POEMS
August 3, 2017
We are the children of memory, which seems so unreal now, when childhood a distant dream. It’s hard to imagine you once were young, it’s hard to grasp all the ways your subconscious has endured. If you dig back hard enough, you can feel a child’s thought and the faint remnants with which it bore itself so deeply into you. You remember seeing the world through those eyes, knowing now you will never be a child again. That experience has shaped you, those eyes still your lenses, your vessels for these ongoing semblances of human understanding.
It would be impossible not to miss yourself, to supplant your disillusioned self into that former state of innocence. We were young and the world was small. The world is so much bigger now. Your actions have repercussions. What you put into the world returns to you and what you take now leaves a mountainous void.
Extracting contentment from that darkness holds you forever in its obligation, days you owe to a child who hasn’t yet started keeping tally....
June 29, 2016
Not all pebbles are in focus,
not all dreams are still there when you wake,
not all memories retain their luminosity,
because life would be too easy
if everything were perfect that way.
The river that once ran here
now is just a creek;
the water flowed to other places
or else it just evaporated;
everything eventually
soaks into the earth.
The ground is only worth
the dirt in which it’s vested;
everything else is rocks
or whatever cells begot—...
May 17, 2016
Everywhere the gray-green came up to
Meet the dying winter sky
And the trees amongst them
Were heavy with longing for
The Spring that wouldn’t come.
I pass and see the steady fence destroyed
Restored and dead along the tracks.
It stays with me in part,
through the impression of a hay field
and a dip in the ravine.
The hills
Beneath the fence posts,
The grass in shades of green
Belong with me, as I with them become
One, by one, by one.
I pass and see the steady fence in ruins
Revived and blended back to Her.
She comes to me in sleep now and I sense
The densest fog, wrap itself around the gray hills...
June 3, 2014
The poet is a procrastinator.
He goes out of his way to find other things to put his mind to.
The poet knows everything else he does isn’t pursuant to his ultimate goal,
which isn’t really his anyway.
It’s just something he’s found himself stuck to,
like a freak second head you’re forced to converse with
and for which you then become too attached to destroy.
The poet makes every effort to deceive himself,
anything to convince his ego that it’s okay
to think about something else now and again,
as long as his id inevitably returns to what it’s after,
that tranquil state of disappearing,
the serenity in removal from oneself,
the fear and excitement of letting yourself get...
April 9, 2014
i wondered if you had the time
of day
it wouldn’t suit you if i did
and so one swears that, after all of this un-going,
this is where it all begins
but if time is all you want,
there’s an abundance of that
it’s finding the time to get along...
November 12, 2012
Where then have all the beleaguered thoughts
disappeared?
They tarry into yesteryear.
What state of such recompose has lingered in
that going by?
...
October 6, 2012
"Pontificatorily (stage 1)"
how do you say
to say?
how doesn’t one forget
to rhyme?
i’m not wearing any clothes today,
am i?
it wouldn’t matter if you were.
so goes another...
July 10, 2012
one couldn’t count on fingers and toes
the things that help the poet disappear
it’s the will of a man that keeps him walking
not the shoes on his feet
or the feet in his shoes
though both are helpful
it’s just one catastrophe after another with you, isn’t it?
(one must be willing to let it all get rearranged)
poets, plights, people, and playing cards
virtue is relative to the medium
sense the same as the jar it holds
counterintuition can often be the safest practice
because you know yourself well enough
not to trust your instincts
(no, it isn’t something you said
the wind just blew a funny way)
th...
May 7, 2012
“a breeze on the air, a blue sky”
He sees birds playing through the trees
and remembers they exist
and hates their freedom.
Two lovers sit on a park bench
grotesquely kissing.
Two men who appear homeless
wrestle over an empty bottle.
A third man throws
chess pieces at them.
A little girl throws breadcrumbs
into the pond
for the ducks,
which a little boy scares away
with rocks.
The little girl hits him on the arm,
then cries and runs to her mother.
The little boy looks back at the ducks
swimming away.
March 14, 2012
“dandelion parapet”
whimsical shoes remorseful
they don’t walk more
a cup worth of soup
making love on a cool spring morning
to a tin can
garnering ideas cultivates a sense of existing
everything boils down
but still nothing gets defined
the challenge has always been coming to terms with that
January 10, 2012
how colorless it seems to be forgotten
whereas milk laments all rational
in daydream breakfast cereal
profanity becomes mundane
singers scratch chalkboards
to experience the unbearable
everyone is too worried radical ideas
cast out the world
so pawning off insanity seems
the most logical source of income
and prosperity the hope
of...
December 2, 2011
i dream once more
of pasts gone by
through life to limb
of futures to come
the soft wind and
a clearer mind
make one last
complete thought slip
into the open night
and december sounds more
than a lifetime away
November 18, 2011
“periscope vernacular catastrophe daffodil”
people are just sounding boards for other people’s emotions
my cell phone knows me better than i know myself
nine:forty-seven on a thursday evening
i can’t describe something i don’t know exists.
people who look like they’re angry and restless
probably are
it was nice being there again
but i think i enjoyed it better
the first time
everything tastes like meatball sandwiches now
November 11, 2011
To what end
will my existence find?
To what extent
and on what grounds
will my existence thrive?
These questions have
no answers
because
life has no meaning,
purpose, or resolution.
It is swept away
by inconsequence just as
bubbles rising to water’s
surface burst. There
is no knowing
that ever they had been
nor any kind of writing down
that would provide
the experience
with
perspective.
November 5, 2011
the thrill of hope is lost
somehow
in the petals of a gilded
rose
that blooms away from
that what it once was
it is a two-leaf flower
now
that grows and grows
one petal for my life
the other for my love
Older Posts >