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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Honey bee on a manuka flower, and unidentified wasp, possibly Family Chalcididae. Photograph taken in New Zealand with a Nikon D500 camera and a...
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...
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,...
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...
16" X 30". Collage of oil paint, stencil, grease pencil, old newsprint, and photo copies of old photos applied to a masonite panel over...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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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...
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...
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 -...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
The musty shed with the slanted roof collects rot like the Blair Witch collects teeth. Inside it there are two freezers, one that buzzes,...
(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...
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...
Every so often – such a vague beginning I know but stick with me – every so often Marty calls me on the telephone,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In the sleeper class from Pune to Aurangabad I sat across from a man. Next to him, on his bag, a book with ducks...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
One of my favourite sights in early autumn is to see the fields of goldenrods against the green foliage and the blue of the...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
There are words that do the poetry, they are endless, you can get the lawn the way it was light and dark, always moving,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
(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...
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
&...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The full moon
was staring at me.
I felt it in Braille.
Thousands
of little raised dots
erupted on my skin.
I lifted my hand
to wave hello
& found it fisted
inside...
love is a lion
your head in its mouth
poetry in your throat
I was feeling down
it was Memorial Day weekend
and I just wanted to sit among nature
along with a hundred other dumb souls
nowhere to park, so...
is the day I find the wolves
you can count on that.
I will follow along
the s-curve of your path,
the one that pings
my search image
and has...
Tony next door is suddenly old
I saw him yesterday
curved behind
his slow lawn mower
and Eric across the street
rickety with his shovel
his wife, my age, a...
Carla at the Veterans Crisis Line
tells me she has never met with negativity like mine
I didn't tell her I've met plenty of cross-dressing sockcuckers
whose...
He pointed it out like a carnival oddity
a bearded lady or monkey playing guitar,
perhaps an albino deer or lion with the
head of an eagle....
knows
the
last
time
is
the
last
time
until
it
is.
was worse
than anything
he could have imagined,
but
he didn’t
want to dull it,
so
he put
aside the glass...
walked
out in the yard
and stared at the trees.
this time
by a
bird
whose aim
was more direct,
on target
and effective
than any of
the critics
who dislike me,
my poems,
my attitude,
my way of writing or
just my way of
seeing things.
this bird
should...
I mean, put my car in your pool
you know we are never going
to forestry school together
no food, no water
Omaha Beach ya know
my heart looks...
There are no words,
only eyes
in a silent world
where your presence is enough;
there is no time,
only pure promise,
memories like crumpled notes,
and empty sugar packets,
each with...
too busy directing the marches
he'll watch you fall
smile as the nets fail
the audience gasp
and all that's left
when the clowns have gone
are the rabbits
no miracles,...
you mean it was the settings that were wrong
yes.
so, it was all your imagination?
yes.
I toss
my hat
onto the empty chair
next to me
i think
it was 1969
and we were sitting on
the floor in the front room of her house,
playing
records on the stereo.
i remember
playing Steppenwolf
and Simon and Garfunkle.
i...
if you're reading this,
you've already felt it:
a tingle
an itch, an ache
you exist
in a kind of hollow agony orbit:
the cool knot pleasure, orgasm
of a burning...
When the city's in trouble
beware the brooding hero
whose beacon burns inside his chest
to throw designs on nightly skies
to dazzle unprotected eyes
and wraps bleak wings...
Gaia speaks as Mother Earth, whispers softly to her child
Child answers Isis, goddess of trees and forests wild
Pachamama swaddles babe and holds him to...
I drive the same route daily,
flip through the same stations,
but today all my radio presets
were phonemes and static.
I ruled out the weather,
because the sky...
I'm addicted
to the abandoned rail trestle
over Grindstone Creek
it's far enough away
to be romantic
and it's in the woods
I go there, eat the lunch
I have brought...
After this pestilence is over
if we are free again and I am still young enough
We will go back to my birth mountains of Albuquerque
and...
The next time I have
ringing in my head I’m not
gonna answer it
I think I’m tired when I retire,
I know I fall asleep.
Something’s wrong, I don’t know what.
I sit up wide-eyed wondering.
I check the locks, I...
A painting called Life
on a museum wall
after hours
hangs
lifeless.
The museum opens
people stroll
down the aisle
pause at Life
give Life
meaning.
Early May plums
the size & color
of green olives
are well hidden
among the emerald leaves.
In the next months
as they enlarge
& purple
& eventually fall
& split open
& when
the...
Awake and voracious ...
I feel like if I must violate the peace then so be it
jump in the word pile give off an inexpensive...
the peace
is as plentiful
as the water
surrounding
this city
moving away
from its bays
into its heart
blue-gray
permeates
and the eyes
are tempted
at every turn
to take in
the wisdom
that shimmers
under
its many bridges
Tank Girl - 1
Pencil, graphic ink pencil, coloured acrylic inks, ink brush, coloured pencils, chalk pastels, black ink on Strathmore Illustration Board - 42cm...
I tell myself
I am not as fat
as I look
& it’s true
I do tell
myself that—
because
I am a liar
a big fat liar
the scale agrees
fuck the scale
&...
If I were an Orca
off the coast of Portugal
near the Straight of Gibraltar
I’d try to sink your sailboat.
How would you like it
if I hovered...
I wished
to be forever happy.
It was granted.
Now I don’t know
what it means anymore.
Pencil, graphic ink pen, ink and brush on Daler-Rowney smooth Cartridge drawing paper - 52cm x 37cm
When I was nineteen, lost, alone,
depraved and often raving from
the lack of food and meaning,
walking the streets for days
on end after dropping out
of college...
Klint rubs his knife clean against his dingy shirt. He thinks I never notice blood, metallic taste that lingers from a kiss, or his...
You were dead, I'm certain.
I knew from the way we all
looked away from your bed
and into our phones. You sat up
and grabbed both my...
It was always
in cluttered antique shops
that my wife and I could get our fill
of nostalgia: where a 100-year-old typewriter
may sit atop a 1950s television...
I admire the fit of the monkey into the alarm
& the women who drive their obscene sofa trucks from mailbox to church
... well, this...
We had goose bumps on our chocolate skin
because we weren't well dressed for the weather
We didn't think about clothes when we fled motherland
on aluminum...
I sit on the balcony like a droopy shirt
and hope that I get assassinated
the green SUVS and white mini vans
pass by
with no understanding
of my...
and said "Maximalist" as if
it explained everything. I gave
her muffins with cranberries,
pine nuts, rooibos tea and dark
chocolate. I warned her
to duck so she wouldn't
hit...
I’m not crazy
anymore
trying
to see myself
like you see me.
My reflection
bouncing off
the mirror
is no longer the me
who used to bounce
off of reality.
Still,
I think
you must be
meshuga
for wanting
to...
...the long wave swells and rolls towards my shore
sound is sucked from air
till only the subterranean roar
of a distant heart is felt
and breath is...
I know where all the graves lie;
those of my father, mother,
close friends, acquaintances,
some uncles, some aunts.
My parents' I visit often,
the relatives' as often as...
if you
were only
as thin as
one atom
one
wide
one
tall
one
deep
you can bet your atomic arse
electrons would still think you're fat
the house grows smaller
with each step I take
walls pinching in
a carnival room
your chair in its corner
worn like a molar
a trick you still do
blowing smoke...
A flock of Dunlins startle
rushing to rise
on a Merlin rumor.
Murmuring among themselves
when to shrink or swell
to foil an intrusion.
Summer speckled plumage
strobing
like northern lights on...
I let the date whisper through me
like slow bullets each year
I refuse to count
will not say it’s been howevermany years now
for time does not...
HEYYYYYYYYYYY STUPID
HEYYYYYYYYYYY STUPID
the windshield wipers chant
as I battle the midnight rain
for a pack of Lucky Strikes.
"Everything's a metaphor," he said,
deadheading the rosebush,
thick gloves protecting him from its spite.
"Is it?" I asked, "Even us?
Are we just a metaphor?"
And though he...
They had deep dark secret day at school one time only. I don’t think they were prepared for the results that decimated the entire town, so...
Winding towards Josselin
through woods
green as absinthe,
sharp as a lime slice,
I drop the roof
and speed carries
the smatter of rain
over the car and away.
Along the ditches
pollarded...
the air from the vent
suddenly shuts off
and now my thoughts
are so clear
I actually
have to deal with them
like a 20-foot rogue wave wall
appearing suddenly out of
a placid, gray-teal ocean
giving no time for fear
to be digested, nor for
comprehension to do its part,
heaving...
We are under a spell today
the rules of gravity suspended
birds float through the fog
It is my eldest daughter’s birthday
and this is an all-day...
my kitchen again --
the flash of sunlight
on the counter was you
and has me talking
to the sky
Machines under alarm
a squeeze from a warm hand.
A whisper—please don’t die.
I tried to reply
but got confused
in all the commotion
never noticing the shocks
from cold white...
In Midnight's hour I take my tongue
and place it on the floor.
(It loves to run about and play
with Beetle, Dung, and Spore.)
Then Teeth and...
When distant wishes calling you
in breezes rushing off the bay,
return, as blush of deja vu,
of distant whisper calling you
to kisses spent at twenty two
which...
I slept in a small room
I dreamed there as a boy
the moon came & went
wind knocked on my windows sometimes
in the grass
in the fields...
(Warning: Adult Content)
I was just
writing this poem
where I was going
on and on and on
when really
I just want to fuck
it’s spring
I’m frustrated
and I’m not
attracted to...
The annoying drone
a mile over the hill,
I-35 tinnitus.
It helps to pretend
it’s a waterfall or rapids
or squalling river valley winds.
At night
its white noise
puts me to...
I coaxed you into my life
like a wild animal and loved you too hard.
Like when the fox said to the Little Prince,
To you I...
He conforms his tired bones
to the shape of a bed,
crosses his arms,
lets eyes
go to grey-
spinning the world
a needle grabs dust
on a vinyl LP,
no lyrics,
no...
When you get off the boat
your perception changes
You watch things more closely
Like my beloved old tree dying
I never imagined it would become dangerous
There was...
Lost at Sea
Alzheimer’s Pantoum
I first noticed when we sailed as we often did from Robinhood Cove to Bath.
A thick fog swaddled the boat, mist...
The distance between us
is a giant red star.
The irregular shapes
of particulate matter-
drifting away. Your eyes
looking elsewhere.
he's out there now
row 2
forcing tines into the rain-packed crust
beating greedy roots against the fork
shaking loose clumps of soil and stone
salting the earth with...
Another packing up dream
and we're getting good at this.
The embroidered table runner
goes beneath the bundled
purple china cow. As we add linens
to cushion around it,...
I got a 10-gallon hat
But my head’s so fat
I can only put it on
1 gallon at a time
EXPLORE
..best..
the roads here are winding, the leaves are changing.
best not to bang the teapot down on serving, best
to tell the truth.
