Poetry

Daydreamers Prisoners in love.Addicts of hope.A tightrope walkerbalanced betweensleep and night,betweendespair and ecstasy. Scribblers of poems,pressed by images,fettered to words,smooth-talking so and so’s,their grimy heartslike captured songbirds. They who sing sweetlyfor the unlikely chancethey won’t…

Loneliness There is a painIt feels like school dances and crowded carouselsConversations with no pauses for a breath or a sip of beerRecords left skipping as people filter out of doorwaysIt is a pain that…

19 Reasons

Woman Under Water I grew up believing femalekind was made of something else, something foreign, something like soil and soap rubbed together into indefinable goo. Chalked into squares, they couldn’t hop or scotch out, lest…

Storks with Poulets, Peanuts with Pineau “Consciousness of reality is itself a way of being in the world.”Being and Time They sail sphinx-like beyond the house, spread outWhite threads plowing Charente’s Atlantic pathWhile imperious Blanche…

Hometown I have memorized this way of thinkinga road that stretches across the darkest hoursthe kind you learn young by the feel of its curvesdips of sunken pavement you could drive blindthe foot moves between…

He wouldn’t be me His face grey, fingernails filled up with muckHe sits outside the store change filling his cup“Change that’s ironic,” I say with a smirk“Why don’t you change your clothes and go find…

A Tumult Her question transported him like Beatrice’s first salute, yet as he looked at her face for the first time he was filled with terror. He was startled by the speed with which her…

The Window I Wish for my niece Xondra A window draped with nightlike a road in rain reflectsmy face, two passing taillights. The pane is cold and hard and smoothas polished stone.Touch stains the glass.…

Unforgettable Were I a scientistrather than justa wondering guy,I’d study what shows uplike a person in a roomwhen you look aroundand she’s there. Give me a maze, some electrodesand a pen skating across a graph,a…

Icarus I did not ask for you to catch me.I knew my wings were dipped in weathered wax.Who are you to prevent me from my fate?Why fall, if not for devotion? Thrusting inherently ruptured wings,our…

Thunder Early on, thunderrumbled its broad bassecho to tremblemy soles, to excitea deep-rooted tempothat rose up my neckand I awoke toa wide-open skydarkened and boiling,that invited me tobelieve there waspower I couldharness, now worndown to…

Catherine’s Poem There is no room for a story,not even really mine. I lookand look. The world is doingsomething so unsavory.The dirty sparrows bathein the storm run-off. Robinsgo for the cicadas’ empty shape.We just bicker…

Where the Light May End I have traveled so deeply through the temporal spell that so much of the dayhas devolved into remembering.In my seventh decade,the path toward tomorrow seems disappearing and I cannot tell…

A Bar in Santa Cruz The bartender slaps my glassand change on the counteras in anger, making me wonder what I did, then I realize it isa need to put rhythm in his work. Children…