Category Archives: poem

Self-Portrait with Blue

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Blue

Self-Portrait with Blue

Darker shades contain black or grey. I claim
the median and the shortened spectrum, near dawn’s terminus.

In many languages, one word describes both blue and green.

Homer had no word for it.

The color of moonlight and bruises, of melancholy and unmet
expectation, it cools and calms, and slows the heart.

Woad. Indigo. Azurite. Lapis lazuli. Dyes. Minerals. Words. Alchemy. 

On this clear day I stretch my body on the pond’s surface and submerge.

Not quite of earth, blue protects the dead against evil in the afterlife, 
and offers the living solace through flatted notes and blurred 7ths.

Blue eyes contain no blue pigment.

In China, it is associated with torment. In Turkey, with mourning.

Between despair and clarity, reflection and detachment,
admit the leaves and sky, the ocean, the earth.

Water captures the red, but reflects and scatters blue.

Look to me and absorb, and absorbing, perceive.

This originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait Series, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, scheduled to be published on October 15.

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My Chapbook, THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF OTHER, is Included in the Silver Birch Press Chapbook Collection IDES

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My chapbook, The Circumference of Other, is one of fifteen contained in Ides, the Silver Birch Press one-volume collection of chapbooks scheduled to be released on October 15, 2015. Ides is priced at $15, and rounds out at 283 pages. I believe it will be available through Amazon. Many thanks to editor and publisher Melanie Villines for including my work alongside that of such a fantastic group of poets.

Let It Remain

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Let It Remain

Comfort of name,
of pleasure

freshened in
repetition, unformed

pears falling, and
the mockingbird’s

inability
to complete

another’s song.
I will take no

moment
from this day

but let it remain
here in the knowing,

in the tyranny
of the absolute

and its enforced
rhythm desiring

both flight and
maturation,

the ecstasy
of fruit grown full.

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Yesenin

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Yesenin

Respite, involuntary and gentle
circling one’s
collar, a touch barely felt, renewed.

Or, the other turns,
belying expression and the halted voice.

The recursive window, closing.
A final poem in blood.

And beyond the glass? The face behind
the indifferent mask
designs its own

smile, risking everything
as the chair’s leg tilts,

inertia become constriction,
the taut lapse begun.

A fascinating poet, Sergei Yesenin died nearly 90 years ago. You might check out his bio on wikipedia.

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This is Not Just to Say

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This is Not Just to Say

Okay. I ate the damned
plums. But it’s not my

fault you left them
sitting there on the top

shelf, so sweet, so cold,
enticing me, as only

you, or perhaps a ripe
peach, or strawberries,

or Asian pears or even
pomegranates, can do.

Besides, you need
something substantial

for breakfast. How about
donuts, or bacon, instead?

My apologies to WCW, but I couldn’t resist. You can find the original Williams poem here.

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At Sunrise We Celebrate the Night’s Passage

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sunrise

At Sunrise We Celebrate the Night’s Passage

And discuss not the darkness of crows, but the structure of phonemes
embedded in our names, the gratitude of old fences, of broken

circles and extinguished flame.

Two weeks ago he poured wine and declared himself Dog.

There are roosters, too, who cannot crow,
other speechless men, and lonely burros guarding brush piles.

What letters form silence? From what shapes do we draw this day?

Light filters through the cedars and minutes retract,

as the bull’s horns point first this way, then that, lowering themselves
through the millennia, becoming, finally, A as we know it.

With my tongue, I probe the space emptied of tooth.

Barbed wire was designed to repel, but when cut sometimes curls

and grabs, relinquishing its hold only by force or careful negotiation.
Symbols represent these distinct units of sound.

My name is two houses surrounding an eye.

Yours consists of teeth, the bull, an arm, the ox goad.

barb

Originally published in Prime Number Magazine, one of my favorite online literary journals, in 2013:

http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/Issue41.html

Flowers

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Flowers

How they share our
desires, shape
our days.

Passion to hope,
fingertips to
lips. Some bud

easily, others
struggle. A little
water, light, a kind

voice. Sometimes so
little achieves
so much. Yesterday’s

sunflower droops on
the sill. Today’s promise
arrives with rain.

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What Edges Hold

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TorilCave

What Edges Hold

By which I mean those lines framed in certainty: the demarcation of sunlight and shadow. Kami signifies not spirit, but rather that force above man.

Never religion, but life itself: the mountains, trees, the rocks. Lightning.

Or waves, thundering off the coast, lured by the moon.

Stirring the water with a spear, Izanagi dripped an island into being.
Separate the ordinary through limitation, by practice, by ritual and space.

Another night in the twisted trees. The god-shelf.

Recognize that wind respects no borders.

Knowing that to the east questions may respond to answers I have long
suspected, I look elsewhere. After the vowel, the consonant. 

Though torii differ in style, each retains two posts and a crosspiece.

After the consonant, the winnowed tunnel, extinguished light.

At the gate, bow respectfully, then enter. Ladle water from right to left, 
then left to right. Pour it into your left hand, then cleanse your mouth.

Invert and regard the precipice.

I have placed one foot in their sphere. The other still searches.

This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month Celebration.

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Texas Haibun

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Originally posted in February, 2014.

This is my first attempt at a haibun. Please forgive my transgressions.

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Texas Haibun

I dream of poetry in all its forms, rising and flowing and subsiding without end, much like ice shrugging within itself. Last winter a hard freeze split a valve on the downstream side of the cistern. Had it cracked even a few inches up-line there would have been no need to replace the valve.

captive rain recalls
its journey towards the ground
the garden returns

The well terminates at 280 feet. The water is hard, but cool, and tastes of dark limestone and ancient rains.

Even the gnarled live oaks have dropped their leaves. Grass crunches underfoot and smells like dead insects and dried herbs. Mosquitoes have vanished. Only the prickly pears thrive. Their flowers are bright yellow and bloom a few days each year.

sauteed with garlic
nopalitos on my plate
their thorns, forgiven

I wipe sweat from my forehead with the back of the glove, and wonder how many ounces of fluid have passed through my body this year, how the rain navigates from clouds through layers of soil and stone, only to return, how a cold beer might feel sliding down my throat.

stoking the fire
winter rain whispers to me
forget tomorrow

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I Have Misplaced Entire Languages

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ships

I Have Misplaced Entire Languages

Neither this tongue nor that still dwells in my house.
The hole of remembrance constricts, leaving behind only debris.

As a child I mixed three languages in family discourse.

Now only one is comprehensible, and I abuse it daily.

The woman in the blue dress stands alone on the pier, weeping.
A pidgin is a simplified language developed between groups with no

common tongue. Sounds form easily, but meanings struggle.

My father is shipped to Korea without warning.

Some words insert epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. Years
later we arrive in Italy and my mother starts receding.

A fourth language emerges.

This morning I asked, “Ame?” “Yes,” she said, “but just drizzling.”

Some families share no common language and must forge without.
We have used pain, pane and pan without reference to etymology.

Having abandoned the familiar, she chose another, never accepting the loss.

These forms we can’t articulate, these memories we have not traced.

This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month Celebration.

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