Tag Archives: life

Having Survived Myself I Lean Away

Posted on by
24

Survival

Having Survived Myself I Lean Away 

You know that
but not
why

the mockingbird mocks,
or how one note

marries others,
forming blissful

chords. And the skies
flaring each night

betraying your willful
ignorance,

while you paint
the words for love

in seven languages
you can’t
speak.

Where are you now,

whose bodies
have you denied,

wrapped in linen,
bagged or boxed,
arriving unseen?

Sagging, I observe your
counted victories, the
smirk claiming

exceptionalism
and destiny or
nobility of purpose,

as even your own shadow
recoils.

cemetery

This first appeared here in October 2015.

Painting

Posted on by
22

spiral

Painting

But completion
arrives in the most

limited sense,
outlines enriched and

filled with lush
darkness, the red of

an accumulated passion
for texture, for subtlety in

shade, the tactile being
one facet shared with

odor and the black hand
on the wall, the

staircase spiraling
upward, resultant desire,

body of lust, this wall, our
doing, the gathered home.

black hand

“Painting” first appeared here in December 2015.

Recording of “Scarecrow Considers the Afterlife”

Posted on by
10

Scarecrow and Friends

You might read the poem at Eclectica, where it was published with two companion pieces.

 

Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try

Posted on by
31

Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try

Having fallen from the roof not once, but twice,
I verify that it is not the fall but the sudden stop that hurts.

The objectivist sense of the little: the and a, my house in this world.

Galileo postulated that gravity accelerates all falling bodies at the same rate.

While their etymologies differ, failure and fall share commonalities,
though terminal velocity is not one.

The distance between the glimpsed and the demonstrated.

Enthralled in the moment, Icarus drowned.

Rumor has it his plunge was due not to melting wax but to an improper mix
of rectrices and remiges: parental failure.

Thrust and lift. Drag. Resistance.

Acknowledgment of form in reality, in things.

When the produced drag force equals the plummeting object’s weight, the
object will cease to accelerate and will move at a constant speed.

To calculate impact force accurately, include the stopping distance in height.

Followed by long periods of silence.

house

This first appeared on the blog in December 2015.

3 Poems Up at Quiet Letter

Posted on by
26

stroller

I’m delighted to announce that three of my poems are live at Quiet Letter. The three (“Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine,” “Strollermelon,” and “Memory and Closets“), were written during the 30/30 challenges I undertook during the past two Augusts to raise funds for Tupelo Press, a non-profit literary publisher.

Apricot Wood

Posted on by
8

clouds

“Apricot Wood,” is included in my chapbook , If Your Matter Could Reform, and was featured on Autumn Sky Poetry Daily in March 2015

Apricot Wood

I built a frame of apricot
wood. This was for you. The clouds float
through it even as I sleep. You wrote
once of wild herbs gathered and brought
to a lovely girl, an offering not
of passion but of some remote
desire to hear a word from the throat
of the Lord Within Clouds. I thought
of this as I chiseled the wood.
Last night it rained. I listened to
it from my bed by the open
window, hoping that the clouds would
not leave. This morning two birds flew
by. It is raining again.

file8641239202119

The Geography of Silence

Posted on by
34

laundry

 

The Geography of Silence

 

1. Laundry drooping at midday.

2. She dreams off-key, in pastels.

3. With misunderstanding comes anger.

4. Mata! Mata! Again!

5.  Ashes crossing the ocean.

6.  Sweat, and the taste of separation.

7.  Reaching for past moons, she cries.

8.  Death’s shade.

9.  Rice.

10.  Self-sacrifice, the centered gift.

11. Inward, always. Inward.

telescope map

“The Geography of Silence” first appeared here in March 2016.

One

Posted on by
50

number-one


One

I am Brahma
the straight line, the upright being,

fire that flares,
seed without end, manifold

self beyond all
polarity, radiating sun:
the all.

Philosophers considered one a non-number,
generatrix of all that follows.

Other.

The singularity. The lone.

From the Indo-European oi-qos we achieve solitude,
while the collective meaning of one derives from the Sanskrit sam.

United in itself, it changes nothing,
becoming everything.

On its side it represents the horizon.

Alone is all-one.
The Latin non is one negated, as is the German nein.

Symbol of intellect, the Hindu moon glows wide.
Atomic number of hydrogen, magician’s numeral,

monad and eccentric, I bear the empty product.

one on side

“One” first appeared here in February 2016.

Water Witching, We Hear

Posted on by
48

dry

 

 

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.

 

 

National Poetry Month: A Few of My Favorite Poems & Poets

Posted on by
59

I love these poems and poets for various reasons – technique, beauty of language, intellect, rigor – but mostly, their words burrow into my brain and won’t quit whispering to me…

Jane Hirshfield, “Not Moving Even One Step”

Carolyn Forche, “The Colonel”

Arthur Sze: “Kintsugi”

Antonella Anedda: “A Winter Night in the City”

James Wright: “To the Saguaro Cactus Tree in the Desert Rain”

Camille Dungy, “Association Copy”

Who are your favorites? Link in the comments.