My poem “Ghazal to the Night,” is up at Eclectica.
I enjoy working with this form. It’s a bit challenging, but ultimately rewarding. For a little information on ghazals, you might read this article at poets.org. Superb examples abound in Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, edited by Agha Shahid Ali. The introduction alone is worth the cover price.
I’m delighted to have two haibun and another short piece in the Summer 2018 Showcase at The Zen Space. Many thanks to editor Marie Marshall for taking these pieces.
This first appeared in 1988, in Aileron. At the time I was experimenting with movement and breath and line, and wrote quite a few of these meditations in this form, some more successful than others.
* * *
where breath begins
it ends consider
light its secret
structure the sense
of limit defined
if a hand
recalls what the
eye cannot which
is the source
of remembrance one
touches more deeply
or allows itself
to be touched
a difference only
in the approach
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
We can all use a helping hand from time to time.
These guys are awesome. Happy 4th of July!
Sometimes Love is a Dry Gutter
Or a restless leaf, a footprint.
Is fault on a blameless day,
scrawled on a washed-out sky.
My friend’s music orbits his home,
worms through the cracks
in the bluest lines, ever new
and permanent, staining even his hope
long after the lights stutter away.
And the rain’s attenuated sorrows?
They’re coming, he says. Like goats
through a fence. Like lava. Like tomorrow.
“Sometimes Love is a Dry Gutter” was first featured at Vox Populi in January 2017. I’m grateful to editor Michael Sims for supporting my work.
Even the Sotol Believes
If we must discuss logographic systems, let us begin with fish.
And how might one mistake an entrance for a perch?
A movable rod for a desert spoon?
Today’s lesson excludes a poorly rendered door.
Hinges are merely mechanical joints, the origin of which means to hang. Concentrate there.
D is the tenth most frequently used letter in English.
Depicted on rock wall paintings, the sotol has provided food, sandals,
blankets, ropes, tools and spirits for millennia.
Slow cook the roots for three nights, crush, then ferment for seventy-two hours in
champagne yeast. Distill, then age in French oak.
We shall neither open nor close, nor mention those things that do.
Like bivalves. Bottles. Eyes. Shops. Caskets. Books. Mouths. Circuits.
Its flower stalk rises up to fifteen feet. Its leaves are long, thin and barbed.
Surrounded by orange ochre flames and black smoke, the sotol spirit appears.
Dalet will not enter our vocabulary today.
Originally published in Otoliths 41 (October 2013), and most recently posted here in May 2017.
* * *
My poem “Letter to Schwaner from the Toad-Swallowed Moon” was first published at The Hamilton Stone Review in October 2017. Much gratitude to editor Roger Mitchell for taking this piece.
Ikebana (You without You)
Between frames, between presence and negation, authority.
If your body lies in the earth, why are you here?
Limits admired and sought: the way of the flower.
I pluck leaves from the lower half to achieve balance.
Shape and line detach, yet comprise the whole.
My father, awake in his chair, mourns quietly.
A naked twig forms one point of the scalene triangle.
Starkness implies silence, resonates depth.
Heaven, earth, man, sun and moon invoke your absence.
As you trickle through the interval’s night.
* * *
Ikebana is the art of Japanese flower arrangement.
This first appeared on the blog in March 2016, and is included in my mini-digital chapbook, Interval’s Night, published by Platypus Press in December 2016, and available via free download.
O at the Edges 