Will and Acceptance
Flecks of coal
Along dead tracks
Breathing old dust
The rail is change
Brighter than a drop of Mercury
Virginal steel
Transcend the body
Whisper to God
We will be one
Flecks of coal
Along dead tracks
Breathing old dust
The rail is change
Brighter than a drop of Mercury
Virginal steel
Transcend the body
Whisper to God
We will be one
In the flit of a hummingbird’s wings,
Someone can die in your eyes.
A flutter of lips that clings
And forms a sty.
Like a featherless chick falls from a beam,
Never again to lift its still-blind head,
One weak stitch pops the seam
And unravels the thread.
There is no back
To go once the path splinters
And rain dissolves your mutual track.
You have to leave behind what hinders.
Excise the spider’s bite-
It only did what spiders do,
So do not lapse into futile spite
And walk away from who you outgrew.
Acrid smell that lit on fire my nose
One eye black as a marble
Blood, a rope like puddle of insides
Never did I realize
The tininess of a squirrel hand
I was 6
My eyes grew
My pupils black like that marble
Though nervous, but curious
My hand moved to its fur
A dead thing
Yet fur smooth as silk
I wanted to see
If a heartbeat existed
Amongst a carcass of cracked bones
And tire burnt skin
I had almost touched
The little stripe down it’s back
She grabbed my hand
As if I were about to touch fire
A little bone popped
I cried with guttural instinct
She was more afraid
Of a dead squirrel
Of disease, visceral nausea in her guts
She tugged me away
Tears streaming down my cheeks
Not a word of my wrist
Never looked back at the squirrel
Let him lie there
Cars to continue to break
Bones on a pavement
As black as his marble eye
(after Lesley Wheeler)
Ruthlessly pruning the overstuffed closet,
I make room for the new. I cannot emphasize
enough how out of character this is, but then
again, I am on the verge of so many changes.
This time next year we can’t yet visualize, so yes!
We must be pitiless. The future is roaring toward us.
Control is a Gods lie,
Control is a devils truth.
What is found in the white ether,
Is humanity untethered.
Birth by sleep,
Death by waking.
The mind made up by greater parts,
Is undone by the power of the sum.
The alcoholic pride,
In the world built reassuring.
In the wee small hours,
When we betray ourselves.
We are all but Gods and devils.
I enjoy writing poems—
but I’m no poet.
Words appear in my head
never making it to the page.
Once the white canvas
does fill with grey etches,
the eraser of my number two pencil
quickly diminishes.
Poetry helps me find my voice
while losing my mind.
Time is thrown into the trash
as I perfectly ruin my
criminal masterpieces.
she always told me
that women were
all trouble and
no love left in them
that they would
take and take and take
but looking back
at those women
and what I did
and what they did
she had it all wrong
there was that white-hot flash
riding an end of the line
train
and we did
our best
with what we had
but I was a man
that was too hard to love
so it always ended
like I knew it would
with the blood on my hands
and sorry lodged in my throat
with a confused hurt look
coming from them
from far away
but there was no way
I could ever explain
that I did them a favor
Strum and Lull
Luna Moth
Radial Symmetry
The Air Around the Butterfly
Translating Silence
That Reckless Sound
Weight of the Ripened
Second Skin
Broken Tulips
One Hundred Hungers
Composition Studies
Down Deep
Splitting the Soil
Weaving a New Eden
~ Created from titles of chapbooks and collections, in order of appearance (including title): Phoebe Reeves, Taunja Thomson, Jerry Judge, Katherine Larson, Katerina Stoykova, Manuel Iris, Colleen S. Harris, Gina Ferrara, Katerina Stoykova, Jeremy Paden, Lauren Camp, Annie Hinkle, Mary Anne Reese, Rosemary Rhodes Royston, Sherry Chandler.
