Tag Archives: life

In the Garden of Wind’s Delight

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In the Garden of Wind’s Delight

Faltering, it drifts
to a stop, rests for a moment
before fluttering to its end.

It is good to be sound.
It is good to trickle through holes.
It is good to be old
even if just one of a crowd.

These notes serve no purpose
yet they linger beyond
their existence.

I listen to their past
for their future. Where are you?
I ask. What is your true name?

 

 

“In the Garden of WInd’s Delight” appeared in July 2019 in Nine Muses Poetry. Thank you, Annest Gwilym, for taking this piece.

 

 

 

Sunday, June

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Sunday, June

Trying to give, I fail too often.
But this day we prepare for you
food that your beloved often cooked,
made with the ingredients of 19,000
nights and promises of more to come.
These potatoes. That beef, the fruit.
Simple, and yet so difficult to reproduce.
Even the recipe is incomplete. “Some
mayonnaise,” it says, then “mustard,”
but not whether dry or prepared, and
the amount is unclear. Yet the results
transport you to stronger days, to
the clear-eyed self and limitless
possibilities, meals on the table
at five o’clock, the satisfaction of work
well done, knowing that you have soared
above your father’s imprecations
but never beyond love’s touch, her
sleepy murmurs, morning coffee,
burnished histories and late cigarettes,
the tulips on the soil you’ll soon share.

 

“Sunday, June” first appeared in the print journal Nourish in March 2018.

Glass with Memory

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Glass with Memory

When I remember you
glass comes to mind,
but nothing so transparent
as an unclothed thought

or warmth trickling in
through the pipes or
under the haze of
the second night’s sheet,

no two alike except
in appearance, but under
the lamp’s unconscious glare
I find warmth spreading

across the hard surface,
telling me all is
not lost, that smoothness
persists beyond our reflection.

 

glass

 

“Glass with Memory” made its first appearance on the blog in February 2017.

 

 

Poems Up at Circle Show

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My poems “Vision in Far Infrared” and “I Look for You with Satellite View” have been published at Circle Show. I am grateful to the Seven Circle Press team for accepting these two pieces, which were drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 fundraiser. Thank you Angela for sponsoring “Vision in Far Infrared” and providing the title and these three words: nebulosity, eon and maelstrom, and thank you, Ken Gierke, for sponsoring and providing the title to “I Look for You with Satellite View.”

Two Poems Up at Ligeia

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My poems “Moonwalker” and “Take Another Piece of My Heart” were published in Ligeia’s Winter 2019 edition.  Many thanks to poetry editor Ashley Wagner for taking these poems. I’m also grateful to Tami Wright for providing the title and sponsoring “Take Another Piece of My Heart” in the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 fundraiser.

 

 

Political Haibun

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Political Haibun

The wind knows impermanence but does not trust it.
Dependent upon atmospheric pressure, absorption
and rotation, who can blame the wind? We, too,
lend ourselves illusions, only to barter them away.
Three miles for a beer. Seven seconds for a fresh look.
A dollar extended for every five stolen. Empathy,
but only for the wealthy. Electing liars to office,
we justify our actions with more untruths. Nothing
improves. Even the quality of lies diminishes.

yellowed grass bending

under the sun’s weight

god’s will, they say

 

 

Not Blame Your Pleasure

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bike

 

Not Blame Your Pleasure

Because vision limits options, I close my eyes.

Becoming urges patience.

The morning after I didn’t die, I took breakfast in bed.

Arrival stamps the difference between waiting and choice.

Expectation, too, extends its squeeze, rendering sleep impossible.

I ride the bike and go nowhere, or walk steadily, covering the same ground.

Which will claim me first? An occlusion, gravity or unchecked growth?

Anticipation replaces one sigh with another: I have three falls from two roofs.

A friend has named me executor of his estate, and now the race is on.

The path to the void seems straight only near its end.

My ashes will one day soil someone’s morning.

 

ladder

“Not Blame Your Pleasure” first appeared here in November 2015.

 

Mockingbird III

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Mockingbird III

Songs, returned
to their space

within the sphere of
movement, the patterns inscribed
as if to touch the face of every

wind: here one moment, then
gone. This quickness delights us.
How, then, do we so often forget

those things we share? Night
comes and goes to another’s
phrase, yet each note is so precisely

placed, so carefully rendered
that we hear only the voice, not its source.

 

* * *

Another piece from the 80s. This first appeared here in March 2015, and would likely be a much longer poem if I were to write it today.

 

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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.

 

image

 

“Let It Remain” first appeared here in September 2015.

 

From Alternative Fiction & Poetry (1987)

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(This first appeared here in March 2014).

Quite the interesting mag back in the day. This particular issue saw the likes of Bukowski, Ivan Arguelles, Lyn Lifshin, Norm Moser, Sheila E. Murphy, and, well, me, among others. I was thinner back then, as was my poetry.

 

no more than
the slow grace
of light turning

the leaf so
patient in the
air and colder

now that sense
of permanence unfurled
it is not

long to wait
as Wang Wei
said in his

letter I listen
for a sound
but hear none

 

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