The clock keeps time tic toc Round and round again, our ordered nonsensetracks like a fuguey finger exerciserattles our bones, we play like we’re about to start cryingwhile the tension of a steady beat, beats steadyhalts the nonsense of tears, shakes floorboardsand walls instead. Woman at the window watches rain waters rise and the land … Continue reading Play Like You Are About to Start Crying
Tell About That One
When you moved again,deciding which pieces to bringwith you took days. Disappearing roomsdisappeared objets d’art. Yourfamiliar touchstones were spirited awayalong with your memorieswhich still totter in a multitudeof worlds lately, but you hold onto a familiar question: “tell me a storyabout that”.We saved a few treasures in the purge.The too-large postmodern painting of adistorted violin … Continue reading Tell About That One
Why I Am
Remember the spooky French Horn theme in Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (Op. 67, a “symphonic tale for children”)? The sound of the wolf brought tears to my eyes and so of coursea few years later, I asked to play the horn. “Musician!”, the grown ups proclaimed, and so I was, finding myself lost … Continue reading Why I Am
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Everything
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Everything has started a movement to compel cooks to put their vegetables into boiling water as this kills them quicker than the barbarous method of putting them into the cold and letting the water come to a boil.Lewiston Evening Journal Maine, January 20,1917.A late joiner of the … Continue reading The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Everything
Housekeeping: a book forgotten now remembered
Forest dark moss covered rooted & Vined newspapers piled wet smell the lake maybe a bleached skull or maybe the name of a town Fingerbone battered walking boots sagging porch orphaned girls The mystery of Sylvie her Solitude her wandering her train trestle traipse her cardboard closet the eternal question stay or move on I … Continue reading Housekeeping: a book forgotten now remembered
Clair de lune
I sit yards away, near her, but this moment, she's so far from me, her eyes on the page her hands moving up and down keys, black and white against the olive-green antiqued upright our father brought home for her. Already at four I know the line I cannot cross to reach her when walls … Continue reading Clair de lune
Vanishing Point
As children, we peered over black music stands, deep eye flirtations across a roomful of glinting brass. You liked my long brown braids, I liked your Jack Purcell sneakers. You hid poems In my locker. We grew up, went walking, and heat rose in the spaces between us where we never ever touched. And all … Continue reading Vanishing Point
Old Trees, Level Distance
Based on an 11th Century Landscape by Guo Xi NaPoWriMo 2021 Preview Prompt: Ekphrasis Friend, I’ll meet you on the bridge In the mist shall we walk together? Last year we were young when we said goodbye Now our hands resemble twisting branches You stoop where once you stood tall, jacket threads trailing My hair, … Continue reading Old Trees, Level Distance
Days 10& 11
(Travelers Day) Highway Strange Road Follow the signs ******* Floriography; Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose Alas, poor heart, mine bends, it bleeds They grow then fly like milkweed seeds In sweetness as a soft breeze blows Carnation Lily, Lily Rose In summer days the garden lit with fireflies in bottles fit to open wide, you let … Continue reading Days 10& 11
(day 6)Crucifixion -Hell Harp
As a boy I sat on the corner near the old town men with Lute and Lyre. Their sad songs filled my throat, and from my toes to my eyes I swam invisible waters rippling in space from the sound of fingertips on gutwire. Many a time I thought I could die there, in the … Continue reading (day 6)Crucifixion -Hell Harp
Early Morning Poems 