My poem “The Inside Twitch” is live at Exilé Sans Frontières, a new international publication. Thank you to editors Daniel Nemo and Pryscilla Hebel for taking this piece.
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Poem Live at Exilé Sans Frontières
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Tag Archives: creative writing
Shaping (Haibun)
Shaping (Haibun)
He needed to shape things, make them his. Stones in the garden, carved wooden bookstands, the absence of light in certain corners of the house, all captured this need. His was not so much a desire for control as a means of learning, of observing and participating in processes not ordinarily viewed as such. To watch shadows develop in the presence of trees and vine-covered walls, flowering for brief moments, their entire lives encompassed in seconds: he wanted to hold and be held, to breathe in what the air brought him and return what he could. To live.
what greeting is this?
bugs tapping at my window
tell me winter’s gone
In the evening he often sat in a room lit only by a candle in an old iron lantern. He preferred candlelight for it did not obliterate darkness as did the electric lamps, but diminished it, allowing a room new life. Each crevice in the book shelves became a new world, each doorway an entrance to something beyond one’s perceptions of black and white, the difference of moon and sun. Corners lost their edges. Shadows flowered with every movement of the candle’s flame, became hands without bodies, fingers tapping time to an unheard music.
no gods in this room
singing the blues
darkness lights the way
Water Witching, We Hearn
Water Witching, We Hear
The rattle of stalks
along dirt roads,
whispery days
sifting through
parched
light,
you say
patience, my
friend, and again,
patience.
* * *
“Water Witching, We Hear” first appeared on the blog in April 2017.
Some Dogs Are Larger Than Others
Some Dogs are Larger Than Others
How he stares
at you,
relentless
in his desire,
offering
belly to scratch
and head to pet
just when you most
need them,
even if
you don’t know it,
then curling
against you, saying
in the language
of warmth and fur,
this, just this.
* * *
“Some Dogs are Larger Than Others” first appeared here in January 2017.
Forecast
Forecast
Does the peach
blossom
count its
numbered days
in the lure of false
spring?
Smiling, you admit pleasure
in cruelty,
in assigning lots
to the relief of those
never called,
and those whose answers
remain open,
unfixed.
The freeze is coming,
you say.
Let us pray.
This first appeared here in January 2017.
Portrait in Ash
Portrait in Ash
In summer, sweet crushed ice, and crickets pulsing through the night.
Brake lights, and always the blurred memory of nicotine.
I recall running through the glow, laughing, fingers splayed forward,
and the ensuing sharp admonishment.
Steel, flint and spark. Blackened linings and diminishment.
How many washings must one endure to accept an indelible soiling?
In retrospect, your body still resists.
Lovely smoke uncoiling towards the moon, residue of impurities
and substance. Desire, freed and returning.
You dwell underground. I gaze at the cloud-marred sky.
* * *
“Portrait in Ash” appears in Interval’s Night, a mini-digital chapbook, available for free download from Platypus Press.
Celan, 1970
Celan, 1970
From frame to door,
the obvious defers, denying
entry as if
an eye could reclaim
or separate
the fallen tear
and the river’s skin,
or return
those words to
thought, water to
stone, intent
to cold
reason,
now to before.
He stepped into release.
* * *
“Celan, 1970” first appeared in October 2015. One of the most influential (and difficult) European poets of the 20th century, Paul Celan survived the horror of World War II but never escaped its shadow. A brief biography may be found here.
We Call the Neighbor’s Fat Burro Donkey Hotei, but His Name is Cantinflas
We Call the Neighbor’s Fat Burro Donkey Hotei, but His Name is Cantinflas
Certainty grows in corners, away from light.
From his mouth issues the breath we take, the words we keep.
Enjoy the collusion of shape and sound.
We share the hummingbird’s taste for sweet, but not its fierceness.
Its heart beats 1,200 times a minute,
and you ask me how best to bury money.
Hotei’s name means cloth sack, and comes from the bag he carried;
a man of loving character, he possessed the Buddha nature.
What we own cannot be held.
Most plastics are organic polymers with spine-linked repeat units.
The space you’ve left expands exponentially.
Left in the rain, the bell grows.
Christen me at your own peril. Agaves flower once then die.
Fluency in silence.
I dropped my pants when the scorpion stung my thigh.
The wind takes nothing it does not want.
After vulcanization, thermosets remain solid.
The Cantinflas character was famous for his eloquent nonsense.
Vacuum wrap the bills in plastic, place them in pvc.
Having mastered imperfection, I turn to folly.
Not the thing itself, but the process laid bare and opened.
Hoping to hide, the scorpion scuttled under a boot.
Thought to action, whisper to knife: which is not a curse?
The wind wants nothing; the burro sings his loneliness.
This first appeared here in May 2015. My failures often lead to success. I’ve never quite completed this piece, and don’t know that I ever will. But the first draft (nearly five years ago) set me off on a new path, one that has served me well. What more can I ask?
The Simplest Coercion
The Simplest Coercion
Each portrait betrays a similar
attraction: faces
swallowed by the artist’s
eye, his sight being
beyond optic, that assumption
inherent in every expression
but one. Yet this, the self-
portrait, reveals a hint
of secrets – an unwillingness
to confront,
the simplest coercion.
* * *
Another piece from the 80s…
This first appeared on the blog in May 2015.
To That Dismal Train Somewhere Near Banff
To That Dismal Train Somewhere Near Banff
Forgotten, you settle into the earth,
naming stones for each destination missed –
Kamloops, Jasper, Lake Louise – which is worth
each open-mouthed coin laid on the rail, kissed
and reformed into altered currency
no longer capable of carrying
debt or a tourist’s sense of urgency,
only dying days and the wearying
plight of the unmoved. If vines caress your
body, who’s to blame for accepting their
advances? When green subsumes rust, deplore
that too, but enjoy the moments you share,
leaf on metal and glass, the raspy light
tonguing your throat through those long, whistling nights.
O at the Edges 