Prose
long ago, and far away
long ago, and not so long ago all of this seemed possible I thought to myself that I could be a writer you know, make a real go of it sometimes, on sunrise mornings even saying so– out loud tho, I’d been alone at the time
limits of dare
This disregarded fan spins madly above my head, wobbling in space, looking as though it might fall from its heavens in exhaustion at any moment, yet it never does. Instead, it perseveres, dutifully spinning on it wobbling voyage to nowhere, without questioning why, or if, it should continue. It just keeps spinning, furtively, presumably out […]
angels’ sanctuary
Will you remember me when all the false lovers have gone, when the warm wind chases across the desert of a soul, searching, loosed from the embrace which’d held it once tight to the bosom, will you remember my name, love, will you whisper it softly, to the angels, wherever they’ve found sanctuary?
top-shelf dreams
We kept our dreams on the top shelf, with the good liquor, tucked to the back, out of reach, saved for a time to come, saved for someday– but we both knew; each of the days pulled over the shadowy edge, swimming into earth’s arched-spine spinning ecstasy, explodes into her moist middle, tho never impregnating […]
simplicity
A mind grows weary of the rain’s falling assault, tho the sky never tires of its gray churn, and a mind starts to wonder– what is it under this spray-vandal’s heaven, that is real? Is any of this– sincerity, or is falsity the only sincerity which has ever been? Is there anyone– truthful, under this […]
promise
To see only his eyes, black and narrow, without any shine, any reflection, from outside, nor within, you wouldn’t know if he were alive, or waxen. We were high on mescaline, and I watched Leo change from nothing, to something, a dark King, and then back to nothing, but colored blood-red this time. At least […]
Late December
“I’ll be back in town in late December. I’ve got to stop by to see you. You’ve been so much help.” Her voice over the phone carried her decades, each a splintered-wood ship tossing on blue-waves’ ebbing persistence. Hoarse and smoky, she insisted. She told me her daughter worked at the corner bar in town. […]
wings of brass
What will we do with these years remaining, love? Now that all the gods are slain by our introspection, now that sunsets’ once playful pink-cotton foretells only night’s panicked, chirping-insect void, what shall we do with the stilled-scream horror of ourselves, as it sits lonesome and warted, hunched and spiny, digging its claws into gray-wrinkle […]
Atop the Shimmer
Most of what I am to you now, to anyone, is the drunken musk of memory; I am aware, and was– before the sun considered rising over our wishfulness. Choose your poem, choose your sunshine-afternoon and pin its photo to the wall, and try, love, try– not to look too deeply into its shadows, tho […]
golden-afternoon memory
Even as you are gone from what we were, only the shadowy-well ache remaining, this howling void stays– the most potent reminder– these words, all that I am, wish only to fill the emptiness; these words wish– if only once, if only for the rustling leaf-turn of a golden-afternoon memory, your singular and acute understanding.