cinquain of clutter
Is it
a poverty
of spirit pushing me
to save unmatched socks, old letters
crayons
ruined pans, skeins of kinked up yarn
or simply sabotage
to keep myself
defeated?
Is it
a poverty
of spirit pushing me
to save unmatched socks, old letters
crayons
ruined pans, skeins of kinked up yarn
or simply sabotage
to keep myself
defeated?
When she comes,
she comes
without mercy.
Your sins are
nothing to the
raging of her
tempests–
the calm tides
of her indifference.
What you have done
is nothing
to the scale of
her breathing,
to the slow,
inexorable,
pulse
of her life.
Her shores are
shifting
and you
have been lost
beneath them.
When the
sea comes,
the bells ring.
You
are forgotten.
Today,
I definitely say
to love is to hurt…
Bare feet on tiny gravel
Bandaid removal
One minute past close
Both sides, stopped up nose
Expired gift card
Broken bite guard
Tuna in oil, not water
Noisy theatre neighbor
Printer low on ink
White laundry turned pink
Sparkling clean car, dark skies
Unsolicited ill advice
Flat tire and already late
Slow AT&T internet wait
Blue lights in the mirror
Unfavorable bank error
Bloat and skinny jeans
Dadgum IVs
New Windows 10 to learn
Nagging blistered sunburn
Tweezed eyebrow pinch
Clabbered milk stench
Car door smashed finger
Bare cupboard and burnt dinner
Cell data overage
Stubborn kinfolk grudge
Visit to the dentist
Rainy camping trip
Tomorrow,
maybe a rainbow?
To love is to hope.
her lonely
resides in the heart
diffident
smiling oft
her lips a vestibule of
beautiful damage
If not for her, he could have forgotten love. Instead, he still remembers, wittingly. The completion of shattered continents, tying lonely seacoasts together by way of the landlocked heartland, bringing mountain snows to dry lake beds: How could this seem so simple? And when she left, saying nothing the least bit unexpected, why did none of her fade, become less than real? A found photograph is as surprising as his reaction, the gratitude at seeing the open-ended, intertwined translations a formula: (thanks to) (because of) / her
Poem 5, June 5
Hot, humid Saturday
For two hours yesterday,
I cleaned the gutter
in front of your house.
You were not in the house.
I cannot begin to say
how unpleasant the day was.
How unbearably hot it was,
& miserable in every way,
me scooping decaying organic loam
like human waste from an outhouse.
How I would have traded the job for a fish gutter’s
chore in those moments, but when a wren
flew from your hanging flowerpot
& scolded me, I smiled a smile
meant only for me.
When a red wasp darted at me,
I did not think. I let my rile
control my action, my swat,
missed;
it did not.
When did 8 berzerker myths
become my autobiology—
a rosary of blood & memoryless
chess pieces bolted
to unleveled landscapes.
Be disruptive.
Create distrust.
<Distrustives>
Somewhere in the caucophanous
tangle there might be music.
Nature feels no crimes.
Just us.
I don’t know why
I miss you every morning.
Bernie Deville
One Thread of Detail
It seems to me
the night was filled with dreams
lush, flush, over-flowing
brimming, ballooning
Chagall-like
teaming universes
of fantasy and color
Just a snag
in the cloth–
one thread of detail
may float back to me
to pull
the whole
story out.
some like the way a mare’s tail
flames behind her as if she sets
the very air on fire when she runs
others fancy how her mane breaks
along the arch of her neck and cascades
over her withers, water spilled on stone
me, I watch the feathered dance of fetlocks
as her feet fly over the earth, shimmy
of lightning to the thunder of her hooves
