the bed is not
made where
they laid last night,
the covers holding
the passions like
air in the lungs
and i stand there
in a state of staring.
the next morning
came, of course,
the next conversation
over coffee came,
the next movement
around each other came.
i remind myself
of my worst self,
how the fullness of
life evaporates into
sin sometimes.
my lover and her
lover here in
this epic solitude;
i smell their serious
versions.
and i pretend...
Saturday, December 15, 2018
Friday, December 14, 2018
lovely receiver
my blanched smile,
scalded to slip off the
outer skins that have kept
me away.
i sit near a drafty
door in order that i
may calm the new fever;
the cold coming from
beneath the crack
is a spectral wash
in her reaching up-toward.
where is the calm
quiver i've come to
love so much,
but in the invitation
of your timid smirk,
your peculiar increase?
the pearl is there
waiting when my
lovely receiver sends
herself unguarded.
now there's an invitation
to...
Monday, December 10, 2018
a road, at night, cold
i have a lover,
mutable in her dress
and bra, sitting
there with the
countenance of
the goddess of chance,
fate and fortune.
my lovely
tyche, she weeps
and then smiles
and goes back to
weeping, while
outside there is
something moving.
i would have her
held while holding
her; have her
loved while
loving her; have her
sung to while i
sing alone.
we met at the light
that...
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
let lovers leave
this clearest-stated, calmest-kept
place within my deepest mind
woke upon where life had slept
and left my fears therein to find
let lovers leave as they would want
in knowing they'll return to you
let go the rooms that fears will haunt
and all the gods you thought you knew
there's something good in the decay
of life's conventions held too fast
by those of...
Thursday, November 15, 2018
hold the balance
hold the balance of the
hours in one palm,
and with your
dirty knuckles go
into the world.
moonlight havens
and sunrise gravity
can be wretched things when
you're infused with darkness,
so be the nearest
star and skim
the surfaces of
lakes on your
quest for love.
there are salts of passion
in all things, and
the trick is to ameliorate
every taste of this life
with...
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
you look at me like
you look at me like
you're looking at an approaching
storm that
growls across the horizon,
the colors of godawful
bruising and retiring embers.
so i whisper something into
your neck, perhaps a prayer
to the moon and her lover;
something about wanting
or about will or about the
salt of passion in tears.
we lovers all begin with something
to die toward; it's the bellows...
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
i want wondrous moments
i want wondrous moments
of half-holy corners
cleaved into glass; with your
splintered shafts of errant
radiation now beacons well-spread.
i would grieve in my words often,
how weak they became
in the face of your
tempest eyes and
heated host.
i could not find the
words i needed to
disallow the things
i had feared lost
that were never departed.
so.
i want wondrous escapes
beneath...
Thursday, November 1, 2018
this prophecy is the baby on the hip of my love
this prophecy is the baby
on the hip
of my love,
who stands there, in a
vast solitude, looking
with delicate pupils
toward something.
perhaps toward that
town you left me
for, the one with
the oily black-sky
sorrows and salted air?
you joined me.
why, again?
and again, why?
because i am dubious,
at times; entrenched
and needing to be pried
from the ice of a self-inflicted
menace.
i...
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
the truth about trust
my natal fear is that
of being prised apart
with the economy of wind
against october leaves.
when she departs
the bedroom
my hands occupy
themselves with the salt
of her gone flesh;
while in the forest, at night,
trees are made recumbent
following the swift
ejaculation of windy-ice.
the moss and earth,
exposed at her felling,
are flipped up and fanning;
this alluvial, dark spread
confronts the fool
whose curiosity after
the storm took him
to...
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
my weakest cause
i once thought that this is what i deserve:
this caustic imbalance
this toxic enfolding fear;
but my weakest cause
these days
has eroded the tissue surrounding
the head, finally
so i let the collapse
begin, having hope
that the attrition will
reveal, in time, the hot
marrow of my heart
and leave me in a fine stupor;
receptive of the best
signals, the warmest
impulses that once thundered
in the vein and drove me
to far fields and left
me the master...
Friday, July 20, 2018
feather on the floor
come walking over
and find me in
your own way
and tell me who
you've found
with a flower
between your lips
and dew pressed
beneath the tongue.
i am happy
you've found me
sitting beneath the sun
with eyes closed.
i tend to dream that i
know myself as
you know me,
but the image always blurs.
i see me as you do,
approaching, your
eyes mine and
we're smiling.
but nearer...
Sunday, June 17, 2018
father
fomented seas below him thrash the heathen rocks
into a million-year submission and he is suddenly
ambushed at the edge of the world. tempted to peer down
just once he then restores his focus and altogether his soul is
thrust outward toward that line between black and turquoise,
...
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
time and unsympathy
on that horizon
a cackling spectre,
summons me there
with a tremulous claw.
in his convulsions
of simpering laughter,
pulsing with ticks
and their ravaging flaw.
what is unwanting
when echoing footsteps,
padding down ways
of a narrowing chance,
send you soul-digging
for nurturing mothers,
breast-less and weak
in their twilight-ing dance?
i do remember
day's lingering...
Thursday, May 24, 2018
silly
silly
how the moody winds
blew your particles of fire
my way and burned the blades
silly
how the boasty thunder
rumbled with your voice of reason
into the ears and flattened the eyes
silly
how the waters of the high crevices
spilled from your too-low sky
and drowned my last lingering fear
silly
how the piercing silence
sang your tribal hymn
and pumped...
Sunday, May 13, 2018
mad love
mad love is a burden,
all wail and want;
bounce and plunge.
i look into this mother's
face and i look into my wander
to find the flutes of her yearning,
the flock of all her exiled passions
passed on to me the days
in our moments of coitus.
i've looked into that flowing
face a hundred thousand times
and discover again and again
the seeds of my blossoms,
the curls of...
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
79 and anew, begins
it's mom's seventy-ninth today:
i called her when i felt she would
be able to talk, her attentions now
abridged by the poison of illness
she was going to the greenhouse
with Dad, she told me, where they
would pick flowers to fill the
boxes around the house
there were many years he would
drive her to New Hampshire
to dine at their favorite
restaurant...
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
all yearning
something sometimes i write
makes no perfect sense,
so that what i put out there
is most frequently tread upon by
my sated behavior.
i can't imagine a world
in which words always march
in a narrow trough like this
and it's left me lately dismissed,
speculating on what i'm trying to
say against the ego of my
clouded and partisan intentions.
truth is:
i'm trying to be...
Saturday, April 7, 2018
ungirl
i'd have you raised up to the
height of your truth;
elevated above the assured
counterfeit of lesser minds,
who chance against the atomic
weight of your best self.
you are picturesque
you are positive self-proof
you are a grant against the greed of
the soul-swindlers
don't hasten toward those who
ask you to shine for their behalf,
for they do so in service of
their own...
Friday, March 23, 2018
sleep in her shade
i missed the shaded tones
of all those you've held
to your sleeping breast.
i'm too small for the
conscience of time to
know any better i suppose;
to see that the consumption of
the curious, calm breath
of loved ones is a craft;
that those formed of love
are eternally in love
and not surpassed.
i will watch you sleep
inside silence's muted
source, vibrating,
and...
Thursday, March 1, 2018
i'm ok, daughter
i'm ok, daughter
on my shoulders
rests the weight
while i wait
for your fire
to burn the world down
i sit in our
kitchen looking out
onto a march afternoon
enlightened by sun but weaker
without you here
you are at school
or you are at play
or you are at sleep
or you are at one of
those moments of deep
thought that i find you
in at times that makes me hurt
not knowing...
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
the first time i made you laugh
there was an attraction to chance,
when the days of eternal vitality were far before us
and the depth of hidden meanings magnified
our new fate.
blown by gusts that i will call impulses,
and proceeding from cold wisdom
that rioted with the heat of passion,
you cracked me open.
it was subtle how you did it,
standing in the dark before me;
i'd known you just for the length
of...
