Posts for 2025

These bubbling fonts of ink where birds do grow
and chirp, and chatter, flutter all the day,
they are a place I often love to go.

Tired life I clutch, the hours long and slow
by these a-flowing, tetric pours of shade,
said bubbling fonts of ink where birds do grow.

By night ears catch the whispers and the groans,
a man, hanged child’s choked sibilance do say,
this is a place you’ll often love to go

deep where no traveler returns, the hole,
and to its haints on trees grotesque who sway
these bubbling fonts of ink where birds do grow

and chill me skinned, flesh off denuded bone
and flay my scalp from forth atop my grey,
all this a place I often love to go.

Taken to death, cicadas, scarabs sweep me home,
smeared in dung, the sticky detritus of jays,
these bubbling fonts of ink where birds do grow,
they are a place I often love to go.

I walked the labyrinth tonight 
unwinding my thoughts –
letting the day spiral beneath my feet 

I walked the labyrinth tonight –
watched the sun set in an apricot sky 
Wisps unravel against blue-grey clouds 

I walked the labyrinth tonight 
said goodnight to the chirping sparrows
and listened to the robins bid me adieu 

i a m t o o m u c h 
y o u r a n a w a y 
i a m m a k i n g 
a s s u m p t i o n s
a g a i n 
l i e s i t e l l
m y s e l f 
t o h u r t m y o w n f e e l i n g s
m y n e w f a v o r i t e 
w a y t o s e l f h a r m
m y t h e r a p i s t 
r e c o m e n d s
t r a n s p a r e n t c y
i a m o p a q u e
w a l l s u p 
n o w o n d e r y o u
n e e d e d s p a c e
l i e s i t e l l m y s e l f

When you don’t hear its prayer. (Poems do
pray, stuffed away on shelves, their words
grow old, hardly heard, less alive than AI.)

Still, they pray in your mind as you travel
some Robert Frost pike, a college town
ahead. Frowning, you wish you could stay.

A poem dies when its dusty music is muffled,
its ink weakly coursing through consonants,
words flying a final time — scattering, hiding

in crags of oaks and elms. At last, they lay
ready to die, but for the poet out for a walk,
his hound dog moping along sniffing the bark.

He flushes the words from their holes, so they
take to the sky once more. Warmed by the sun,
filled with wind, the poem’s time is not yet done.

I want to be a worthy steward
of colleague- gifted cherry tomato
seedlings & the remainder of my neighbor’s
divided irises (iri? irae?) she leaves in an open
cardboard box at my front door
but I am light on space & heavy on shade.

Surveying the back patio, my eyes fix
on the weird sandy pit between
the mossy bricks’ edge & the low brick wall
filled with mulch, sand, weeds I can’t identify.
Yes. This will be today’s Roman Empire.

I pull the weeds by hand. (I know. It’s fine.
I got my dad’s anti-poison ivy genes) & visit
the rubble bin by the garage, 
carrying over broken bricks
left by the previous owner,
one plastic plant pot haul at a time.

Something scuttles in the tub and leaps out 
as I lift one of the bricks with a concrete stripe still intact.
I assume it is either a fist-sized spider, rabid rat, or
copperhead that has been lurking in my urban backyard
since I moved in, waiting to kill me,
but it is, in reality, a tiny chipmunk.

My heart restarts. The bulbs and weeds persist
& so must I. I finish my moat,
rake, lay (lie?) down weed fabric, dump soil,
make holes for the irises (iruseus? irisai?)
& tomatoes, spread mulch, stand back
to admire the bed I have made but will never lie (lay?) in.

The seedlings are dwarfed by the darkness
around them, not even tall enough to need stakes.
The iridian leaves are yellowed,
flaccidly drooping toward the earth,
a few carry dead blooms, like
translucent brown wax paper origami
rucksacks holding shriveled vacated cocoons
that I can barely imagine were just recently
bursts of yellow, white or purple.

It doesn’t look like much for how sweaty
& dirty I am, but I have played my part.
I am supposed to let the leaves stay ugly
until Fall, soaking up sunlight & rainwater
until they are ready to be nipped
& tucked into their bed
for their winter beauty rest.

To choose one song and the memory
it evokes, pull into the snowy parking lot

at the bottom of Toggenburg with the opening
piano notes of Elton John on the A.M. station,

watching your older sister with her long
blond hair put the car in park, and you

both buckle your ski boots from the front
seat, each door open wide while Elton sings

“It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside…”
And you think your four-years-older sister

with an endless string of boy-
friends must have someone who croons

this song about her, but how
can anyone mistake sky

blues for green? And anyway,
what I mean to say is,

it was more a hill than a mountain
when I sang along. 

**Thanks, E. Elizabeth Beck, for the prompt at Samantha Ratcliffe’s series!

The lingering scent of sunscreen fades, as warm night air begins to ease. My favorite sight, where moonlight braids through branches, whispering through the trees.

It showers down on the barn’s tin roof, a scent of woodsmoke, softly curled. Colors pop, we grin within, as doo-wop sways our summer world.

The Cake
What do you want?
I already know.
You’re trying to #%!@ and eat it, too.
You’re trying to have your cake and eat it, too.
Kate and Edith, too.
Both of us,
Have two.
Because you don’t want to have to
Choose.
You’d rather me hop out
of the equation so you don’t have to opt out.
The cop out.

The Circus 
You’re juggling too many and I don’t wanna be part of the circus.
It’s not worth it. 
I’m trying to be on the trapeze.
Not on the same level or surface,
with some clowns.
I’m above this;
too skilled to be a sideshow performance.

The Cut
I like him and 
he likes me
but he likes she
and she’s in deep
Definitely seems
he’s in between
and there’s more lean
toward her versus me
So there’s no we
and no waiting 
Though it stings
and it stinks
I can’t have strings
attached so 
I have to detach

So, time is like a bottom locker in the men’s changing room at a strip mall gym.
The gym stays open twenty-four hours, seven days a week,
Except for the next two weeks when we’ll be closed for renovations.
So, first I notice all the vents in the doors of the lockers
Have scraps of paper taped over from the inside.
This will prevent over spray from leaking in
When the outside gets painted to match the new color scheme.
Everything used to be purple—a radiant, insisting on itself sort of purple.
The designer we hired suggested sea foam green. Weird
Choice for a box for socks and running shoes,
I thought, but she’s the professional and what do I know.

Anyway, like I was saying, the bottom locker, the one that represents time,
Got the tape like it was supposed to. But the one right above…
Just go across, two sheets of paper, four pieces of tape, each locker, two rows.
Skirting the edge of the county, in the gap between here and there,
How many lockers could this discount fitness fortress need? 32? 43?
Just why anyone would need to take their p.m. smoke break
In the midst of prepping the few lockers for painting
I’ll never be able to guess, but that’s what they did,
Or something else sidetracked their work; point is they skipped one.
Specifically, (you might have seen this coming), they skipped the locker right above the bottom locker symbolizing time.
Because of this, beads of enamel entered through two sets of three slits each,
Dripped down the door’s inside face, and pooled in a resoivoir,
Right at the base of the bottom locker’s latch, and we didn’t notice
Until the paint had dried and sealed the door shut for good.
Now we assume it’s empty, but I don’t see you either placing bets on the void.
Strange liquids abound: milk, honey, antifreeze, and bile.
All the sweaty towels, cold compress breadbags, and forsaken ice cream cones,
Guys love to stow away in here. At this point anything could be growing.