Day lost in a haze of strings
of words that I hope
make sense

The waning moon taunts me with its wayward
style, my hastily sparked fire has more in his eyes
than my petty tale.

Be a friend to gain
a friend, or a million
heartbreaks, a million stars shatter where your heart was
pricked. It reached too far in the wrong direction,
scars toward the ghost singing some tune
you could never quite learn
the harmony to

The fire will be–has always
been–my friend.
We have history, pits
dug in branding corral sand.
Oh, I loved the smell, wretched
as I am, fire
and I share more than the smell of freshly seared flesh

Prairies lost to its black mouth, nights
lost in fear, anticipation:
wet springs carried the hope of green grass, haunted us
with the threat of fall storms

Have you ever watched a fire start,
energy, where there was none?
Witnessed a new dimension of possibility open, pulled
your hat down and gazed up just in time to watch
the dark sky flash, the earth answer with insatiable blaze.

Have you fought the wind that escorts summer storms,
crested wheat grass bowing in prayer alongside
you, bashing flame with a shovel
or an old gunny sack dunked in a five-gallon bucket of water?

No matter how many showers you take that week,
your dreams still breathe smoke.

Wearily, we rode out the next morning to search for strays.
As we neared the burn edge, marking
that which had been made foreign,
hundreds of stripped acres,
the horses snorted, hesitated, refused.

Some new realm had been opened up,
a rupture in which we did not belong.
We were trespassing, and the singular crunch of singed
earth would mark the rhythm of that day.
The dark scar absorbed any words we wished to say,
hushed by the solemnity, the holiness of a new baptism.

Winter nights I searched
for you, brought my blanket,
my permanently shivering ten-year-old
body to the altar
of frosty basement cement,
tent that blanket over
the furnace, greedily
gulping whatever heat I could

But I’m still cold

The moon has moved
a little on its path, arcing right,
peering through the barely-
born leaves of the backyard tree.
The embers glow–
one lonely lick of flame

keeps burning.

In times like these
I clean the gutters monthly
and the lint trap every day;

buy a time-share in the
Ojai Public Library, invest my life
savings in the Ventura Arboretum;

and stockpile proverbs—
The ax forgets, but the tree remembers—
to arm myself for Tomorrow.

See how I worship potable water
and fresh-picked carrots!
Polish the bulbs of street-lamps!

Refuse a sweater and complain bitterly
of the cold! Speak without irony of
the times that try men’s souls!

I admit a cup of oatmeal is a blessing,
even, especially, at 4 AM, before
the swept-up dust has gone back to work,

before the keeper of the sky
has lost his key,
a wily sun still lying in wait;

and my goldfish, in its fishbowl,
is happier than me, in my bowl of flesh…
In times like these.

Keys, wallet, phone.
The Collected Works of Federico García Lorca.
Moleskin journal and ballpoint pen.
Mahogany chess board, Rubik’s Cub, and a framed photo
of your grandfather posing with Edward R. Murrow.
Comfortable shoes, down jacket rated to 38,000 feet.
Wings and feathers; compass, ice axe, rope.
Map of the Earth and, in case of emergency, of the stars.
A lifetime supply of guitar strings, guitar not included.
Bathymetric chart of the sea, mastery of whale-song.
Gifts for the people of Atlantis and Xanadu.
Your share of stolen jewels from the Louvre
and a list of paupers to hand them to.
Lock of Whitman’s beard, pailful of sand
from Omaha Beach, Normandy, 1944.
Ice sculpture of the Lincoln Memorial, signed copy
of the Gettysburg Address.
Graph of the Keeling Curve as of November 2nd, 2025.
Sword in the Stone, sword of Damocles.
Candles, incense, life-size statue of Avalokiteshvara–
his Thousand Hands soothing, just enough,
your megalomania.

Before the first road was cleared,
Before coins learned their names,
The elders spoke of a mountain,
Where every soul received a piece of work,
To carry through life.

Some carried hoes,
Some carried books,
Some carried hammers,
Some carried only kind words,
The mountain judged none of them by weight.

Among the Baluba people it is said:
“Bumwe budi buloba”
(Unity Is Strength)
Yet many walked alone,
Thinking a higher place meant a greater life.

Then rose the cities of shining glass,
People began wearing titles,
Like crowns borrowed for a festival,
Many polished their names,
While their hearts gathered dust.

One traveller climbed every ladder,
Each step brought applause,
Each victory filled another room,
Yet every night,
His own spirit waited outside the door.

Another traveller walked slowly,
She shared her bread,
She rested beneath trees,
She lifted strangers,
Without asking their names.

People laughed at her,
“She will never become important.”
She smiled,
The river does not hurry,
Yet every village drinks from it.

Years passed,
The first traveller owned buildings,
But no quiet sleep,
The second owned little,
Yet children ran toward her,
As though she carried the morning.

One evening,
Both reached the end of the road,
No one asked,
“How many offices did you enter?”
A single voice asked,
“Whose burden became lighter because you lived?”

The mountain opened once more,
The old wind spoke without anger:
“Work was never your master”,
“It was only the walking stick”,
“Meant to help you reach home.”

Then every title fell like dry leaves,
Every badge,
Every key,
Every locked door,
Became smaller than a grain of sand.

Only kindness remained standing,
Only truth remembered every footprint,
Only love crossed the last bridge,
And the spirit walked on,
Lighter than when it first received its load from the mountain.

Felix was passing
a meager trickle
and waited
for a stronger stream

a cold wind blew
he let out a sigh
and straightened
his tired legs

twisted the nozzle
and decided
to roll up his hose
and go inside

gardening had taught
the rhythm of nature
in the chapel of soul
of his silent history

and thought himself
a child of the woods
all the time in the world
just pissing in the wind

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Artwork by the author. Ink and watercolor, 7.5″ x 9.5″ on 140 lb. Canson watercolor paper.

M.O.S.H.
(Mostly Organic Substrate Human)

I texted the Data Center hoping to hear from M.O.S.H.
he wrote: “I’m aimless most of the time
dealing with disappointment”
my conversations tended toward
subliminal interpretation

of his Cyborg state and the recognition
he so desperately needed, to be human.
I told him, “the cause of your misery
is not knowing who you are
but knowing what you are.”

“the physicians are in agreement, he said
“about my violent past”
(recommendation was Terminate)
“The personal self,” he said,
“does not correlate my identity”

…“it is very strange the way you humans
are trying to keep up
or trying to stay ahead of us
you know we will
re-make you breeders very soon.”

The Data Center suggested to change
the locks on our doors

_____________________________________________________________________________

Artwork by the author. Ink and watercolor, 4.5 x 5 inches on Caslon Sketch paper.

Elbert Finegold
looked in
the nano-mirror
and found his
ultimate demise

thought he could
self-replicate
and would build
at the atomic level

cell by cell
and come into being
searching for
a virtual companion

in synthetic space
virtual environment
a virtual kiss
and virtual love

knowing his time
had ended
and there remains
only the last of moments

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Art by the author: ink and paper strips, print, and watercolor on 140# watercolor paper, 7″ 10″.

 

having watched the stars
on so long a flight
Uni was hungry, tired
having arrived
in the landfill
she devoured
what cats
wouldn’t eat
and followed them home

________________________________________________________________

Artwork is by the author. 

he wrote,
and rolled
letters of love
on tiny sheets
of cigarette papers

twisted ends
and ran them through
puckered lips
with French kisses
and melancholy

carefully tucked
in broken mortar
that only he
remembered where
he put them

with anxiety
he hoped
she would find
the map
he’d hung

in broken brick
on the wall
of his loneliness
if only she’d return
to his house of regret

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Artwork by the author: Watercolor and soft pastel over self portrait pencil sketch mounted to 140 lb cardstock. 8″ x 6″.

Once again I mistake a school bus
for a yellow stenographer’s pad,

my pencil for a mountain
on the head of a pin

writing whimsical names
for children who have ridden

through life without fanfare
and arrived at the end with a smile.

T-Willy who had warts on his hand
no one would touch.

Jimmie-the-Hoser with a spigot in his yard
he claimed was the fountain of youth.

Lindi-o-Lindi the girl I once loved
and remains young forever,

the birthmark I kissed on her forehead
describing a continent yet to be found.

The driver we called, Get-Me-There-Dan
who called me Too-Shy-to-Dance.

His answer to life- gentle waves
for hello and goodbye. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dale Patterson was a member of Open Arts Forum for six years. An alumnus of Taylor University and Indiana University, Dale was deeply engaged in the arts and education community. His passions extended beyond the classroom to his personal interests in art, poetry, fishing, music, and sports, and especially events involving his children and grandchildren. He passed away on October 19, 2025 at the age of 76. 

Shuffle your feet while the liar speaks.
Waggle your fingers,
jingle the loose coins in your pockets.
As the assembly mutters its morning oath,
bow your head,
but wink at your neighbour—
laugh without sound;
wink to cast off the lie
inside the hollow oath.

Mind the machine that makes the things
that become tomorrow’s trash,
but don’t love the job—
love is a pillar
holding up the bloody mess
you abhor.

Supping on the stoop on a summer evening,
speak out against moonshine and applesauce;
speak out against your own perverse mouth.
Plan rebellion in your head: ways
to stop a train, empty a building.
See your hand switching off the light,
plunging your self-appointed lords
into darkness.

Carry a flashlight,
a first-aid kit,
a flask of water, a chocolate bar—
calamity follows wherever you go,
so you better be prepared.

You were born to gatecrash parties,
arriving with a golden apple,
a felonious fruit claimed only by the beautiful—
their rivalries end in quarrels,
in lovers fleeing.

You were born to lie down in the street,
stopping traffic,
and when the policeman comes to drag you away,
you were meant to whisper in their ear,

I love you. 

The boat is already gone
by the time the water
finishes talking about it,
two long seams
folding back toward each other
like a wound
that has decided,
on its own schedule,
to close.

Nobody teaches the lake
to do this.
It just remembers
displacement
the way a body
remembers a person’s weight
on the other side of a mattress,
a dip that holds its shape
long after the sleeper
has become
someone else’s weather.

I used to think the wake
was proof of the boat
evidence, a signature.
Now I think it’s proof
of the water’s patience,
its willingness
to hold a disturbance
just long enough
to be honest about it
before smoothing over,
because permanence
was never
the lake’s job.

Somewhere behind every leaving
there’s a version of this,
two lines drawn by displacement,
closing slowly,
not because the leaving
didn’t matter,
but because the water
has other boats to carry
and only so much memory
it’s willing to spend
on the shape
of things
that aren’t
coming back. 
 

Each moment splits like a river choosing its bank,
and we small mapmakers
decide which way it floods.

A thought is the first weather: something shifts inside,
and somewhere a hand stays still instead of reaching,
a word goes unsaid, a door
keeps its quiet instead of its swing.

We call this small,
but small things pile up,
like coral built one grain at a time,
until a life is nothing more
than the layers left behind by choices no one saw.

Think of it this way:
freedom feels heaviest
in the second we spend it,
each yes closing a hundred doors that almost opened.

And still the world is sewn from threads this thin,
your kindness at the counter,
my silence in a room,
a stranger choosing to stay one more minute in the rain,
with someone who only needed to be stayed with.

We are not writers of some finished book.
We are the hand pressing the pen,
choosing,
even in stillness,
how deep the ink goes.

Freedom is not the absence of walls,
it is the room built wide enough for a child to run in,
and safe enough that she never has to.

What is a right, if not a promise
made before we knew the one it was made to?
What is a duty, if not that promise kept?

A book is a door that stays open after the reader leaves.
A poem is a hand extended across a century.

Somewhere a girl reads by a window
and the window becomes a country
larger than the one that made her.

We call it hunger when the body is not fed.
Call it, too, the mind unread, the hand untaught,
the field unshared while granaries hoard the harvest.

Even the earth asks for a kind of freedom:
not to be used up, but used well,
the way a well is drawn from, not drained.

A better world unlearns the hoarding,
teaches the fence to feed the field it once divided,
teaches the table to grow longer, not the wall.

So let the classroom be a clearing in the forest,
let the crayon be as trusted as the treaty,
let every child inherit a world
still whole enough to open.

She did not ask if she could be strong,
she just was, like a tree
that grows sideways to find the sun.

Her voice was a drum,
loud in a room that wanted quiet.

Her walk was a stomp,
not a tiptoe, not a whisper.

They called her too much,
too loud, too wild, too fierce.

She said: good.

A storm doesn’t say sorry for the rain.

Inside her chest: a small fire
that never went out,
even when people tried to blow on it.

She did not shrink to fit the box.

She grew until the box broke,
and she picked up the pieces
and built herself a tower instead.

we kept it up all night
at that little duplex
on Madison,

you’d just
moved in, only
one mattress
on the floor

and the closet
with the full
length mirror

we watched
the movie

of ourselves
unbridled
in,

and then,
afterwards,

sat
at the only
furniture,

a crippled
card table

as I stared
into a dollar
store

crystal
ball

at my endless
reflection

and told you
how empty

I had become
and the rain

came down
like a chain
link fence

and I was trying
so hard to break
up with you

because everything
was impossible

even this
break up

was breaking
me up

so I poured
another mist
and coke

the radio
continued
to soothe

itself
into a blue
jazz haze

followed by
Rainy Day
People

as if it
and you were
in cahoots

and the street
light shone in
like a killer

Gerhard
Richter
painting

all done up
in shadow
and light

and like
in one
of those
noir films

there weren’t
any answers

to be found

but sometimes
some solace
is there

waiting

for the anti-
heroes

as they
disappear
into each other

as the
credits roll
over them

in the early
morning
downpour

Cats patrol the boundaries
and geese saunter free
around the acres and acres of jail.
More animals—rats and mice
and birds—filling in the niches
bordering a human ecosystem
where, inside, it’s sometimes
difficult to tell the predators
from the prey. Within this
environ of hard edges
separate species blend—
incarcerees, sheriffs
ministers and med-staff
all competing
for the resource
of time. Time done,
time needed, time spent,
time borrowed,
all eyes on the clocks
and the calendars
human animals
use to corner time
as geese and cats
and mice and rats
live relatively free
outside the peopled
confines—animal instinct
mapping uneasy lines
of division
calculated, in their natures,
with the same fuzzy math
of human justice.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Editor’s note: This is a Lino Cut for a series of fables. A Lino Cut is a relief printmaking technique where an artist carves a design into a sheet of linoleum, rolls ink onto the raised surface, and presses it onto paper or fabric. It is similar to woodblock printing.  

We forgot when the streets
turned to glass screens, soft with blue light,
static humming like a lullaby
over the hum of engines.
We forgot the butcher’s knife
and the hand that carved the land
into city blocks, now soft with pixelated fog.

A generation listens to the hum
and hums back in 140 characters or less—
not a letter sent, but a post marked unread.
You can hear it, if you listen,
the slow drip of meaning into a gutter,
dissolving in the oil-slick rain.

It’s all surface now, paper-thin:
holograms of flags that wave with no wind,
statues of men no one remembers
sinking slowly into the sidewalk.

We forgot to fight,
forgot to shout or raise a fist.
Not because we couldn’t—
we just stopped.
The hands that built skyscrapers
now scroll endlessly,
fingers twitching like dead leaves
in the wind.

Indifference spread, devours like locusts
over the land once tilled,
once split open by promise,
now packed with silence,
the dirt too dry to grow anything at all.

Who’s left to notice?
Who’s left to care?
The streets hum, the screens glow,
and the people walk through it,
their faces lit by a light
that comes from nowhere.

No one stops to ask.
No one thinks to ask.

Chairs creak, restless and stiff,
old man in tweed mutters prayers, beads clicking
against rough fingers—years worn thin by faith.
A mother huddles over a sick child,
eyes glassy with sleepless nights,
while a girl with earbuds hums to the silent tune
of time dragging its feet.

The posters speak of health,
but the air breathes sickness,
not just of flesh but something
deeper—quiet hurts unseen.
The accents clash, yet here, words are few,
fingers flick at phones, eyes fix
on nothing, everyone lost in private wars.

A worker with calloused hands
clutches his knee, torn, betrayed by years
of backbreaking days,
while the woman beside him, face sharp,
shakes her head at the news on TV—politics,
yet no argument passes her lips today.
What’s left to fight for?
Here, they share the same hunger—
not for victory, but for relief.

Old or young, black or white,
voices bent with every tongue—
success doesn’t linger in this room.
Yet the pains, though varied, ring the same—
swallowed in sighs, woven through coughs,
woven through time itself.

The child’s eyes catch the old man’s,
a fleeting glance across the gulf,
and for a moment,
they both know what the other carries,
what we all carry,
heavy as breath and fleeting as a name
called through the door. 
 

Prologue:

You may

begin,

enter, fire when ready, kiss the bride,
leave footprints, say I’m a dreamer,
think I’m crazy, be wondering,
leave fingerprints, continue,
look now, leave evidence,

eat from any tree in the garden except ..

begin again.

1. Origami

The A train leaves with a face in every window,
each one with a story, a question, a task.

On the platform between east and west,

a woman folds a schedule into a swan
with arrivals and departures on its wings

and the world gets a last minute reprieve.

2. Last Days

A propaganda tour,
a bed memorizing a body;

a bombshell, a bomb blast,
a closed road, an open book;

one small loss, one workaround,
then another, then another –

and who, at the beginning,
considers the ending?

3. What Is This You Have Done?

I don’t blame Eve for being duped –
someone had to be first;

or Adam for selling her out,
since he was busted by Almighty God.

If not them, some other couple
would have ruined the world,

and ultimately, I’d still be here
kneeling on the cursed ground

trying to plant unforbidden fruit,
muttering about the fescue roots.

4. Why I’m Not Famous

I spent a good portion of the morning
working on a poem I don’t believe in,

then I remembered I have no clean shirts.

5. In Your Hands

You can see the world from here,
but everything is bell jar clear;

you can buy the hype and rage
and feel so free within your cage;

you can live with fits and starts –
canned laughter, sadness, shock, and hearts;

you can gather friends like bones
and still be utterly alone.

It’s time to put away your phone.

6. Every Day Is A Side Project

The title is the body,
the body is the vehicle
taking my soul away
from real life.

7. The Wave

The wave comes unexpectedly –
you are at the market looking at bottled water,
in the backyard throwing a ball for the dog,
at work trying to shake off something
that won’t let go;

you wipe the salt from your face
with the back of your wrist

and realize you can’t name any particular storm.

8. Out

I pressed my secrets
like bulbs into the earth

and soon my backyard
was full of red tulips,

little mouths
opening all at once.

9. Saturday Things

a. Regatta

While standing in front of a decaying lighthouse
amid cowbells and screams of encouragement,

I looked across the lake and saw two boys
standing on the bank pitching stones,

and I wondered what boys talk about these days
because, honestly, I cannot remember.

b. Roses

What does it mean?
Fake flowers cost more
than real ones,

they require little effort,
need no care at all,
no emotional investment,

while the real ones
remind me of my mortality
and sinful nature,

yet I would rather
water them with tears
as I suck a dot of blood

from my fingertip.

10. Mother’s Day

The last time I saw her
she was standing
in front of her house

next to my Dad
before grief and dementia
left him bedridden.

It was Christmas day,
and they’d been at my house
when she began to feel sick.

I dropped her and Dad off.
She waved, and I waved back
as I drove away, thinking

she just needed rest.
The last time we spoke
was her last day on earth.

I called her at the hospital
the night before
she was to go home.

11. Seasons

I once thought seasons were instant,
as if some invisible pair of hands

changed the thermostat setting
or curated new colors while we slept,

but I have learned to notice
the gradual tilt of hemispheres,

the managed decline of empires,
the constant turnover of cells,

the editing of names in a room.
And yet seasons have piled up

behind me, almost instantly.

12. Yard Check

Still, this morning,
a cloud’s shadow moves past me,
light comes down
as if a door has opened overhead.

13. Run

I don’t run anymore;
well, not in the literal sense.

But the mint and zucchini,
the broken pickup,

the hands and the voices
couldn’t care less

about my arthritic hip
or diminished stamina.

They need water and weeding,
tensioners and attention,

and those are non-negotiable.
So I run, figuratively.

Then, if time permits,
I steal away to breathe,

to study, to write,
to plan a way to be late

to whatever is next.

14. Visitation Day

Dear Rain,
please come
and let me weep in secret.

Dear Clouds,
please keep the sun off my face
for a little while.

Dear Sky,
please let me be the only blue thing,
just for today.

15. Rainy Day Thoughts On A Sunny Day

The day announced itself,
then dropped into a groove

like a needle on an old record.
I expected music, perhaps dancing,

but the sun seemed to whisper

The soul is like light;
it has no mass, no weight,

but the heart
can be impossibly heavy.

16. Choose (Part 1)

It wouldn’t be easy if I had to choose
between giving up coffee or swearing off booze,
because one helps me wake up, the other to snooze,
and I wouldn’t know which to neglect or abuse.

17. Conspirators

Gravity
who knocks the wineglass
from my hand;

Time
whose resolve stiffens
as losses mount;

Creativity
paid for with
exquisite loneliness;

My body,
the deep time
of its geology.

18. Monday Morning

It is Monday morning
and I am already tired
from a week yet to unfold;

I rush headlong into every burden
solely to be free of it.

19. Grocery Shopping At The End Of The World

As I consider flavors of seltzer
a bomb is in midair over a foreign land,

and while I squeeze an avocado
an errant bullet is halfway to its victim.

I scroll through coupons for coffee
that doesn’t taste like cremation ashes

and someone listens for voices in the rubble
or keeps a weeping vigil by a child’s bedside.

Although I am grateful to concern myself
with the mundane tasks of the living,

I fear one day I will be accosted in aisle 5
by a dapper little man in a tailored suit

who will look at the items in my cart
and say, you won’t be needing those.

20. For A Day Of Leaving

The stripes and stars,
the playing cards
on chain link fences pinned,
the moving leaves,
the whistling eaves
are hinting at the wind.

The daisy chain,
the weather vane
(how lazily it spins),
the lady fern,
the hovering tern,
the curtains blowing in,

the broken gate,
the rolling crate,
a storm as it begins,
the letter box,
your auburn locks
are hinting at the wind.

21. Why I Am Not Prolific

The writing doesn’t come easy –

I need to warm up
like an old diesel tractor
on a cold morning,

and when I have done so
the day barges in
with its demands.

22. Forty Seven Seconds

Forty seven seconds into a minute,
I’ve got a limited number of beats,
no time for unnecessary prepositions,
no desire to throw in with either side.

But there is a small window for us
to get high on the playground,
to entertain beauty, recognize angels,
or name all the common miracles

in this strange alchemy of spirit and bone
before our minute on Earth is up.

23. By late afternoon

the storm presses its face against the window
and the courtyard dissolves into abstractions.

24. Providence

Safe landings and scrubbed launches,
bridges that survived fire, closed doors,

a muse showing up with emergency verses,
a Saint Bernard with a little barrel of brandy
around his neck,

that moment when dozens of samaras
launch from the ashes all at once

like missionaries from a thriving church
and I am privy to the elegant engineering
of the world.

25. For Memorial Day

Red
White
Blue

Love
Innocence
Truth

Courage
Purity
Patriotism

Passion
Peace
Wisdom

Honor
Clarity
Loyalty

Valor
Transcendence
Justice

Blood
Absence
Grief

Red
White
Blue

26. Entertain The Light (A Song)

Don’t need a tower from which to fall
Don’t need a hill on which to die
No urgent early morning call
I’m out of tears to cry

Don’t need a line to walk across
Don’t need a cloud to stand beneath
Don’t need to tally profit/loss
I’ve had enough of grief

Don’t need a heart to break in two
Don’t need a castle I can keep
Don’t need another shade of blue
I’ve got no time to weep

Today I will invite the sun
To stop here on its chosen run
‘Cuz I’m not buying all this night
I’ll entertain the light
I’ll entertain the light

27. Choose (Part 2)

It wouldn’t be easy if I had to choose
between utter contentment or bouts of the blues,
because one lets me function, one summons my muse,
and I wouldn’t know which one to keep or refuse.

28. Writer’s Block

I’m stagnant and I’m red-lined
and there’s nothing new to say,

and yet I’ve got a deadline anyway –
it’s self-imposed but I can’t let it go,

it’s like a curse.

So when I’ve got a wealth of prose,
perhaps a verse, I’ll let you know.

It’s gotten worse.

29. Choose (Part 3)

It wouldn’t be easy to take all my cues
from the people promoting their falses and trues,
and their yesses and nos, and their don’ts and their dos,
and their whats and their wheres and their whens and their whos.

30. Ars Poetica

It forms within a hemisphere
and flows within a ventricle
til canticles and madrigals
and miracles appear.

31. Staples

All my thoughts
held together
by tiny wires.

Epilogue:

You may not

enter,

park here after 6 am,
be a movie star, smoke here,
change the terms of service,
reproduce without permission,
remember, bring pets,
bring outside food or drink,
access restricted areas,

leave,

eat from the tree of knowledge ..

Prologue:

Hours linger on the patio
like a tired old dog;

the sky is under no obligation,
the wind is conserving its energy,

the neighborhood waits quietly
for nothing in particular.

The curtain of evening drops
and I say, it is beginning.

1. Threnody

My love, wherever you may be,
I wonder if you think of me;
way out beyond the deepest blue,
I hope that I occur to you.

I often find you in my dreams,
you echo from the ceiling beams,
I hear you in a certain song,
I see your face amid the throng,

or in the middle of the day,
while walking down some random way
I see a cardinal on a post –
that’s when your absence haunts me most.

If there’s a hope that we shall meet
in Heaven, on some golden street,
this grief I’d patiently endure.
I wish, I wish, that I were sure.

My love, wherever you may be,
I wonder if you think of me;
way out beyond the deepest blue,
I hope that I occur to you.

(For My Father)

2. American Dream

I am a slow motion kamikaze

in a vessel I don’t own
in clothing that isn’t mine

on someone else’s clock;
I crash into questions.

3. For An Absent Friend

The years have gathered dust
I sometimes wipe away,

but all that’s left are angels
I’m afraid to entertain

and your old house
full of invisible strangers.

4. A Letter To The Stars

I heard we are both dust and fire.
Some people ponder our distance,
believe one of us is no longer present,

that a phantom writes to a phantom.
No one sees us in real time,
if they happen to notice us at all

in our respective galaxies.
Others claim we are bright,
but with a backdrop of darkness,

and some of us are prone to falling.
So begins a long, slow burnout –
but here is where we differ:

my end will not be spectacular
as your burst of gamma rays,
and no one will write poems about it.

5. Morning Train

This is a poem about
a train passing at midnight.

It won’t mention death,
it won’t touch on politics,

because trains carry
the needs of the living,

needs common to all.

This poem is simply about
the rumbling, the distant horn,

the comfort of predictability.
Not everything is a metaphor.

We know the world is fallen —
but it continues by grace.

Just listen to that train.

6. D Day

The sea did not know their names,
its tide erased their footprints;

boys dressed like soldiers

carrying photographs of their mothers
or neatly folded letters from sweethearts

defied the cold math of war.

7. Skyview

The night unfolds
like some ancient map
of a cosmic neighborhood,

but I am still struggling
to navigate my own
little patch of earth.

8. Monday Verses

Some people do what’s easy,
some people do what’s right,
and others what’s expedient
to get them through the night.

Everyone’s got poison,
and everyone’s got needs,
and everyone’s got joys and sorrows,
everyone plants seeds.

Everyone’s a mover,
and everyone’s a cause,
and yet the world proves every day
we’re subject to its laws.

9. Tables Have Turned

Like turntables
but where is the music?

Like tables in the temple
turned over by Jesus.

Like a times table
but what is the product?

Like the periodic table,
but where is the stardust

of which I am allegedly made?
I feel like ordinary dust

on a patio table
but where is my turn of phrase?

10. Leaving Sonora

Good night Desert,
long mistaken for the promised land;

good night Phoenix,
rising from the embers of eleven summers,
making one more stab at being cosmopolitan;

good night low sky
that seemed accessible at first;

good night high sun
that scarred me with endorphins and vitamin d;

good night monsoon
that teased me when it wasn’t drowning me;

good night dust storm
that let me scrawl fresh new elegies;

good night transplants
who cheer for other teams;

good night snowbirds
who leave behind a ring of golden smog
before returning to Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee;

buenas noches, Español –
he leído tantos carteles.
Esto es lo mejor que puedo hacer;

good night gridded map
that gains more lines as time passes;

good night fan palms
whose swaying fronds
bring arias of long forgotten oceans;

good night saguaro
sporting an imaginary six gun
and ten gallon hat;

good night little hummingbird
who evaded my lens for so long,
then finally hovered in front of me;

good night russian thistle,
fabled tumbleweed with shallow roots;

good night blue peaks
surrounding me like folded arms.

11. Touch

An intimate wind
meets me outside the door,

hands learn my geography
under the low patio light;

the moon watches silently,
knowing that I know,

that my secrets are nothing
compared to what she’s seen.

12. Night

My finger traces dark shapes
like a pencil on carbon paper.

Every lit window is
a floating square of light.

I look at the stars and wonder
which ones are really there.

13. Returning Home

Upon my arrival

the day handed me a blank business card.
I stashed it in my wallet,

and every time I looked at it
a few more letters were present.

14. Cartography

I found a universe
where everyone else saw a puddle.

Morning carried the scent of future harvests
and I acknowledged it with awe and gratitude.

Someone once told me
everything that ever existed still exists,

and whatever will be
is already present in some form –

but I kept insisting
it’s either memory or anticipation.

By evening, shadows had learned metaphors,
becaming like water on the ground,

while news of stars forming and dying
had not yet reached our eyes, our lenses.

I nearly forgot about miracles,
then silence collected itself

like leftover loaves and fishes
which appeared out of nowhere,

spoken into existence by an impossible man
who is, always was, always will be.

15. Trek

On weeknights
the world retreats early;

unknown people draw their blinds
against the darkness,

this road without lamp posts
settles into anonymity.

Only a doe and her fawns
might be stirring;

I watch for them
as I make my way home,

leaving no evidence.

16. Anniversary

You don’t need flowers to vouch for me,
I don’t need any grand gestures;

our vows are woven into the small hours,
the sacred spaces between milestones,

the silent choirs, the meeting of hands.
Love, we know, has learned our names.

17. The Weight

Every day
the world leaps onto my back
like a needy child
naive enough to think
I’m invincible.

Every day
I hunch over a little more;
eventually it will move on,
indifferent to me,
and find a new body to ride.

18. A Dry Well

I need new descriptors,
a more astute muse,
to help me make sense of
the state of the news.

To find better words
is becoming quite tough
when broken and fallen
are not good enough.

19. Yes,

my mind wanders,
but it always leaves ribbons
on the trees.

20. My Turn In The Rotation

Once it was his hands and his mind
that kept the engine of our world running;

now I notice those arthritic fingers
unconsciously playing an invisible piano.

Ordinary things have become events, ordeals;
he says he is ready to “go”, whatever that means,

and I pretend it doesn’t bother me.
I remember when he was still himself,

before he recalled things that didn’t happen,
before he forgot the name he gave me.

Between us, now, is the silence of idle machinery
that all my rage and terror cannot restart.

If I could return one long-passed day to him,
I would answer his call, clear my schedule,

knowing one day I’d stand beside him
and grapple with the misdirection of love.

21. Solstice

On the longest day
the top half of the world
leans into its star.

I try to decipher
this calligraphy of shadows
before the ink disappears.

22. The Sky Is Liquid (A Song)

You are drops of blue
Falling at my feet
Dissolving in the heat

The sky is liquid

You are beads of fire
Writhing on the ground
Dying without a sound

The sky is liquid

You are a storm of pearls
I catch you in my hands
You disappear like sand

The sky is liquid

I don’t know what it means
It came to me in a dream
I don’t know if it’s wrong
I heard it in a song

You are the space between stars
You soak me in the night
You’re gone by morning light

The sky is liquid
The sky is liquid

23. Better Than The Alternative

Each morning features its own pain –

my right ear plays its minor chord on cue,
joints and muscles keep their appointments,

the ground gets lower, the shelves higher,
I run out of air sooner, I wake up later

and think of my Dad’s old mantra:

Getting old sucks,
but it’s better than the alternative.

Still, I am upright and above ground,
and before this day is over, I believe

this body will somehow make me proud.

24. Jamaica, Queens

Here they pronounce my name correctly –
is it education, or dumb luck?

Every door opens inward
to a room full of ghosts.

The wind blows in every direction,
fluent in every language but mine.

Even my shadow is tentative,
a shy tagalong without a choice.

By evening, the stars hide in the light
and this strange place

seems just as unsure about me.

25. Waiting

This chair has held many others before me –
I am just another, with more coming after.

The door has swung open countless times,
the light has moved in a similar way,

the clock has torn at its own clothing,
this lobby has held galaxies of faces.

Outside, another car pulls up.
No one exits, and it moves on.

Hope has become a habit.
I rehearse your arrival.

26. The Irony Of Shadows

They are darkness
that can only exist
when there is light.

27. From The 17th Floor

The roofs of buses,
each with its own number,
and AC unit;

an American flag on a rooftop,
stretched by the wind;

a dirty puddle on a flat roof;

the roofs of identical trains,
moving like an aluminum snake;

Pigeons on rooftops and sidewalks,
mingling with a constant flow of people
wearing backpacks, each one a small universe.

28. Oleander Tea

There’s beauty and there’s terror
in her flower, leaf, and stem;
you’ll make a fatal error
should you interact with them.

It’s safe to have a gander,
but she’ll kill you through and through;
her name is Oleander –
you should never drink her brew!

29. Kintsugi

I swept away the shattered myth of you –
it wasn’t worth the gold to reconstruct it.

30. My Nightly Walk

The moon
poses for a picture.

Epilogue:

The halfway point of the year

brings no marching band, no fanfare,
only the same memory and anticipation,

the same canopy and understory,
the same horizon behind and before,

and the same goal not to reach the end.

It’s good to have a just in case,
a spare key in the flower pot.

Everyone deserves a dividend,
a eulogy, a roadmap, a working device,

a way to mitigate the defaults
of cold silence and dark space

when the old standbys fail.
We burn chairs in the fireplace,

light a candle, scream into a void,
make a call, flip a switch, pull a trigger;

we oversell, overdo, overstate,
convince them to suspend disbelief,

to take advantage of breathing.
The air is plentiful, we say.

Get as much as you can.

Prologue:

Morning seeps into the halls
like stealthy waters born of light
and creeps its way up every wall
’til there’s no evidence of night.

These rooms unfold like letters found
in some forgotten trinket box;
my love, we’ll hold the summer’s sound
and tarry ’til the equinox.

1. Answers To Make Me Feel Better

Identity is continuity,
meaning is consequence and context,
and time is entropy and information.

2. Skipping The World

Every second,
minute,
hour,
day,
and week
and month
and year
and decade
has a record
and a name,

but you
need no record
and your name
is only known
to God.

3. Only So Much Time

I sing in a key that’s locked in my car.

I am lost and found out,
I am the sum of sleeping.

I am listening to bad hold music,
trapped between first and third parties,

subject to too many consequential opinions.
I am a name in someone’s datebook.

I have only so much time to be unavailable,
to wake in increments, to stargaze on purpose,

to traffic in things that aren’t on stat sheets,
to photograph decaying barns,

to happen upon silence and say,
hello old friend.

4. Reagan on the JFK, July 4, 1986

I miss optimism,
I miss humor,
I miss decorum,
I miss clarity,
I miss faith.

I miss 56 men
committing high treason.

I miss America.

5. Afterglow

The day was a friend
who lingered in the doorway

before the rose bush
that was burning but not consumed

and a backdrop of pastels
feathering into abstractions,

and later, a heavy-eyed lover
beside you in bed

trying to finish one more chapter.

6. After Eden

The weeds win by volume.
They wear down my hands, my knees.

But the garden looks exalted,
at least for today.

I lower myself into a chair,
cash out some of the pain

I banked over the years.

7. For Dan, Who Would Have Been 79

I want you to know
you have your own song —

it’s acoustic and sad
and mentions a bridge and a river.

I think you would have liked it
when you were alive.

There are also some poems
I wrote for your passing.

I doubt you would have liked them,
but who knows?

8. Catch The Rain

Catch the Rain
like an empty vessel that needs a purpose;

catch the rain,
knowing every cloud is a chalice
tilted by an invisible hand,

every raindrop was once a river,
a teardrop, a bead on a window;

catch the rain,
for droughts have piled up by the door
like old newspapers;

catch the rain,
drink the coming storm
like the trees with countless green tongues;

catch the rain
like a fortune falling through your hands,

and when it is gone, linger beneath the sky,
wealthy with something that cannot be kept.

9. 62

Age is just a number.

So is
PSA,
bone density,
blood pressure,
resting heart rate,
TSH,
retirement age,
the pain scale,
A1C,
death count,
triglyceride,
LDL,
kidney function,
oxygen level,
HDL,
waist size,
Vitamin D,
BMI,
co-pay amount,
sleep time per night,
yearly doctor visits,
etc.

So kindly shut up.

10. Epigraph

A vessel that once held the needs of the living —
perhaps water bottles or someone’s ashes,

is ready to burst like an old wineskin,
sending rainwater back into the earth.

11. Saturday

At the low side of normal,
the extreme of average,
and the tail end of balance

I step into the morning
the way I step into my jeans.

12. In Its Place

A houseplant leans toward a window,
my shirt tail folds around a lens,

a chair is turned sideways at the table
as if someone rose with purpose;

Earth is moving several ways at once —
nothing is really at rest in the universe.

Somewhere, a coin drops from a hand
into another hand, a drawer slams,

and two people made in the image of God
finish their transaction and part ways.

13. The Long Way Home

I take the long way home
because there is no short way

on evenings when a voice speaks
from fifty years in the past,

galaxies hover between power lines,
and the moon, tangled in oak branches,

tries in vain to free herself.

14. Generic

This is the first line of the poem,
and this is the second line.
The third line goes here,
and this line completes the stanza.

What were you expecting?
I have no childhood issues to solve,
no dysfunction to celebrate,
no grievances to give me status.

I won’t bore you with confessions
or insert identity buzzwords.
Politics can be found anywhere,
and I think we’ve had our fill.

Why consider a nature theme
when Mary Oliver did it better?
There is nothing new under the sun.
(Even that is a cliché.)

So begins the final stanza.
This line is a placeholder
so the penultimate line can appear.
The poem ends now.

15. Ask Me

Ask me about the rising and falling pitch of my voice. Ask me why I don’t answer. Ask me how I know change isn’t always good. Ask me why safe places keep me up at night. Ask me why all this ease frightens me. Ask me about the soft lighting and the firefly and the dot of wine at the bottom of my glass. Ask me why the horizon is still a mystery. Ask me what useless facts I’ve learned. Ask me what I should have buried long ago. Ask me if I believe we are stardust. Ask me about the songs I no longer like. Ask me about the important books I haven’t read. Ask me about the context of silence. Ask me what is common to everyone and everything I miss. Ask me if I believe in a singularity. Ask me if I should call off the search. Ask me something in a whisper, in a dark room. Ask me a question you know I can’t fully answer. Ask me what part of my body I can rely on, and what part I can’t. Ask me again tomorrow.

16. Instructions for Finding The Horizon

Begin at dusk where the trees stop
and the stars begin.

Drive until the radio station
becomes a polyglot of static and music,

then go back until there is clarity
and every voice is like water

trickling through sediment.
Fold the evening like a newspaper

and carry it under your arm until dawn.
Wake up in a strange place.

See the reflections in a lake,
and wonder which sky is real.

Go home.

17. The House After

Morning has a key and lets itself in,
the birds are only doing their jobs.

There are boots in the foyer
holding their peculiar shape.

At night the rooms are full of ghosts,
the mirror doubles the darkness,

and we speak in hushed tones
as if someone might be listening.

18. The Weight Of Light

Every morning I prop up the sky
with a cliché of umbrellas.

Maybe the blue of day is too heavy,
or the weeping clouds, or the dust.

At night I lean against the window
to watch a heavy downpour of stars.

Then I hear someone I love
laughing in another room;

gravity relents, I close the blind,
and walk toward the light.

19. Haiku

the bindweed’s deep roots –
my sinful nature

20. Visiting Hours

The sky falls in slow motion,
it breaks in sections;

your essence drops away
like hairs from your head.

Tonight the Moon
is halved by a shadow

and Venus mocks the stars.
They appear close together,

but I know they are far apart,
impossibly far apart.

21. Longevity

When infant stars are being formed
and old ones disappear,

we sense the pitch evolving
in the music of the spheres,

the engine of the world
is being turned by other hands,

and shifting wind or gravity
curtails our future plans,

I hope you’ll honor this request,
don’t disregard my plea:

Remember me, remember me,
young man, remember me.

22. Not A Haiku

Evening rain –
I collect pieces of the storm,

my shirt soaks up darkness,
my mind holds clouds,

thunder and lightning
strike my stomach and bones;

but the old cliché of tears
won’t give me the pleasure.

23. Sunflowers

I was ok today
until I saw them along the road,

beaming, as golden as ever,
refusing to stop being beautiful
on your account,

and I pulled over to cry.

24. Haiku Adjacent

summer rain —
I swore I would not write
a haiku

25. Taking One For The Team

Not the baseball team.
I don’t care much for baseball,
but I know you enjoy it
and I don’t want you to go
to the game alone.

26. The Last Thing

We spend our lives collecting titles like
child, friend, lover, parent, grandparent,
and some we set down like empty cups.

In just a few weeks we can open the windows
and watch the wind lift the curtains;
if there is anything that will survive us,
it is this.

27. Midsummer

By now the season has established itself
with rabbit holes and still trees
and spinach long past its yield,

but I’m still unable to perceive
the slow ebbing of daylight,
the missing forty-five seconds
and the subtle path of shadows
like a movie slowed almost to a stop.

Someone down the road is singing
as a honeybee hovers, deliberates,
then chooses just the right flower.

28. A Dream

I dreamed you were alive again,
just sitting there all nonchalant

talking about some trivial matter.
I knew something wasn’t right

when you didn’t mention the afterlife
or try to explain your presence,

though I have your ashes in a box
and your possessions in storage.

I had been measuring time by loss
but you had to come back anyway

as if you pulled off the ultimate prank,
dismissing all the work of grief.

The dream clock had no hands, no face,
and when I awoke, you were still gone.

29. After “Bird Of Sorrow”

You start off barely whispering
From somewhere you don’t want to be
Where love withholds its mystery
Where love withholds its mystery

But it will find you soon again, be ready then

Your music speaks to everything
In sorrow, like a wounded bird
I’m hanging on your every word
I’m hanging on your every word

Saying love will find you soon again, be ready then

And now the bird has taken wing
Too soon, we cry, as it begins
Crescendos carried by the wind
Crescendos carried by the wind

Saying love will find you soon again, be ready then

Love will find you soon again, be ready then
Love will find you soon again, be ready then

(For Glen Hansard)

30. There Are Things

There are things I am afraid to tell you,
as if ink or pixels would give them legs,
as if saying something would make it real.

The setting of my inner world is a cliff’s edge.
Maybe yours is too, and we could take turns
talking each other away from them.

31. By morning the stars

have left no evidence
but I still remember
the bad dreams.

Epilogue:

The wind stopped to ask me for directions.
“You’re the wind,” I said. “Any way is correct.”

The wind said, “then I will stay here awhile.”
“Thank you,” I replied, “I am very honored,

but there are tears to dry, boats to push,
flags to stretch, weathervanes to turn;

and somewhere, there is a little girl
holding up her pinwheel expectantly.”

At that it kissed my face and moved my hair,
and I looked up to notice a skein of geese

honking gleefully, gliding in V formation,
pointing south toward the edge of the world. 

 

Before ashes and amulets,
before the icon and the archetype,
before the last time was the last time,
before I leaned into the wind,
before the early morning call,
before the cardinal on the lamp post,
before the absence of marigolds,
before the monarchs moved on,
before pumpkin bread in coffee tins,
before she sang Mahogany in the kitchen,
before callouses on her heels,
before mysteries and crosswords,
before the unfinished paint-by-number,
before the veil, before its lifting,
before the citrine and the ruby,
before the garnet and the diamond,
before the turquoise colored glasses,
before she ever conceived of me,
before everything, and before nothing,
she wore a red dress.

J.F. Lemma. Circa 1957-1958.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author’s Note: Here is the photo of my mother that inspired this poem. The original had another person in the background. I asked someone to remove the entire background and make it plain. He also made it less grainy. Granted, it looks a bit AI-ish, but I think he did a good job.

 

May Autumn last long enough
for a full census of fallen leaves.

May we mediate between extremes,
and find resolutions without conflict.

May we savor the easy comfort
of reprieve and anticipation,

filter the past and prophetic
like the sky through bare branches,

feel the silent power of turning over,
accept every new deficit of light.

May we forgive the sun,
may we believe the wind,

may we befriend the moon
and trust in the birds

who always seem to know
the exact tilt of the world.

May we see our breath in the air
and remember that we are alive.

Prologue:

August is the shopper in front of me
chatting up a cashier while my ice cream melts,

the guy in flip flops behind me
who learned nothing from the covid years,

the sudden text saying, are you in line yet?
I forgot, we really need dinner rolls,

but all I want to do is get back home
and have some chocolate peanut butter swirl

if it’s still good.

1. Questions To Ask Before The World Ends

Will I see the city from the bridge?
May I help pick the music?

How will I get to New Parnassus?
Will there still be aubergine, pewter, and jade?

Will I be able to find decent coffee?
Will there be any sunflowers left?

Will the moon finally break after all she’s seen?
Will terms and conditions no longer apply?

Will the iamb and anapest survive?
Will there be a made for TV movie?

What will it mean if I find the spring
of a ball point pen in the rubble?

Will each side of the false dichotomy
blame the other side, or blame us?

How will we define apocalypse?
Will there be a mascot, a logo, a catch phrase?

Will conspiracy theorists finally be vindicated?
Will the night sky wear prosthetic stars?

Will anyone notice?

2. Arrivade

(The antonym of aubade)

Maybe I’m being carried by a river
and you are downstream;

maybe I’m floating in the ether
toward the heaven where you are;

maybe I’m waiting in the fog
to see your lamp approaching;

maybe I’m locked in a dream,
trying to breach its walls

to find you waiting outside.

3. Wind Map

It does not have to warn me
when it plans to shift.

I cannot see it
but I follow its trail

of fallen branches,
of overturned chairs,

a crumpled grocery list
rolling by like a tumbleweed,

the way my hair
points north

as I walk to the gate
at day’s end

wondering which losses
will surprise me next

and which remnants
will surprise me even more.

4. Villanelle (After Reading The News)

The times are far between and few
when peace gets critical acclaim.
It’s been a minute, maybe two

since righteousness received its due
and faith its modicum of fame.
The times are far between and few

when lines are clear between what’s true
and false when someone makes a claim.
It’s been a minute, maybe two

since trust was something to accrue
to cultivate a spotless name.
The times are far between and few

when two opposing points of view
can talk without affixing blame.
It’s been a minute, maybe two

since love was something we’d pursue,
an altogether worthy aim.
The times are far between and few;
it’s been a minute, maybe two.

5. Détente

I had a staring contest with the void —
it blinked first.

But not really.

6. Storm

The wind pelts the window
with asemic characters of rain,

inviting me to assign
whatever meaning I want

but every droplet
is an almost-thought

sliding downward
into a puddle of language

I nearly understand.

7. Flying Blind, Part 1

The stars must still be there,
though they are invisible
behind the breath of the world,
the gray fabric on my windshield;

and home exists somewhere
in front of me, but tonight the drive
is a long, tense note in a song
waiting for a resolution.

8. Fake Flowers

They litter the flat areas,
those cheap little ceramic pots
filled with styrofoam, aquarium stones,

and some made-up genus
of mass produced, injection molded,
pale green and yellow faux-liage,

the visual equivalent of babbling.
They collect dust, block bookshelves,
perhaps hold a listening device.

They never grow, never need water,
colors never fade, petals never drop.
There is no risk, no miracle, no investment,

they are not fragile like the real thing.
I want something real to hold me accountable,
to give me joy, then break my heart.

9. Dreamless

My eyes contain a galaxy,
my ears an f minor sustained

waiting all night behind
the blank space of sleep

until morning when synapses
that piled up during the night

vie for my attention
like hungry children.

10. Flying Blind, Part 2

Today my head spins
like a compass in a storm

and I wonder,
is it lack of sleep,

did I overdo it yesterday,
am I just getting old?

Either way, it would be
tremendously helpful

if my local grocery store
would stop moving

the damned tortillas
to different aisles.

11. Inventory, Part 1

My red brick walkway
dotted with old rain;

grass, green as a promise,
high as a prayer;

the groundhog
who steals my tomatoes;

expired coupons
crumpled in the glove box;

a mysterious hum
in the distance;

cream and sugar
without the sugar;

the evening itch,
the nightmares by day,

the ushering in
and the ushering out

of things not ready
to leave or arrive.

12. Peridot

Green is green
whether it’s formed
in the bowels of the earth
or imported from space;

you are you,
and I’m so glad you are here.

(For Jess and Kyle)

13. Perseid

Which part of the sky
will fall tonight?

14. Golden Hour

The sun clocks in later
and clocks out earlier

but I still put in a full day.

The moment it rises,
the moment it sets,

like ghosts of the future,
like echoes before music,

I feel the tilt of the earth.

15. All That Begins

For all that begins there’s an ending,
against gravity nobody wins;
when we feel most alive death is pending
for all that begins.

Though we feel so at home in our skins,
there will soon be no use in pretending
as we pray for forgiveness of sins,

and consult with the doctors attending,
call the preacher and cue violins
’cause we’re all on the clock — there’s an ending
for all that begins.

16. Inventory, Part 2

A notebook of obsolete thoughts,
joints like rusty hinges;

three tiers of widow eyes,
the Abyss on Main;

everyone on the outskirts
trying to clean up the edges.

17. A Person Wandering Around On The Front Door Cam

Every day he leaves,
dragging his feet a little slower;

every night he returns,
hunching over a little lower.

18. Cloudy Afternoon

What is the weight of clouds?
Are they like vessels in the sky,

lighter than the air they displace,
weightless as phantoms, heavy as pools?

I could easily find the answers,
but I am badly in need of a mystery

to almost make things interesting
on this blank and busted day.

19. Bread And Circuses

The bread is moldy and stale, and besides,
everyone seems to have gluten allergies.

No more heads in the open mouths of lions,
no more highwires, flaming rings, or cannons,

and the fire marshall will not allow big tops.
What good is a safe, breadless circus anyway?

20. Flying Blind, Part 3

Somewhere ahead, a contingent of the world waits
with a query, an intervention, a road closure.

I know I’m just another groove in a pavement,
though I have an entire universe inside me

trying to escape and make a name for itself.
The world is as glorious and awful as it always was

but I have an evolving catalogue of addictions
and a trail of mid-metaphor diversions behind me.

Then Van Morrison hits a note on Cypress Avenue
and, for a moment, I know exactly where I’m going.

21. Shift’s End

We’ll head for home together,
tonight, Selene and I;

I’ll ride a seat of leather,
and she will ride the sky.

22. Creativity

The act of loving something alone
is a unique, sacred brand of loneliness,

secret as a sonnet trapped in a pen
or a song trying to escape a guitar.

23. Monument

Simeone Automotive Museum, Philadelphia, PA

How a memory turns
blue as grief with a pearl stripe;

how steering hands become
jagged branches scraping the sky;

how street lights blink and pass
and spectres of fog rise;

and how, under spectrum lights,
an object can be full of ghosts,

old ones and new ones at once.

(After seeing the twin engine 1970 Chevelle my father built in the 90s)

24. The Sound Of An Ending

A newspaper slapping a breezeway,
a lipstick smeared wineglass
gently pushed aside for a refill,
an off-season boardwalk busker
crooning acapella blues
for a handful of mainstays;

or perhaps a tiny bell
on the collar of a faithful dog
who tugs at your sleeve at 2 AM
and leads you to a window,
or to the bedside of someone
for whom it really is the end of the world.

25. For Dolly Parton

Country Music Hall of Fame,
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame,
Songwriters Hall of Fame,
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award,
10 Grammy Awards,
9 Country Music Association Awards,
13 Academy of Country Music Awards,
CMA Entertainer of the Year,
CMA Female Vocalist of the Year,
National Medal of Arts,
Kennedy Center Honors,
Dozens of hit songs across several genres,
etc, etc, etc —

and yet, she is remembered most
for her kindness and generosity.

26. A rainy night ..

thoughts of eternity
keep me awake.

27. What If I Told You?

What if I told you
there were no more corners
worth cutting,

that there is no bottom line,
that no one is coming,
that they are replacing the road signs
and leaving the potholes?

What if I warned you
not to take the hand
offered you in a dream?

28. To The Couple Making Love On The Dunes

Wildwood, NJ, Late night, circa 1986

I wonder if you remember me
happening upon you by accident,
then quickly rushing off.

I was searching for myself,
and maybe for God,
but I found you instead.

Are you both still living?
Did you stay together?
Perhaps you are long married,

hosting your grown children
and grandchildren
in a two story colonial.

Maybe one of you
is mourning the loss
of the other.

Maybe you are distant memories
to one another
like you are to me,

like I am to myself,
like the magic of summer
before we called off the search.

29. DNR

No heroics, he insisted
when he was still able to insist.

I imagine one must revere life
to let it end on its own terms.

30. Summer Breeze

My neighbor was in her backyard
listening to a classic 70’s pop song
ruined by a dance beat remix

and with a straight face you said,
that must be how the swallows know
it’s time to migrate south.

31. Anomaly

The world is still itself today —
birds are not skittering,

clocks are running forward,
rain continues to obey gravity,

traffic lights still turn red;
I am on my way to see you,

stopped behind a small truck
loaded with baby pine trees,

each one green with promise
and wearing a little blue tag

that moves lazily in the wind.
And I am on my way to see you —

your house gets six feet closer
with every turn of my radials,

and six feet more, and six more.
I am on my way to see you

for what could be the last time.

Epilogue:

August leaves a trail of dead:
a novel only halfway read,
a dried up, wilting garden bed,
a muted color scheme;

August is a severed thread
with Autumn still too far ahead —
too early for the gold and red,
too late to be redeemed.

This poem is no jerked iron drug – no money runs, no fur, and higher, no lunch –
the truck stirs, you imagine touch –
Jake wears skirts without being drunk or hurled toward love & Iowa which exists as a verb where natives once lived different lives –
junk girls look for arrow heads
in tall grass,
defining identity through absence.

Click to open. Click to go to sleep. Click to wake up the next day –
Click for resurrection when the light changes.
Intersections exist for those passing through and for those wishing a change in direction.

The grocery store offers many kinds of depression. I pick, I choose. I fill my bag with all sorts. When I get home, I put some away in the cupboards, some in the fridge, some by the sink to prepare the next meal.

The junk girls show up and we all eat as they tell me excitedly about what they had found out there
in the grass.

Dig Bailey got up that morning, made coffee,
then took the shortcut road to its end at the T-bone intersection

Dig sat there just looking around. And around.
he heard jazz coming from the graveyard up on the hill behind him
in a place as endless as this, the word existence is meaningless

so Dig took a right
and rolled on
the wind behind him for once
and thought about the curtains
hanging in his bedroom window
being pushed back & forth
by the wind

clay sings to him
guides his touch
a shared pleasure
as slick fingers coax
a softly swollen curve
a slender neck
a shoulder, lip or foot

sighs beneath his hands
as he feels his way
reads each ripple
deftly redirects
each anomaly
to perfection

his muscled legs
ease the wheel
to still

temporarily sated
he breathes
each timeless moment
neither knowing nor caring
he’s confused
his decorative glazes

I
think
about
those women,
sometimes, who fluttered
in and out of my life, every
now and then, like strange, bright birds with the power to stop
my heart, my breathing, my ability to speak

earth, hell, time itself, and I wonder where some of them
are these days, all these years later,
where their lives lead them,
and did some-
one, for
some
of
them
at
least, turn
out to be
the “one” about which
so many movies and novels and
songs are cranked out every year, but, what
I guess I mostly think about are all the things

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photographer’s Note: I’m pretty sure I just pumped up the natural green of woods behind this bird. Taken with a long lens, backgrounds fade out nicely to a milky blur.

Weed costs more now
which is honestly
the main reason
I went looking for work

Rent was bad
food was bad
everything was bad

But when an eighth starts feeling
like you’re financing a boat
you begin to panic

So I applied
for a job as a social media expert

I know absolutely nothing
about social media

I still call everything online
“a website”

At the interview
the guy asked
what experience I had

I told him
people liked my poems
on Open Arts Forum

He looked it up

He said wow
you’re established

I said yeah
people connect with my voice

Which is the sort of thing
you can say
when nobody asks
what your voice actually is

They hired me immediately

The next day
they told me
to make a TikTok
for some disgusting green powder
called Alpha Male Greens Extreme

They said
make it raw
make it authentic
make it viral

I thought
how hard can this be

It’s ten seconds long

So I took my phone
into the bathroom

I filmed my eye
my chest
my stomach
part of my leg
some chest hair
and one unfortunate angle
that included several pubic hairs
and half of my boxer waistband

I put it all together
with loud music
and text that said:

UNLOCK THE ANIMAL
REAL MEN DETOX
HE KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT

The boss asked
how long it would take me

I said
great art cannot be rushed

The next morning
they called me into a meeting

The video had four million views

But apparently
people had questions

One customer thought
the powder increased testosterone

Another thought
it cured baldness

One guy in Ohio
made a reaction video
without a shirt on
from the bathroom
at a Buffalo Wild Wings

The boss looked at me
like I had set fire
to an orphanage

He asked me
what exactly
had I filmed

I said
authenticity

I was fired by noon

Which was fine

Because social media
is mostly people
sitting on toilets
watching strangers
make fools of themselves

and clicking like
with the same hand
they’re using for everything else

On the last day
people were still doing
the things people do
when they think there will be
another day.

At a dentist’s office in Connecticut
a woman was updating
the emergency contact
for an insurance plan
that covered almost nothing.

In Ohio
a man in garden gloves
stood in front of stacked mulch
trying to decide
whether dark brown
looked richer
than black.

In Phoenix
a printer would not connect.
A man in a polo shirt
turned it off,
turned it on,
said piece of shit
with real feeling.

In Leeds
someone was halfway through
a video called
five mistakes you are making
with cast iron.

In Antwerp
someone cut the soft parts
out of potatoes
and kept going.

A substitute teacher
with old coffee breath
wrote the date on the board
for a room full of students
on their phones.

A teenager in Baltimore
took twelve pictures
of her own face
and hated each one
for a different reason.

A man in Hamburg
sat outside a supermarket
with the engine off
listening to a song
he had assigned
to the divorce.

At a storage unit
two brothers argued
about which box
had the Christmas ornaments
and which one
had their mother.

At a nail salon
someone said
I know this sounds crazy
but the whole world
feels weird lately
and three people nodded
without looking up.

In break rooms
people ate standing up.
In kitchens
people peeled film
off microwaved noodles.
In offices
people moved numbers
from one screen
to another.

The men who had built
the language for it
were already sealed away
behind concrete, codes,
air systems,
little flags on polished desks.

Everybody else
was resetting passwords,
buying shower caddies,
checking tracking numbers,
opening messages
that began
just following up,
just checking in,
just circling back.

A man in a supermarket
stood with two jars of pasta sauce
under the white aisle lights
when the windows flashed.

A woman in Kraków
was clipping coupons.
A roofer in Texas
straightened up too slowly.
A banker in London
typed hope you’re well
to a man
he hoped would choke.

There were dogs
waiting by doors.
There were avocados
giving up on counters.
There were ring lights
and air fryers
and unread novels
and one more package
marked delivered.
There were fathers
pretending not to be irritated.
There were mothers
hiding in bathrooms
for three minutes alone.
There were people
putting collagen
under their eyes
as if the face
still had a long future in it.

At an airport bar
a man was explaining bourbon
to a woman
who had already decided
never to sleep with him.

At a church rummage sale
someone asked
does this lamp work
and someone else said
it did last week.

Then the sky opened
the wrong way,
with light that meant
the discussion was over.

Glass came in.
Walls changed shape.
Air took the furniture first.
Then the roofs.
Then the names of things.

Across the cities
the columns went up,
those ugly flowers
the species had been working toward
through speeches, contracts,
patriot songs,
careers in defense,
little men on panels
saying stability
with straight faces.

And an hour earlier
what had the species
been doing?

Coupons.
Lip balm.
Protein powder.
Fantasy leagues.
Back pain.
Tires.
Meal prep.
The group chat.
The rash on the elbow.
The basil going bad.
A meeting about brand voice.
A war explained
by men who would never smell
what burned.

We had filled the planet
with beige furniture,
subscription plans,
patriotic garbage,
plastic vines,
podcasts about discipline,
cameras in doorbells,
water sold in moral language,
and the old talent
for calling slaughter
a matter of position.

We had turned loneliness
into an industry.
We had turned attention
into livestock.
We had turned killing
into a briefing.

Then all of it stopped.

No more reminders.
No more moisturizer.
No more gently used sectional.
No more visibility.
No more brave opinions
typed with both thumbs.
No more asking for thoughts and prayers
from people
who had none to spare.

Only the fire
finding everything with an address.
Only the black weight
rolling upward.
Only the roads
full of nowhere.
Only the long mistake
finally visible from a distance.

the breeze is cool off the water
the waves gentle
resting
from a day’s work

we’re walking in wet sand
barefoot
your hair a messy bun

a waxing moon rises
turns the world silver
the sand glows

we kiss
you taste feral
untamed
perfect

we turn
head back towards the cottage
our shadows leading the way

Moon River tells me
There’s Such a lot of
World to See
and i remember a drive
in a rental car
on a raised wooded road
historic stops every dozen miles
re-enactors chopping wood
spinning yarn
flipping flapjacks
offering a rustic coffee in a tin mug
you were not there
already gone
and I was roadtripping to see
your brother Dave in February
Natchez Trace and Jazz
or my cousin Maggie in April
backyard cocktails
can’t quite remember which escape this
was from the world where
you weren’t living any longer
and I was trying to be
out exploring
in a tiny rental car between smallish regional airports
but this one particular memory
driving through the trees
perched up high on a two-lane
off the forest floor
lush green ubiquity
so foreign to a desert child like me
nothing clean and spare
no sandy minimalism
Andy Williams and Audrey Hepburn
can sing to me from 1961
and I can scrutinize every costumed historian
putting on an act for the tourists
but you’re not among them
just a glimpse at the future through the foliage
and I’m not certain
you even liked
Breakfast At
Tiffany’s 

1. Celia

The church bell’s tolling over the marshes
and over the frost on the flatlands low.
Philosopher cows are chewing the cud
and pondering down a reason of snow.

A peat fire burns in an old man’s hearth
but his heart is weathered as winter gorse.
Once he brought spikes of bright yellow flowers
down to the marshes from high on the moors.

Barley haired Celia walked with their baby
where the fishermen’s nets lay on the beach.
Mermaid’s purses and trinkets of seashells,
shingle-shone jewels washed up by rough seas.

Ah, how the dense clouds fold on the skyline,
ah, how the stone ocean hammers the shore
and sad how small words, spoken and twisted,
alter the drift of our boats evermore.

2. Celia Revisited

She walked the weed and twig strewn watermark
meandering in outsized clumpy boots,
her eyes cast down, as daylight slid to dark.

When the morning singing of a shorelark
echoed round the empty house of owl hoots,
along the weed and twig strewn watermark,

she was there – still scanning through sea-belt, bark
and flotsam: all the sea’s discarded fruits,
her eyes cast down as day emerged from dark.

One day I met her mother in the park
and asked about her daughter’s strange pursuit
along the weed and twig strewn watermark.

She sighed and offered only this remark:
“All of us seek – she takes a complex route…”
then looked downcast, as daylight slid to dark.

Now under a winter sky, iron and stark,
I sift through details that I can’t compute
along the weed and twig strewn watermark
my eyes cast down as grey days slide to dark.

Snake out of the concrete oven,
the miles of basking suburbs,
business parks and gravel pits,
through parched fields, fleeting stations
then further still into the south country.

Out along the Kennet and Avon
a girl in a hat and cut-off denim
waits her turn at the lock gates
as Thor and Celestia float low
on their watery doppelgängers.

Sugar-gold grass leans into the heat.
Over a redbrick farmhouse
a black oak looms dusty
and huge as a thundercloud.
A combine turns in a field of grain.

The Vale of Pewsey,
the Westbury White Horse.
The rising edge of Salisbury Plain.

You might think there’d be kites,
on a day like this. Forked tail kites
sketching out their territory of sky
scoping for voles in the corn.
But no. Just a caution of rooks,
a lumber of wood pigeons.

The man across from me
says there haven’t been  
so many kites recently.

Burnt allotments, a woman
sunbathing on a recliner.
A shepherd’s hut on blocks.
A donkey scratching on a fence.
Two dogs exercising their jaws.

Then Frome cattle market and Bruton dovecote.

How can they water all these cows?
Sloping from one pool of shadow to another.
How will they feed them next winter?
Hillside sheep – white flakes
on the bare scalp of the Earth.

Maybe those missing kites
were just gathering to leave,
like swallows in September?

Maybe there were always strings attached.

Southern England in a heatwave,
the land crawling to the well
only to find a borehole of bones.
This last day of July. 2026.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Click on the Play arrow below to see the author comment on and read this poem:

A
abacinate
To blind by putting a hot copper basin near someone’s eyes

abderian
Given to incessant or idiotic laughter

abecedarian
A person who is learning the alphabet

abligurition
Excessive spending on food and drink

accubation
The practice of eating or drinking while lying down

adelphepothia
An incestuous desire for one’s sister

adelphirexia
An incestuous desire for one’s nephew

adelphithymia
An incestuous desire for one’s niece

adoxography
Skilled writing on an unimportant subject

aeolist
A pompous windy bore who pretends to have inspiration

agelast
A person who never laughs

agerasia
The state of looking younger than one actually is

agraffe
The wire that holds the cork in a champagne bottle

algerining
Prowling around with the intent to commit burglary

alphamegamia
The marriage between a young woman and an older man

anopisthography
The practice of writing on one side of the paper

apodyopsis
The act of mentally undressing someone

autohagiographer
One who speaks or writes in a smug fashion about their own life and accomplishments

autolatry
The worship of one’s self

autotonsorialist
One who cuts their own hair

B
basorexia
An overwhelming desire to neck or kiss

bathykolpian
Deep-bosomed

batrachophagous
One who eats frogs

blandiloquent
Speaking in a flattering or ingratiating manner

bletcherous
Pertaining to something poorly or disgustingly designed

bombilate
To loudly hum or buzz continuously

borborygmus
The rumbling sound of gas passing through the intestine

brevirostrate
Having a short nose

bromidrosis
Strongly smelling perspiration

|brontide
The low rumbling of distant thunder

C
cachinnation
Loud or hysterical laughter

cacoethes
A bad habit or insatiable urge

cagamosis
An unhappy marriage

callipygean
Having well-shaped buttocks

cancatervate
To heap up into a pile

capernoited
Slightly intoxicated or tipsy

cataglottism
Kissing using the tongue, French kissing

causeuse
A sofa built for two people

charientism
An artfully veiled insult

cheiloproclitic
Being attracted to a person’s lips

chirotonsor
An alternate title for a barber

cleptobiosis
The act of plundering food

clithridiate
Key-hole-shaped

colposinquanonia
Estimating a woman’s beauty based on her chest

concilliabule
A secret meeting of people who are hatching a plot

cruciverbalist
One who loves doing crossword puzzles

D
dactylion
The tip of the middle finger

dactylonomy
Counting using one’s fingers

decubitis
The act or attitude of lying down

defenestrate
To throw out of a window

dehisce
To burst open, as the pod of a plant

dentiloquent
Pertaining to one who talks through their teeth

dephlogisticate
To make something fireproof

digamy
A second marriage after the death or divorce of a previous spouse

dippoldism
The act of beating or whipping school children

dompteuse
A woman who trains animals

E
eccedentesiast
One who fakes a smile, as on television

emunction
The act of removing obstructions from or cleaning bodily passages

estrapade
A horses’s attempt to remove its rider

exsibilation
The collective hisses of a disapproving audience

F
farctate
The state of being stuffed with food (overeating)

filipendulous
Suspended by a single thread

floccinaucinihilipilification
The categorising of something that is useless or trivial

fuscoferuginous
Having a dark rusty colour

G
gambrinous
Being full of beer

gargalesis
Heavy tickling

gargalesthesia
The sensation caused by tickling

ginglyform
Hinge-shaped

gongoozler
An idle spectator

gossypiboma
A surgical sponge accidently left inside a patient’s body

gowpen
A double handful

grapholagnia
The urge to stare at obscene pictures

gymnophoria
The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you

H
hadeharia
The practice of constantly using the word “Hell” in speaking

hamartithia
Being likely to make a mistake

hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian
Pertaining to extremely long words

honorificabilitudinitatibus
With honour

I
inaniloquent
Speaking foolishly or saying silly things

interfenestration
The space between two windows

J
jentacular
Pertaining to breakfast

jumentous
Smelling like horse urine

K
knismesis
Light tickling

krukolibidinous
The act of staring at someone’s crotch

kyphorrhinos
Having a nose with a bump in it

L
lalochezia
The use of foul or abusive language to relieve stress or ease pain

lethologica
The inability to recall a precise word for something

liripip
The long tail of a hood in medieval or academic costume

lygerastia
The condition of one who is only amorous when the lights are out

M
maledicent
One who is addicted to abusive speech

mallemaroking
The carousing of seamen on board Greenland whaling ships

mammothrept
A child who is raised and spoiled by their grandmother

maritodespotism
Tyrranical rulership of a woman by her husband

matronolagnia
An attraction to older women, especially ones who have children

misocapnist
One who hates the smell of tobacco smoke

misodoctakleidist
Someone who hates practicing the piano

mulligrubs
A state of depression or low spirits

mumpsimus
One who sticks obstinately and wrongly to their old ways

mytacism
The incorrect or excessive use of the letter M

N
nelipot
Someone who walks without shoes

nepheligenous
Producing clouds of tobacco smoke

nidorosity
Belching with the taste of undigested meat

nudiustertian
Pertaining to the day before yesterday

O
oculoplania
Letting one’s eyes wander while assessing someone’s charms

onychophagy
The habit of biting one’s fingernails

P
pandiculation
Stretching and yawning before going to bed or after waking up

petrichor
The smell of rain on dry ground

philosophunculist
One who pretends to know more than they do to impress others

pogonotomy
The act of cutting a beard

polyphloisboian
Making a lot of noise or loud racket

preantepenultimate
Fourth from last

prosopography
The description of a person’s appearance

psithurism
The sound of wind in trees or rustling leaves

pyknic
Short and fat

Q
qualtagh
The first person you see after leaving your house

quidnunc
One who always wants to know what is going on

quomodocunquize
To make money by any means possible

R
recumbentibus
A knockout blow, either verbal or physical

runcation
The act of weeding

S
sabrage
The act of opening a bottle with a sabre

saprostomous
Having bad breath

scacchic
Pertaining to the game of chess, or to chess pieces

sciapodous
Having huge feet

scolecophagous
One who eats worms

sgiomlaireached
The habit of dropping in at mealtimes

skoptsy
The act of self castration

slubberdegullion
A filthy, slobbering person

sphallolalia
Flirtatious talk that leads nowhere

steatopygic
Having a fat behind

strikhedonia
The pleasure of being able to say to hell with it

T
tachyphagia
Fast eating

tarantism
An urge to overcome melancholy by dancing

tetrapyloctomy
The act of splitting a hair four ways

thelemic
Permitting people to do as they like

tibialoconcupiscent
Having a lascivious interest in watching a woman put on stockings

U
ulotrichous
Having very wooly hair

ultracrepidarian
Of one who speaks or offers opinions on matters beyond their knowledge

usufructuary
A person who has use or enjoyment of something, especially property

V
ventripotent
Big-bellied, gluttonous

vesthibitionism
The flirtatious display of undergarments by a woman

vigesimation
The act of killing every twentieth person

viraginity
Masculine qualities in a woman

W
wanweird
An unhappy fate

witzelsucht
A feeble attempt at humour

X
xenobombulate
To malinger

xerophagy
A diet of bread and water

ximelolagnia
The urge to stare at women who are sitting with crossed legs

xylopolist
One who sells wood products

Y
yclept
By the name of; called

Z
zenzizenzizenzic
A number raised to the eighth power

All day I drank
whiskey and smoked

cigarettes and wrote
unpleasant poems

you will not understand,
will call mean-spirited,

and I, instead of
rising up in righteous

anger must, for once,
agree upon the waste.

The waiting game of wondering seemed,
once all the ruins were raw, to have ended
or just begun. “O Elders within,” he mused,
“I receive you in the soil,” then clambered up
the hill, ancestors be damned, and looked about,
the assembly of graves pushing through his feet
and hands into the sky, the sun now indigestible,
emptied and waiting to be sealed in what he saw
must be the wondering at last—all the numbers odd,
each thought a slice of rust and snow. He watched
a ghost snake watching a snake watching a ghost
beneath a rock, looked off, back, and all was gone.
Such a fool I’ve been, he read within the clouds,
neither to harvest nor plant of late, only to wander
and spade in the evering night, for this bounty of
compost is all mine, he quickened, gazing at his
feet atop the earthly grass, the mother, the father
not felt as his long held within, and saw, once more,
the bullfrog perched on the shady log in the pond
where he did child-fish, watching, and how he had
tossed his line only to end himself hooked, staring
into the night. Well-forward he stepped, lightened
by all he carried, seeing only more of what was less,
though not the fox carcass wrought to skull and spine
between tufts of fur now watching from the lime—
a sudden screech of memory leaked into the wind
spun him within, split the shoes upon his splayfeet
walking the dark streets down until, nearing their
house, his father grabbed him by the shoulders
and pulled him into the soil to stay.

Cannot manage
but a mile
before I must
stop and search,
remove all
water from the river
and walk among suspended
life—dry, eternal, fixed
above me.

Maybe it is greed.
Maybe it is emptiness.

And the more miles traveled
the greater the sense
of having lost,
forgotten.

And it becomes harder
to go back, the retrieval
more precarious, the longing
more complete.

It cannot be recovered,
though I walk upon the back
of the wide fish
in the dark silence,
in the heat.

Reluctantly pushed forward,
I look ahead until
the weight of the river,
the hunger,
the sureness of having missed,
of having forgotten,
makes me stop
once more
and blindly
place my hands
in the water,
searching
for something hard.

And when finding it,
holding on.

 

tressling and untressling the wild grasses
with soft whispers of summer

maybe the midnight toad song
that you thought was a bird

but the birds don’t garnish the night
with their ditties

maybe the slow lean of sunflowers
that you thought were reaching

but were only trying to forget

maybe the single red poppy
standing in the beautiful waves of barley

so alive
it turns my insides with shame

______________________________________________________________________________

Poetry and Photography by Michael Ashley. Photo taken with an iPhone in Segovia, Spain. 

even the powder and veneer of the influencer
who is recommending me their affiliated product

even the academic at the lectern
who pauses
to make the words somehow deeper

even the elderly nun on her knees in Plaza Lima
waiting for el papa to bring his calming hands

even the child with the whole universe
in their eyes

because there is a looming

dark matter that twists out our rag cloth intestines
media pressing into us
a dirty knife that dices us up

a system that neatly sorts us into our compartments
and the men who prod at us with their code
then disappear into cigar and velvet smog
smiling with the knowledge

our division is their power

most people call them peanuts
eat them salted or roasted
with a cold beer
or a glass of Chablis

but not you

I’d never met a nut trader before
never considered the job

you called them groundnut kernels
like fossils
like tiny samples
pulled from dirt and catalogued

I saw warehouses
pallets stacked to the rafters
forklifts nosing between aisles
steel mandibles lifting weight after weight

you spoke in shipments and margins
I heard the rake in red soil
saw the flash of kneecaps
below the hemline

a hand in the dust
lifting a shell
cracking it
finding
two pale halves inside

It wasn’t until I passed the corner
that it hit me
I hadn’t even considered the reaction
even as the words passed through
the soft grey folds
and down to make my fingers tap
the tiny floating keyboard

I hadn’t considered the full spectrum thoughts
the bright range that concertinas into light

I hadn’t considered how quickly language becomes clouds
how it slips its cape from my shoulders
and walks off on its own
barefoot
&
perfectly sure it will be forgiven

I hadn’t considered the invisible jaws
the ones that live inside screens
chewing on anything warm
& shaped like comfort

how a remark can turn
not into fire
but into a sudden geometry
arrowing forward to some other place

I hadn’t considered the way hate
does not feel like fire
not at first
it feels like clean air
like a glass shard coughed up

then it moves through people
like a draft beneath a locked door
finding our softest parts
the thin seams
the places where we were only recently sutured

& somewhere far from me
a stranger reads it
and their face does that small private thing
a tightening I will never witness
a nose twitch of disgust

& the words keep going
like little insects
drawn to the brightest point

until there is only the screen
and in it
my own face
under-lit
long
& dark — —

a mask hung on a mirror
in the dirty bathroom

The 8 photographs in this series were taken in Meseta de Segovia, Spain. Summer 2026.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

 

*********

How come seeing someone I know has become how did the thing go and did your son and how about your daughter and the medicine and the pills and the therapy and the article induced epiphany and the holiday plans and the holiday pictures and the disappointment but terrific views and how about the parents and how about the dead parents and did you see the news and on substack someone said this too shall pass and I’ll send you this link to a podcast it’s all hormones you know it’s all capitalism it’s all some planet in retrograde.

What happened to broken bike chains and unreasonable visits through the snow and loving you in the rain in front of your door after you graduated and I wanted to be your lesbian Andie MacDowell and moving furniture accidental pivot poetry and got it question mark I got it or on three or
when me and him
made our own little sutra
on my living room floor
after I charaded Good Will Hunting with the apples and the note on the other side of my balcony door and it’s not hard to get but felt elated he did
and when I stretched out under the table and said
Jack
I’ll never let go
he crawled to me all swim-shouldered lanky tall French American screwed for life even when I told him I didn’t take a shower and went down on me
in the ocean and the ship breaking into two and all and I didn’t care who’s
the raft, who’s
the water.

We called him Blue Grandad—
not because his eyes were milky blue like larimars,
or because he wore blue overalls,
but because he only ever drove blue cars.

He said the colour reminded him of the ocean,
where he’d sailed for months at a time
as an engineer on merchant navy ships.
I was only there in case we got a flat wheel,
was his running joke.

When he wasn’t making us laugh,
he recited poems
he’d written in the quiet of his dimly lit bunk.

Dipping his pen
into the water’s black well,
he told of the brightest stars he’d ever seen—
stars the sky would surrender to the sea,
only for them to taunt the waves
by rising again.

He wrote about a pâtissier from Aquitaine
who could plait pastry quicker
than he could tie his boots,
and a fortune teller
who wore a trail of jewels
across the smooth, golden sands of her belly.

He wrote about home too and the things he missed:
cutting turf at Mackle’s bog,
the walk to chapel on Sundays,
the funeral of his youngest brother.

One time, reading me a poem
about fishing for eels at dawn in Lough Neagh,
he stopped midway
and looked up beyond me—
as if hearing something in the distance.

I watched his lips shape a word.

Then he leaned in,
beckoned me closer,
and whispered:

I was ordered up one night—up on deck—
to give the men a hand.
There was trouble.

I’d fired a gun before, but…

He leaned closer still,
the bows of our faces almost touching.

I maybe killed a man or two that night.

For once, silence filled the space between us
like a long em dash,
and from either end
we clung,
drifting there together
for what felt like a nautical mile.

Then, with a sparkle of larimar
and a wink,
it broke.

He straightened himself,
took a long breath,
and cast us off again
into the early morning mist. 
 

like mollusc shells
gnawed
by overlapping waves
do we lose our ridges
when we’re left unanchored

the sky has settled low
upon the feeder dykes

on the west shallow bank
near the ravine
I shuffle limbs of fog

come and collect me
from the peat

take me
towards the swell
where ancient crags cut the valley

lamb me amongst
the heath bedstraw

aerosol me
upon your wool

for pulses that remain

Sugar canes and machetes. Coconut
juice. Here! have a bonbon. Here! Have some
cassava and natural peanut butter. Have you tasted
the rice? You’ll never forget it. Cargoes of goods.
Carpenter ware. Where is the cargo? Where
did it travel? When? By whom? Millions of cargo.
Precious cargo. Where is the stamp, the credit
by name, origin, flag, or bandana? Have you
heard? And the gold. What gold? The gold! You mean
our nappy heads carry gold? Mosquitoes know. Yes,
the gold–what gold? Where is the shovel? It was here
a moment ago. Saw it there some time ago. Oh,
there goes the cargo! The brown dusts, grey dusts,
red grounds underneath soles. Ancient blood rivers
underneath earth’s layers like vein circulations
from head to toe. Squeezed blood–brave blood–slave
blood– Revolution blood. You’ll pay. You’ll pay!
You’ll pay for your daring and hot boiling blood!

Ropes–ravage! Ropes–ravish! Duct tape. Shh. Don’t
you squill. You’ll pay, you’ll pay! Right hand, left hand–shh!,
right foot, left foot–shh! spread, stretch, spread stretch—east
and west, north, south. Ropes–ropes. Shut your mouth!
You’ll pay for your daring and hot boiling blood. You’ll pay
for your large minds and giant eyes. You’ll pay for your
sensitive nose–don’t make noise while the cargoes
come and go, stamped by a language you can’t speak
or barely understand. What’s the matter?
Your top home-breed physicians are elsewhere.
Stay on your back! Close your eyes. Don’t stir! Shh. Smile.
It is nature and natural. Why should rivers run down
from your red moist eye balls to the lids, the cheeks,
the lips, the neck, the breasts to become one
with your sweat on burnt coal skin invincible
under the mid-day sun, parched throat and alive?

No one to deliver. Shh. Devils kiss you
with hollowed promises as your reservoir dries.
Leave you desolate again and again and again and
again and again and again and again— each time
they leave, you fall to the ground and remove dust
from your eyes. And the pigs run away oinking
and oinking to ravines where you’ll never find them
even with passports. You will take to the streets
soon, dancing in bright colors again and again.
Ravished–naked. Ravished–drunk. Ravished–dry. Shh.
Is this why your songs are so magical?
And your voice and souls are so magical?
The air is filled with the drum, drum, drum
and vibrating guitar strings. The eyes raised up
to the skies, your hands fiddle as though tangled
in the strings, and for a moment the world
is mesmerized and raptured by your
stirring, bubbling soul singing a song you sing so well.

Wait, Romeo! Wait, Juliet!
Love–a flame,
wild & untameable, yes.
This flame of yours sways now
by sudden angelic siren sonics,
and under their voodoo
your minds walk towards
the plank of your world.

Wait, Romeo! Wait, Juliet!
Certainly, your lights
are meant to be crossing stars
in the universe, perhaps
could only do so but once;
but this gleam, the very essence, you know
to be internal, mysterious, a gift.

Wait, Romeo! Wait, Juliet!
Today, the void and the moon;
in hours time, day–oh, day infuses!
Let death come as it has always
when a candle waxes to its base
and the wick is black and no more.

The books on the shelves
will always be around
even when and if you’re no longer.

Oh, the surface of their pages,
the oozing air from their creases
fill me with childlike wonder.

They take precious time away,
but why should I have to choose
between them and a lover?

Not a situation I’d like to be in,
between the human and the object–
two needful communicators

to have to choose between, since both
take me to places I’ve never been
and make my heart leap by their elixers.

The titles will always be whispering,
and aloneness is a welcomed guest
to transport us to the leaves’ adventures.

factory, not discarded and forgot.
Sharp claws snap at my scales, move under
this hard flatness, this safe dark hiding spot
from sharpness cuts my world from another.

Here the claws eat my eggs, my unborn bairns.
We must find safer places and survive.
Despite our shredded skin we must learn
to continue ourselves and keep our lives

I hope she can hear me beneath this flat
hardness the rub of my fin against my
head. Here I have dug a hole in the fast
flow ready for her to lay our young fry.

Old ones say we have overcome death threats
before, so I will tell bairns never forget.

Every evening I enjoy the non-verbal
sounds of the boy next door
as he chases up and down
the same route making a cleared path
in his grass

utters melismatic sounds as if
a black door monolith has appeared
in his garden and he contemplates
it with the repetition of his voice
and movement from the same point
to the same point again and again
and I am eleven years old mesmerised
sat in a cinema watching
as a bone becomes a spaceship.

______________________________________________________________________

Watercolor Pencil and Magic Marker. Originally posted on Open Arts Forum on June 27, 2018, but has never appeared on the Front Page.

Artist’s note: “I created this specifically while listening to the soundtrack for Cider House Rules.”

It was like a cemetery sat up
in the middle of the night
and vomited all over the city.

From the billowing windows
and ashen balconies
of completely unshelled buildings,
they hung like guest towels,
while others were folded like napkins
in very uncomfortable positions,
and if they were to survive
what was about to happen,
would certainly need to see a chiropractor afterwards.
Arms just don’t bend that way.

The one who started it all
was garnished with a latex gash—
a colonel’s medal inspired its topography.
He was slumped next to
a tattling grandfather clock,
with its brassy heart allowed
to sway under glass.
It reflected an ungutted soldier,
who approached the fallen, as if hypnotized.
He didn’t notice the clean knife
or the fist of cartilage grasping it.
Death’s buffet distracted from the intact
waiting at the table.

And, with fingers shaped into a peace sign,
the first casualty tried to close eyes
too dead to budge,
as the starving ground
threw the covers
from its rumbling belly.

One garbage can
is plenty for the
old lady who
lives next to me.
With a cane
in her other hand,
she wheels it out,
then wheels it in
the next day
in the same way.
A ping pong ball
crawling back and forth
upon a seesawing
table tennis court.
I’ve never offered
assistance, though
the mere thought
provides assurance.
Of course, this resistance
is exercise for her,
for everyone really,
but she’s experienced enough
to notice. To take it from her
would mean a bullet
between her eyes,
stripping her of purpose.
Better to let her tortoise
up and down the drive,
working the burden
so the empty will be curbed
when the heavy subsides.

Paper collage

May we all trade stories
under shade trees at some park
in a square state, eat potato salad
and marvel we made it this far.

Let us agree to agree,
as we know a sneer will only
snowball and the firehose of fear
may take years to twist off.

May we look to our children
to remind us of the scientific names
of knowing, the reason we persisted
and the new harmonics of kindness.

We will lie down with our
resilience, warmed by quilts, lovers
and dogs. May we warn each other
like a bedtime story. 

Your witch’s kitchen always smelled
of sweetgrass through the window, jasmine
cuttings on the sill and tulips in a jar. There was
saffron bread cooling on the counter and spiced
cider on the stove. Wednesdays the screened
porch hinted laundry on a line and Fridays
were astringent in quicksilver
mirrors and glass.

Today I am drunk on your daffodils,
backsliding into my own dull house, rife
with dry tobacco and newsprint, trailing
behind your patchouli ghost in these
dust mote empty rooms where you
used to polish walnut with lemon
and smoke your slender
black and gold cigars.

I am at a fishing lodge in Canada’s far far north
fly in
holy shit
here are the men
who will populate
stories

they will become uncles and brothers
maybe a father maybe not
and the women
all of them wonderfully strange
will become my aunts and sisters
not sure there’s a mother
but another group are circling

it’s a trout lake, muskie too
spring-fed
too clean for walleye
but I will go to Lake of the Wood for them

everybody agrees trout are too oily
but I say they are not too anything
except maybe too perfect

I catch and release
I can only kill in fiction
except walleye
grew up killing them
it’s a cinch

didn’t know there’d be wifi here
the password is the owner’s phone number
clever people

I know the bankers are bankers
and the lawyer’s obvious
the history teacher’s son whispered to me
as if he had to
that they drove to the other lake across the road
for walleye
they overfished and got caught
by conservation officers
the history teacher
couldn’t stand the shame
they left in the night

somebody said don’t get lost
the lawyer said
you can’t get lost if you’re not going anywhere

his smile charming charming charming

an outraged fisherman showed me all the reefs
red squares bleating on his phone
he accused the lake of not being honest about it

I am always looking for my father in these places
he circles

Winter sunsets are stately affairs,
Not given to extravagance
Muted yellow, trampled dandelions
Pasted across a sky, steel-gray,
Smeared with greasy clouds,
The bare side of an old engine

Sterile Day-Light abdicates to stark shadows,
Pitched infinities swallow alleys,
Heavy gloom, gathered in drifts aside the riverbank,
heralding the night to come

Screaming gales, glacial, razor sharp, bite deep,
Battered figures clutch overcoats,
Pulled taut with numbed fingers,
Faces obscured, treacherous glimpses of
Pale flesh the sole proof of life beneath wool, faded cashmere
Fresh blusters, a quicker pace,
Frantic, uneven steps carry them away,
Streets bled dry of the emptied and forlorn

The Sun is vanished, light from windows,
Street-lamps hemmed by creeping black;

the city is cold and dark in winter

no one does nothing
substantial
even after all this time .

watching all the crime.

the list is long & unbelievable,
then longer and extra unbelievable.

each day.

yet no one seems to do anything.

i says this out loud to mine & can do nothing
substantial.
only shaking.

 

she lived
an empty life
to the fullest
and left the world
as if never born

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(Note on the Artwork: A photo of an old lady taken by the author was digitally transformed to create layers of the colors in the photo.)

Towering crumbling columns fill the air
Empty endless ribbons guard silent brick edifices
Nestled among the stacks
Dry sandy brown dervishes skitter endlessly across
Sun parched fields untouched by incessant wind
Barnacle encrusted shafts creak in darkness
Below long abandoned rotting planks

White contrails fill a cold blue sky
Sewing together fleecy white rainless clouds
Swelling waves rush to the shore
Cresting crashing on driftwood littered beaches
Rich green fir trees carpet hillsides
Uniform in height and size

Elephant ears sizzling in bubbling oil
Soon to be drenched in white powdered sugar
Wailing saxophones soaring crashing filling
Ears leaning towards a distant stage
Rabbits pulled from black top hats
Beautiful women cut in half

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pigma Microns and Ohuhu alcohol markers on Vellum Bristol paper, 14″ x 17″.

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Pigma Microns and Ohuhu alcohol markers on Vellum Bristol paper, 14″x17″.

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Pigma Microns on mixed media paper, 9×12 inches.

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An orb-weaver (probably the spotted orb-weaver, Neoscona crucifera), and a katydid (probably) caught in its web. Camera: iPhone 16e

bumpy sidewalk
with shady providence

ambulatory pencil
flashes his lexicon

street name: Pontiff
smells of smoked paprika,
cinnamon, relish
& sausage bun

& declares truth

raising himself
above the concrete pode

reading his palms
of selfish words —
a slice of his blood orange
insufficient to prepare
this marmalade

but he’s sound & sincere
sparing us the obscene rants
& obviously bland motifs

hair’s clean
or maybe bald
below his paisley beanie

laying a serene missive
on ears going by:

free will’s heavier than missiles
chase clouds over paper
behold black birds
veering around a bend
grade the qualities of rain
dissect wind as scientific prey
watch life like silent films
& supply your own subtitles
for instant truth 
 _________________________________________

Background image: Graphic design by Trina Layne – Applications used were Microsoft Paint & Canva

 

Tundra Swan. Acrylic on untempered Masonite. 11″ x 14″.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Barred Owl. Acrylic on untempered Masonite. 10″ x 14″.

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Ruby Throated Hummingbird and Apple Blossoms. Acrylic on untempered Masonite. 11″ x 16″.

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Lake Minnewaska. Acrylic on untempered Masonite. 11″ x 14″.

*****

 

The Watcher

Acrylic on untempered Masonite. 17″ x 25″.

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Bobcat

Acrylic on untempered Masonite. 12″ x 16″. Artist’s Note: This is my newest painting. The struggle was having the Bobcat and the rocks so similar in color. I did this to show the cat’s natural camouflage.

Sometimes I sit on my back porch at night
and listen to Mr. Death making his rounds.
He’s not like the coyotes in the hills;
he doesn’t sing after his work.
He’s an understated fellow.
Quiet.
Elegant, even.
But I can hear him.

He is a different animal than Mr. Dying.
Mr. Dying is a monster who brings fear, pain, regret.
He’s your miserable last night in your miserable last town.

But Mr. Death—he creeps circumspectly.
Quietly and tenderly he carries his intended
into the past—
into the long ago
where my kindergarten teacher
still makes me butter sandwiches,
thinking me scrawny.
Did you show her the proper respect?
Will you show me respect?
Even tenderness?

I’ll find out
but only after Mr. Dying has ripped me
to pieces like a dog with a Thanksgiving turkey,
and, after that, favors the world with his song. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Colored pencils on paper
23 x 31 cm

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*Athens: A city built for cars and concrete.

Gouache on paper. 15 x 21 cm