our “rides” down the driveways into the street late at night while...
Custom's a deep pond
flat
reflective surface
but deep
in dark, wet infinity
purpose sits a silty bed.
To wash a loved one's limbs
bereft of life's glow
as January's cold ashes
settle into bones
leaves those respecting ritual
no doubts:
lungs will never more inflate
eyes open to this world
nor gentled...
The Opening
Up here, just above the peak,
time percolates, bursting forth
the seconds and minutes fresh
as beads of dew on velvet moss.
The Middle
Notwithstanding all clichés of love,
we persevered till we came through
on the other side; the one
most lovers fear, where hush...
1. A Good Hiding
Long curved drive from main gate like a rich house.
Six Security guards sit in an old
building, play cards, warm up, ogle Penthouse.
Its door reached as slurrytides mudslosh cold
into wellies. Coal packed trucks push their vast
tyres twice...
..for the holding of doors,
for the genial face
on the other side of a window,
for the waitress
with a smoker's voice
who calls everyone
doll and sweetie.
Thank you
for iambic verses
and minor seventh chords
and flecks of robin egg blue.
Thank you
for the rescuing of days,
for perfect landings
and...
Three avocados rooting in the window
and a Meyer lemon cake on the sideboard
are yesterday's lessons of contrition.
I tell whoever will listen, I'm done with
these habits of temperance, my gold silk
robe and Medusa hair mocking its own
tidy garden of snakes....
I wonder sometimes
what became
of my writing friends
from college life,
like the guy who
retyped Nick Adam stories
and kept a folded picture
of Hemingway
in his wallet,
saying it inspired him
to write about
hunting and fishing
and an old girlfriend
who had an abortion.
I wonder, too,
what became
of the...
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Triptych original size: 40"X32". Media: newsprint from 1925 Chicago Tribune of WWI photos, oil on panel, photos, pastel, ink. Photo of boy is of the artist at about age 10.
I turned twenty
in the attic
of a Buddhist
temple
Enraged
by my inability
to move
the hands
Of a cold
watch face
by faith
alone.
*
While meditating
I hope I do not
have a visulation
that demands
I get up to get
my notebook
and write it down.
I get up to get
my notebook
and write this down.
*
Working...
I locked the back door
then opened a window,
the air thick with
dry cleaning solvent
and steam.
Rod had just left,
the pebbles spitting
beneath his tires
as he spun away
in his corvette.
I switched the radio
to Top 40,
then took my seat
at the counter,
staring out the window,
waiting...
She is slowing now, I observe
from my corner. She glides through
the morning room tending her plants
with the long-spouted watering can.
A whisper,
'Een beetje droog, hmmm - A little dry.'
Her fragrance settles as she passes,
a familiar swish, her skirt brushes my chair.
Too...
Pricked
by the image of winking killers with
guns held aloft, I open
to a fiercer version of myself:
I am storm winds, I am plague, war,
and famine, swallowing up men, spitting
out their bones— I bring you peace, I say
to the quiet ones,
whose armour,
whose camouflage,
whose...
of what first day
of what first hour
a frigid dawn
with northern winds
ice blue sky
how one day slips
into the next
I have no knowledge
time
escaped me long ago
I wake and groan
like rusting hinges
crawl from bed
to bath
my body
barely erect
this year
I think
I will live
impeccably
like every...
Where is peace on earth? you ask
and I say it is present
the way silence is present
beneath the din of everything;
it arrives without fanfare
like snow that falls while you sleep;
it bears no brand or moniker,
but appears where it is welcome,
and sometimes...
There’s a pencil scratch across the sky,
a jagged mark from a passing plane,
and a placid river where I like to think
of the flecks that decorate each eye
dancing inside your miraculous head.
There’s a pencil scratch across the sky
that is broken...
Broken Sky
This is the old torpedo testing station just outside Arrochar on Loch Long, Scotland. Subject to rapid dereliction after the fire and too many restrictions for redevelopment, all work has stalled, and the site is rapidly becoming just...
“ a groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape.”
- Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
December holidays are a
struggle when first groundless,
away from home. A sadness
based in nostalgia called
homesickness, comes forth
with good-time...
The most recent conversation with ma
took place over the telephone.
Her voice seemed a bit formal and reserved;
mine was a black hole desiring color and stars.
The words out my mouth were nervously chosen
with short pauses and hopefulness. Still,
I moved in...
in the midst of the steel and mortar of downtown Cleveland
is a small park-like section, an old cemetery actually
sitting right in the middle of it all
I can see a large group of trees,
the leaves changing into their fall colors
poking...
I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining...
Exterior of Boathouse
Photographer's note: I visited years ago. His writing hut is just above on a cliff overhanging the boathouse. There is a narrow track just wide enough for one person to climb to the top. As that person reaches...
While stretching my neck,
I notice water dripping from the ceiling
And a puddle on the floor
Beside the rowing machine.
It trembles with each added droplet
As if nature is coming,
Stomping like an immortal T-Rex
Down the blue plain of sky,
And clawing through the...
Mixed media: oil, oil stick, paper, collage. On masonite panel. 15.4" X 26.6".
What theatre-mask to wear
for the pigeon Dying,
guttered in tarnished aluminum,
a crumpled pile of fly-ash and clean smoke
half-hidden by wrought-iron guardrails;
What frenzied mummery performed
to steady your breaths, jagged, stuttered,
a near-broken engine,
slow and slowing still
reddening evening light stained
the balcony crimson, sprouted...
Artist's Note: I decided to show some of the progression in the work and ideas I create, starting with some ink and paint sketch work and leading up to the end of the series with some final highly detailed...
Photographer's Note: I visited the Ottawa Museum of Civilization in Canada (now Museum of History) a couple of times. I was able to capture these abstracts from this incredibly interesting and beautiful building - inside and outside - with...
our words have never
meant less
scraped together,
they barely mark this page
in the shadow of
her death.
we watched your penultimate breath
and thought you were
gone
weakly,
you filled your lungs
for a final time
and still our words fail to shelter us
from the pain you were in
every...
I folded you into a blue paper
crane and flew your herald
from my turret of stars.
I gathered you in tangled
yarn, wove an indictment
that snared us both,
caught us crossing
the haunted fork
of Crazy Woman Creek,
a tributary that carries
memory like thunderheads
to the moon...
used to carry a tote, filled with dead
butterflies in each hand
his fingers, pinned against the handles
and his arms, numb
branches of cedar, glued to his legs
with the xylem sap from maple trees
the sun rose from his right lake
and set into...
Someone taps lightly
on my door every week
or so, waits while I wait
then finally goes away.
Is it the old neighbor
the crazy neighbor
the kind neighbor
a stranger?! I've
become adept at
quickly lowering
the volume of my life,
not breathing, huddling
with the cat, pulling curtains
close, peering at the...
Because I, like Dedalus, cannot pray to my mother’s liking
and North Sea fog is this poet’s filter. Since my mind seems
predisposed to the efficient burning of peat, and gunboats
on the Liffey set fire to my inheritance of anger,
I will...
Oil on canvas. 30X40 cm.
I flung out of the loose cottage and stood on the ragged path the door beating shut behind me. There was a birch forest across the lake my eyes went there first and then to a couple of fishing...
I fell asleep in church
with sweet butterscotch
under my tongue,
head resting
on Jesus.
The preacher, a hyperopic
guy wearing spectacles
to read, speaks
toward the future.
My wife never fails
to remind as we leave,
a black car burns
hotter than hell
when it sits in the sun.
Our waitress knows
kindness
yields...
Author's note: Lochbuie on the Isle of Mull is off the main road and a good way down a narrow single track of the sort not suitable for extensive motor-homes (or Winnebagoes). When you get to the end there...
My opponent will win unless
you send money.
My opponent has more money.
Please send money.
We can’t win without your money.
Please send money.
It costs money to save America.
Please send money.
We count on you.
We count on your money.
Don’t let them win. Please send...
The cemetery was the place
to read on weekend mornings
by the reedy little lake,
and afterwards clean off some graves
in back corners, you know those—
stones knocked over, lots of rubbish
and not even plastic flowers,
names forgotten years ago.
One morning as I picked...
Call me Worm Eye; Paschal Eye, Lenten eye, Crow eye, Crust eye, Sugar eye, Sap eye. All
these names I am, full in a daylight sky.
Make my wishes come true, bless this soft small
garden in moonlight. I prepare the earth
for...
The old oak tree was felled
because, she said,
it didn’t fit the yard
anymore.
It blocked the view from the window
and from the street.
Too much shade killed the grass
and all the falling
of acorns, leaves, twigs,
nothing but messy trash,
“It had to go”.
The trunk...
Honey bee on a manuka flower, and unidentified wasp, possibly Family Chalcididae. Photograph taken in New Zealand with a Nikon D500 camera and a Nikon 200mm-500mm lens.
I discovered a dark cloud
in my closet. I tried it on.
It was soft & moist on my skin.
I wore it to church. It’s a miracle
I survived the fall. I was floating
above the congregation
when the cloud began to rain.
I landed...
Parents, hear, whatever may come, you,
you made life. If that
is not your reason to drop down
on your kitchen floor; to rubble turned or
marble made, scratch
your nails at where the crayon
was—the wall you painted
over, the wall that bombs—
it holds
his name.
Procession
Pencil, ink, ink brush and dip pen, graphic ink pen, watercolour on Strathmore Bristol 500 Series semi-smooth 100% cotton paper - 52cm x 30cm
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Harbour and Creels, Abandoned, South Harris
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Callanish Standing Stones 1, Lewis
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Callanish Standing Stones 2, Lewis
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Fisherman's Bothy 1, Lewis
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Fisherman's Bothy 2, Lewis
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there is a nice long beach and lovely views out to sea
the sea that is rising
a neon green frog
grows on my keyboard
imagine if he asks me
do I need a lift to the fair?
shall I go exposed
or displayed?
or put a feather in it
and call it food?
but the neon green frog
doesn't ask me if I need...
16" X 30". Collage of oil paint, stencil, grease pencil, old newsprint, and photo copies of old photos applied to a masonite panel over a 1 1/2" frame.
Smaller infinities hide in larger ones;
they lurk between whole numbers,
taunt us with infinite half distances
and prospects of non-arrival.
Words have only so many positions,
but poets, pundits, and preachers, et al
are stuck on an infinite, repetitive loop,
missing the best words in...
Got a little blue
when the band
started playing
easy tunes
remember Ciarán
when we were
young, wasting
away energies
happy days
come, gone
tonight
there's a meeting in the conference room
and the ferry trawls on
old shore to old shore
cautious new hopes
(sign me up)
on the seventh deck
some musician plays a...
I am Baba Yaga, a hag, a toothless blend of wrong and right.
I fear only the knights known as Morning Evening and Night.
I live in a hut on chicken legs – its oven flames ignite
as it turns to face...
I'm torn
between two poets:
one yearns for the scent of bread
and the other longs for soup;
the bomb crater
is a fireless hearth
and the clay bowl
is broken clean in half.
I'm torn
between you and Amichai:
yours the dome
and his the mount;
a cut
is still a...
I never knew
what to say
until the next spring
when my child
couldn’t wait to tell me
the spot we buried
his favorite fish
was full of flowers.
I was here on the cliff at glan-y-mor, his reverie.
Below, the boathouse, washed a pastel shade
of lemon doused by sea mists of the Afan Taf
that meander into Carmarthen Bay. He sat and wrote
window open to the sea across the...
Silence
My heartbeat outpaces the wall clock,
the coffee maker exhales,
old rain drips in the downspout,
the dog wags her tail in her sleep,
my right ear rings in the key of E.
Time
Information is piled up
like clay and dust
that used to be a...
out the cafeteria window of this skyscraper
on the edge of lower Manhattan,
I can see the waters below, waves
and foams serpentine behind ships and boats.
The Staten Island Ferry approaches the dock station
while another -- her orange twin -- has left
to...
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sometimes you know
i have no clue as to what
is occurring
here
or over there
find it challenging
and disappear
1.
Afterwards, we asked the mystery
and were told nothing but starlight.
It spoke to the hinge of small bones
where memory reverses, the place
we must find you now.
2.
Think what you might have done
under your pirate flag. Cut loose
on a torn map, this...
Clouds so low they move
against themselves in parallax,
putty gray on an icy blue.
The boat moves too
on top of inky waves
bouncing in the sprays
that should feel chill
but somehow don’t;
October sun a fine companion.
And they go on in horizon tilts—
the furthest...
The Tannhäuser Gate - 1
Pencil, black and coloured ink, watercolour, graphic ink pen on cartridge drawing paper - 48cm x 27cm
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The Tannhäuser Gate - 2
Pencil, black and coloured ink, watercolour, graphic ink pen on cartridge drawing paper - 48cm...
Editor’s Note: Photographs of bronze sculptures by world-renowned Colombian artist, Fernando Botero (1923-2023), in a park where twenty-three of his sculptures are displayed in Medellin, Colombia.
Summer itself got into the fire last night we all felt the gasp.
Shell looked at me and made a sort of explosion face before she settled into one of those flat smiles you can’t tell what’s behind it her...
1.
The bullets of your absence
left holes in the flesh of the sky.
2.
I cannot enjoy the status of grief -
it is too remarkable, open-ended,
growing in my rearview.
3.
Time has yielded nothing
but the blood of dead stars
and fear as a second language.
4.
The...
Call 911 she said
her chest felt like a siren
blare, I’m scared, we’re there
atop the landing.
She’s climbed the stairs
she couldn’t wait for me to come
to her the lights are blinking red,
what rhymes with red?
My fingers
flop around on pads
forgetting how to...
O wild cat,
flat on your back with
your head on my
arm, old-man
belly exposed and
legs occasionally
twitching in their
natural dreams,
your serious claws
knead the breast of
instinctive sky
past my book,
through the trees,
beyond your masterful
display of the slippery
art of surrender and we,
who understand such things,
are...
My dog & I set out
for a mountain lake
ringed by pine trees.
There were ducks
preening in the water.
Some of them quacked.
They sounded happy.
My dog lapped the lake
with her tongue.
Splash is a language.
A trout nearby
jumped to join
the conversation.
A pink woman
with blue tattoos
&...
Acrylic on canvas; 24" X 36"
One day my body will collapse without reminiscence,
all solicitations at an end
& my tourist credentials confirmed
in this life, I have existed as coal
in the life to come, nothing but diamond
We move slow and there are grapes
drying in the sun, sweet
on the front of everything.
We fumble keychains of where we are,
in the shop and
there's the maze and the quest
of pull or
follow
and I've to tell you a way
to justify my...
Today, as I walked from the kitchen,
a wave of sadness blindsided me;
I asked if it would kindly wait
and steal my composure a bit later
when there would be no witnesses.
It agreed to do so, warning me,
Some day, I will ask...
1.
Here is the novelty of cooler air,
at once fostered and ruined by rain.
2.
I am the inside of a garment
being tested for colorfastness;
my hands are folded like origami.
3.
I see things in other things,
and wonder about signs.
4.
Darkness advances
like shadows of water,
or...
there’s a presence in the wind-blown sand
hovering in the rippling cool of winter
stacked stones of an old graveyard
unrecognizable but for the crosses
i remember sisters i met at a party
who pray over unmarked graves for
souls of the unknown & unloved
they...
tell us things, take us without consent. there are no records
(Editor's note: Composite photography using Adobe software and Nikon camera)
the sun was out
looking
like the butter
on my French toast
autumn
reminds me
creation
comes home
that death
is not a separation
life is
Remember when
I tucked you into
an old sock up to
your chin and then
washed you in the
kitchen sink after
I had found you in
the street infested
with fleas, disease
and hunger? Well,
here we are, years
later, both infested,
battling fleas, disease
and worse, yowling
at the moon who...
My wristwatch checks me for the time,
my verse expects a metered rhyme;
my wallet hits me up for loans,
my secrets beg to be unknown;
my Chevy tries to bum a lift,
and generosity, a gift;
my vodka orders fancy drinks,
my mind keeps asking...
If a tree falls
the question goes
and no one is around to hear it
does it make a sound
but no one is never not around
the true listeners
always in attendance
such (human) arrogance!
yet I know when I leave
the warm rock
and hike the bent...
The musty shed with the slanted roof collects rot like the Blair Witch collects teeth. Inside it there are two freezers, one that buzzes, full of ribs, ground beef, and pigs’ feet, and the other which is coated on...
(I)
Ten minutes into the shower, I fail to recall
if I have applied a body wash & rinsed—
I just check the armpit
of my non-dominant hand.
(II)
After locking the door of my house
before stepping out & confirming 5 times
that I have done...
He was at the breakfast table,
Sunlight angled through the window,
And I said, “I haven’t seen you
In so long. Where have you been?”
He said sunlight at the table,
Forty-dollar yard sale table,
Sunlight silent as a stairway
At the old Formica table.
Oh how...
Every so often – such a vague beginning I know but stick with me – every so often Marty calls me on the telephone, always the same wet hollow voice like the phone’s in his mouth he says something...
Jack was tired of endless approximations; he couldn’t quite pin down the things that seemed important —god, explanations, love, even life itself. Nothing was a whole number and every time he quantified these things to put them in the...
I saw a rusty white truck go by
he had branches in the bed
and I wished I was riding with him
I’ll call him Eric
and he spent the day clopping
these suckers down
he smells like gasoline
and has cuts on his arms from...
I entered your bedroom that Sunday morning
when no one was looking, saw my mother
in the middle of the floor with you on her,
winking at me from behind. Went blind,
became a column of air. Sang snippets
of vomit-confusion within our assumed
sweetness....
All day we laboured under the threat of rain: faced hedges
with a slasher, cut weeds with a scythe, mended gaps in fences,
shovelled out of sheoughs the black glar that sucked on boots
and pulled by hand the weeds that stopped...
In the sleeper class from Pune to Aurangabad I sat across from a man. Next to him, on his bag, a book with ducks and trucks.
After the tunnel, he started to speak. I blinked to get him into focus.
"I...
Simple lines create ruses that what is complex
can be understood. An artist’s detail of heads and legs
are but the medium for admiring curved lines that
make two horses into four.
When we believe that two dimensions can be three,
that love can...
she’s too exhausted for
a poet
had gotten paid
good
by a muscleman
in a blues band
to be
his hanger on
at the strip club
and now that he’s gone
she’s depleted
in 8 minutes
the place closes
is there anything ecstatic
tonight
for me
I clutch
my beer
and wonder
August 31, 2023
To:
Ms. Theresa Cotter
Eldercare at Mayfield Village, Inc.
290 North Commons Blvd
Mayfield Village OH 44143
Dear Ms. Cotter:
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you out of the blue like this. I also hope that I made enough of...
I take books from shelves, and set out
my store of usually useful things:
pens and brushes, knives, and keys
that I put to work, to continue
the debate I am having
with a world
that rimes men’s beards with frost,
that creases the faces of...
I woke before sunrise, or birds
woke me, or perhaps the dog—
I walked her while still mildly
asleep, brain fog-shrouded—
then I returned to bed, and dreamt
of a place, a house, not mine, but
still mine, part of that house
always there in dreams,...
born sick
raised to get well
repenting a sin
never committed
admission
to hobnob
with the holy wrathful
in eternal happiness
First, the old-fashioned dial tone,
zenith of nothingness.
Who invented that?
The almost-silent radio
after Country Carl’s
sign-off prayer,
Blues singer fading to needle hiss
as a Victrola winds down
in an empty room,
Leave off a steam train whistle--
though it inspired
many a fine old song.
At the tone,...
By mid-day,
I’d taken too many calls,
typed too many letters,
and dropped too many memos
on the desks of VPs
who called me 'hon.'
I told my boss Gary
I needed a break.
He said OK,
so I grabbed my cigarettes,
and went to sit
beneath a scraggly locust...
One of my favourite sights in early autumn is to see the fields of goldenrods against the green foliage and the blue of the sky. Less showy than the reds, but every bit as delightful and eye catching.
One good...
I feel like reading somebody else’s book today maybe even on their couch or if they have a boat my presence on the water I am told is of remarkable consequence. I’ll bring the food and you bring the pretend...
i had an emotion today
but don’t know its name
there was a blackbird on the lawn
10 feet away head cocked
eyeing or listening
i watched
then she bent over quickly
bobbed her tail in the air
like a gust of wind had caught her dress
that...
Uncle John was a bullshitter through and through. People always came up to me and said, astonished, things like I didn’t know your uncle was in vaudeville or why didn’t you tell me your uncle John was once engaged to Judy Garland or...
The holy man looks to the stars,
tells time by the weight of the sky
on his shoulders.
He says that the end is new seed,
each day brings us closer
to a field in bloom.
As a sceptic I ask for more proof.
He calls...
It’s ridiculous to think
we don’t disappoint
someone every moment
of every day.
If father admits
never having son’s back,
it’s his revelation to ponder.
No thing for a son to forgive.
We will always have
pariahs and darlings,
wars and rumors of wars,
plenty of old hatchets to exhume
and soft centers to exploit.
I'd rather contemplate
the spaces between raindrops,
marvel at how the daylily
knows just when to open
and close its tiny window,
acknowledge the silence of...
Expressionism | 13 × 20 Cm | On Paper | 2023
Material: Acrylic, White Gesso, Gouache
do not resuscitate this harsh dismantling of the self
I cannot live this way any longer
fractured dreams drooling out of my mouth
as I sleep in some place other than here
it is no escape for the hemorrhage
it is merely a hemorrhage...
I sat up and read the alarm clock dial from the bed. 10 a.m. It was too late. I should have been at work three hours ago. I would be fired. It was the first day that I would...
the relentless
drip
drip
drip
tedium of
my sobriety
is matched only
by the cliché
predictability
of a relapse
so, i displace
any program
into a holding
pattern
closer
to interference
than a pathway
it's
mechanical knowledge
capable of allowing
a functional
indulgence with
a detox regime
that i control
an illusion
i am
entirely aware of
and view with
a contrarian
smirk
I dreamed she got a tattoo
my mother
on her back
she lowered her robe for me
to see a map.
It looked like North and South
America
silhouetted in black.
She talked
strangely, spooning coffee to make
cowboy coffee,
called ‘cuz it wasn’t perked
just grounds
boiled in water, rather gritty.
Need...
The day she fell my mother had
30 rolls of toilet paper
neatly on her linen closet shelves.
The list of things I might not do again,
like buy a box of toothpicks or an awl,
grows longer every day.
The bucket list begun in...
The radio plays funeral music.
Mother enters my dream,
acknowledges love is a sail
and sets me adrift.
Perception is only
one part of the whole.
Come morning my boat
has blown into the reeds.
The water will soon be
blood red.
I stepped in vomit today
it oozed between my toes
I write this because
it’s not everyday you step
in your own filth
wait, actually
it is
organs all thumping my bones
a glistening forehead
sweat gathering in small gangs
raw fingers running
around my temples
cuticles gnawed away
dried blood in the crevices
manic voicemails at 3 in the morning
you have 7 unread messages
each one an intense essence
dread
fear
anger
resentment
shame
insecurities
blame
towering discs about to topple
all...
the prongs are there to use
don't get your fingers dirty
a lot of nice things are sticky
the viscous snot ball
the brown bruised banana flesh
there are lots of little vertebrae
all slotted in position
holding us vertical
as we stand in front of the...
to make amends to the world,
to voices in the wind
denied by closed windows,
to ghosts old and new
that pick and fret at loose threads,
to all the colors we never chose
to use, to crumbs forgotten
—discarded, not swept up
that fell between the...
Oh, for god's sake, let’s not talk about the coming winter
or soldiers waiting outside, rifles readied—
wave them in for a gin.
A ‘40s hit song is what we need right now.
Think of the bars and cafes we loved,
friends who stood...
PUFFIN ROCK
___________
YELLOW CROWNED HERON LAGOON
___________________________
THE MIDNIGHT SONS
_________________
When I was quite young, our neighbors’ daughter
was going to school to be a teacher and had learned
from her parents I spent many hours alone
in the woods. Eager to find out what questions
an eight-year-old boy might have regarding
the natural...
“Hawaii wildfires burn historic town of Lahaina 'to the ground'” - BBC
I remember coffee-flavored ice cream at the Royal Scoop,
how it made me long to be old enough to drink espresso
like Dad. I remember stepping off the plane into the...
I completely cracked it yesterday.
Everyone I showed it to agreed.
The Professor of Creative Writing
covered his mouth and ran from the room.
It even made my skeptical wife swoon.
It wasn't just the best poem I'd written.
It was the best poem ever written.
An Aurora Borealis in...
As I sat with my book
and glass of Chardonnay
one Monday on the patio,
a fly flew by,
and as I flicked my wrist
to sweep it on its way,
my eye found its destination,
a bird on its back
in the grass, its yellow breast
exposed...
Let everyone in. Let in a flinty-eyed coal miner from Elk Creek, and a tiny cleaning lady who lives above a bakery in Uppsala. The world belongs to them. It belongs to a Peruvian boy, only six years old,...
they kept the dress
in a locked trunk
in the attic
gathering dust for decades
forgotten when they passed
away—one following the other
as is often the case—
and years slid by
till one bright day
new residents held a yard sale
and having no use
for the cracked old...
There are words that do the poetry, they are endless, you can get the lawn the way it was light and dark, always moving, almost breathing, those big maple trees leaves big as flags, all the pines way out...
the language
of the finest wool
and metaphors
splashed throughout
as vivid colors
of sky white
cobalt blue
and blood red
while its opaque
meaning is well-
hidden in an
abstract motif
but that sheen
—what a sheen!
eighteen years it’s a lifetime
hair changes
teeth most of all
yet his accent no softer
he doesn’t ride any more
but the stains remain
blood and grease
grace and danger
his words
chosen with care
still harsh through that mouth
I have known so well
Today cannot decide.
I linger, eyes at half-mast,
beneath a dome of curdled milk
and a star sleeping in.
I pretend to exist
until I take form,
like a watercolor
bleeding into itself,
or a bead of water
on a pavilion roof.
I have
molded
this Maine
morning
into a smooth
glass swallow
for your sill,
to shore up
the sharp
clean cerulean
& remind you
of the real sky
& me.
he sits at his desk
writing poems in his head
stares out at the clouds
attempts to decode Nature's own
writ in dripping cyphers on the panes
it’s August and nobody’s listening
but you
I had to leave
it’s like some hyperactive child
is coloring in the nights with black crayons
the scribbles getting in my eyes
I was wondering what you were doing
now that you’ve gone
I can’t believe that
once you were...
I said
do not simplify
I fucking understand
my opinion
differs from yours
but I fucking get it
I do not require
repetition, new angles
greater enunciation
volume or analogies
I knew he’d fucking caught on
but you see
there was opportunity
to really drum it in
so I kept going
From this angle, a day’s last rays make embers of cattails
bent in supplication to an unrepentant wind trying to force
the Colorado into retrograde. A fleet of satellites sail
across a dimming sky eager to unzip the last sheets of shine
and...
roam the yards
flock to the sound
of an opening door
hoping for scraps
tossed our way
tasty, random, diverse
cluck and quibble
scrabble in life's compost pile
double-scratch for juicy tidbits
snatch ideas that wriggle
moist and twisty
before moving on
as a group
play follow-my-leader
across overgrown
unmown
meadowland
picking the winged
and the shiny
from...
I'm mowing the lawn
in a different direction!
purple roses
and blood red candy
a passerby
who knows the secret
you withhold from everyone else
they keep the confession
in their haunted spirit
lay it on the altar
make a wish for you in the fountain
somehow getting the thorny words out
I don’t wanna live anymore
makes...
Schoolyard children rush
the chain link fence, rattle
the metal breathlessly, ask
the man in the wheelchair:
"What happened to your feet!"
When a mountain is dismantled
from eons of wind and rain,
how can I say it’s gone?
When it has fondly spread itself
across this land
re-shaping the terrain.
When a raindrop falls
to meet with its demise,
how can I say it’s gone?
When it serves to...
or divorce or some means
by which the poor lass is on her own,
My lass, without fail,
will ask me:
What are you here for?
Tell me. Why are you here?
You're a hopeless husband.
Tell me why are you here?
I never reply.
She asks a...
I’ll die.
I’ll go brain dead.
I mean, I’ll be here
but in some straw wrapper
exiting through the skull
and brain matter.
What’s the matter?
They’ll all say trying to scrape
the morbid off the exam table.
I don’t know how the shit might go down.
But it...
Abstract Expressionism | 12 × 16 Cm | On Paper | 2023
Material: Acrylic, Gouache
Sun sliced through the window
warming my face,
my skin tinted pink
by skinny morning clouds.
Mom was sleeping.
Harry was up.
His footsteps creaked
just above where I stood,
running water in the sink,
flushing the lead
that pooled overnight
in corroded kitchen pipes.
I made coffee
from yesterday’s grounds,
pouring the...
Grief rides its own wavelength,
reconciliation earns an expiration date,
regret becomes a badge;
some songs turn unlistenable,
but we listen anyway.
I check myself for a heartbeat.
Trains run reliably late,
and the self-immolation of dragons
continues, unabated.
somewhere between a full irish breakfast in galway
& a sunny sail on the mediterranean,
i dove between gentle waves,
swam circles on my side
so i’d never lose sight of your face.
in the beginning there was earth & heaven
& in the end...
i feel
so goddamn
happy, sometimes
i wanna take the damn
out of God
grab fistfuls
of his oxygen
steal
that single beam
of pure sunlight
slicing
thru the east window
crush them together
melt 'em
like crayons
over
that
precious
Picasso
The hurried girls in flight
the mighty half to rule the rabid
roasting meat and placing it on the dirty tray
I'd like to say I depend on the truthful
but delight when the wicked drink flashes its greasy legs,
fucking wonderful & frightening...
Walking wide-eyed, the child drops
to his knees, for the stream is all around
and flowing. He lifts the rock, the water
slurping its way beneath with thirsty relief,
washing cool the inhabitants who sigh
and tumble forth with amazing heads.
He catches some, damaging...
Every once in a while I feel a love story coming on it’s like nourishment.
I don’t even remember who shot JR about that summer but I remember everything about first time I saw Ted, same summer, he was the...
tenets of the most devout
are tempered with a tinge of doubt;
every joyous moment spent
will cost a hundred in lament;
beauty passes in a flash,
reduced to memory and ash;
light and darkness, truth and lies
appear to have familial ties;
remedies could make you...
The wind will change color
and we will go fishing at daybreak
even as things can’t happen as they did before
but approximation of the past is possible
fear of the future will be forgotten
as it always has been
when another autumn returns
and I...
She calls to me across the pasture.
Over here, I answer.
Grasses shrink
from her big yellow teeth
as she approaches—
weeds don’t know
a mare's gentleness.
And I still miss you.
Clouds pause.
Wildflowers hurtle
seeds into cracks
beneath the interstate,
open into
orange poppies
that catch fire
in the sunset.
And I still...
the star of the show
out for a daytime stroll
masquerading
as a round cloud
wearing designer shades
trying to go unnoticed
before tonight’s big performance
The windows weep for wilder air
to sweep the ghost imprisoned where
I sleep these widow weedy days;
your smell still bathes my pillow case -
love’s detritus and battle stains
adorn the sheets I will not change.
I rub the pane and through the...
(Rotring Isograph and Pigma Microns pens on mixed media paper)
These dust motes, so gently pirouetting,
can, from certain angles in slanted light,
reform to embody the departed.
Libraries are full of such airborne ghosts
moving quietly between sleepy shelves,
attending to their liminal business.
Open a forgotten book, a fat tome
on Greek history say,...
when you decide
not to isolate
any longer
& a bird shits
on your
ice cream cone
as you walk
along the midway
at the state fair
so you take out
your pocket knife
& slice away
about an inch
off the top scoop
& a security guard
pulls their gun
& tells you
to drop...
betrayed by
flesh: blood
beats tattoos
against the
underside of
skin flushed
in steady push to expand surface area on palms and soles, prime targets for a
body demanding to be cooled, dilating veins, capillaries, speeding respiration,
& boosting all perspiration till this body is a cross...
i had mistaken myself for the graveyard
somewhere history closed its circle
with an indifferent embrace
mundane acknowledgements of life
were carved on granite marble sandstone
skull scapula and the long bones of my legs
on my arm were 500 years of names and dates
records...
i’m sorry i couldn’t go to your game today
i was on the verge of capturing
a universe in a grain of sand
and i’m sorry i can’t take you fishing son
my hands are cupping an invisible rose
and our blood is mingled...
There are exactly 8,041,272,548 humans
on our planet. The last one in the count
is a feisty, baby girl named Maria-Angelica
born in a Manilla slum to a couple with 8
other children, all reportedly living happily.
There are precisely 327,153,981,241 stars
in our galaxy. The final...
lately I’ve been floating around
I don’t want my feet on the ground
that’s a drag
I’d rather watch you from above
I’d rather hover
I need something to fill my ghost
some adventure of you
helicopter wings over hell
I’d like to rescue you
I’d like to...
The gossip
always the latest –
if you want to know,
she’s the one,
you needn’t ask,
she’ll just tell
but;
one day
she just stops.
When asked
she replies
that she’s been
unkind, as if
she just found out
who she’d been.
there was a gentle breeze going, then
the sun came through.
A Jew, a Christian & a Muslim walk into the bar.
Each one orders a Day of Judgement on the rocks
with a Resurrection of the Body chaser.
A Buddhist walks into the bar & orders
an Enlightenment straight up
with a Reincarnation back.
A Native American walks into the bar,
orders a Sweat Lodge neat...
1.
We begin as night watchers
bringing news and lanterns;
we end with the guilt and relief
of a called-off search.
2.
There is no fresh light,
no star to see in real time;
everything is always moving
away from everything else.
3.
We are eager for storms to arrive,
then...
1.
Yesterday a rat snake crawled up into
the eaves and into a mourning dove's
nest of twigs. This morning we found
five shells and yolk on the flagstone.
2.
Three pills till morning and a prayer to
nobody. Dr. Internet advised against this
remedy, preferring the...
The photographer sees his shadow and becomes part of the landscape.
Stanley Tucci is all in white and wears turquoise rings. If flirtation is a dance
we dance the softest dance of breezes. He has eyes that can recognise
springs ready to wet through the dune.
Things don't turn stupid because I'm moving...
The daffodil is vicious as the fox,
just softer in consumption—
does not pursue another’s face
beyond the garden wall—only the sun,
the moon, the air and soily stars.
The ravenous bitch will bloom.
it was that high school
was a thousand different kinds of cruel
this one got caught jerking off
in the school bathroom
that one fucked a goat
it was a small town surrounded by corn fields
and someone was always fucking a goat
she was a...
They tore down a part of my hometown last week,
imploded it to be precise, dissolved it from the inside
as with cancer. A crowd came to admire the reek
of the ordnance and the trail of the plume adrift
in the spring...
Mom hoed the dead soil
outside her Section 8 housing,
tossing in coffee grounds,
potato peels,
and the crumbs
of a Little Debbie snack cake,
butting her cigarettes in weeds,
saying anything would help
bring the dirt back to life.
She was in remission,
shrunk and concave
from lymphoma and...
EXPLORE
10 North Fulton
Praise Sammy Tepper with the fiery red hair—scapegoat for bullies who taunt and tease to hear him squeal. Praise Etsio Goloni, Gas-station Joe, for...
