You Started This Blog, Now Write

I can’t count the number of times I have exhorted myself to sit down and write on this damn blog. I sit in front of wonderful technology, with multiple screens, and everything that I need literally at my fingertips, and I can’t do it. As I age, I feel myself becoming more careful, more conservative. [...]

20-20

I. There was a woman Who I loved with all my heart. It’s the only way I know how to love. The problem I have With falling in love Is that I just keep falling And falling on through. It’s a perpetual autumn; Storming leaves of memories, Possibilities, Skeletal trees. And turning my collar up [...]

Far Reaching Visions

Inside, a glowing silver sliver A secret, a blossom. Hush now, stop grinning madly. Cup it, feel it, close your eyes; Potential beading like dew On electric arms reaching. Promises made to be kept Keeping on, sparks flying, We reforge the sword With breath and sound, Far reaching vision, Laughter and love. Wave aside the [...]

Realized

Three nights I have lain awake Storming through half-sleep dreams And possibilities, thoughts, Mental magical carpets, Half real, half realized; Doors half opened and swinging Smooth computers peripherally Analyzing and verifying Believing yet incredulous Of the panoramic impossibility. The stark lightning of imagination Energized and rampantly naked; Leaping obstacles with merry, nimble feet Barely touching [...]

Hang On to the Rope

I wish I could string and sell These beads of sweat; They keep dripping in my eyes And leaping From the tip of my nose. I can’t stop pulling on this rope – The mine car can’t slip any further Down those tracks. I don’t know why I took this job But it’s a challenge [...]

Fire and Frogs and Falcons

Oh how I wish I still had my voice Full of fire and frogs and falcons, Wisdom, water, and wedding songs. Something is quenched within me now, No time for me to find out how, To prevent this erosion of my character. Once upon a time I thought I’d never stop I wrote until my [...]

Rioting Raindrops

The rain came down Like cartoon anvils, Spending itself on the cement In an assault on the town. The parachute-less troops Gathered in the low-lying spots And took over the streets In order to regroup. Rioting raindrops, Seething and churning, Swallowing curbs and sidewalks And the floors of a few shops. En masse, they moved [...]

Remember This in Time

I promise that someday I will be faithful To my journal again. Another sacrifice To the fires of my economy. The poet-sap has dried, Hardened to a cloudy yellow But I guess beneath This bark I’ve grown, The blood still boils And the words still run Like antelopes or Like a persistant brook.

Once Upon a Sky

Once upon a sky, I saw, imprinted: smoke from the pretty bonfire of each lie, lie, lie. I saw this thread from afar, black and hanging from God’s suit: my hair stood on end from the heat; it’s burning bright like a star. The twin scratches at my insides, carving words in my skin, inciting [...]

THIS BRIGHT LIGHT

Ah, this bright light – I was a closet Vampyre, dancing on cardboard tombstones with flexible skeletons who beat chopsticks on overturned Folger’s coffee cans – it shrivels the flesh and weakens the bones. I’ve heard of the process of aging before, from people older than I (that was all that mattered back then), but [...]

The Blessed Heart Sacred Moon Wanderlust Spelunking Club

I am the sole member of the The Blessed Heart Sacred Moon Wanderlust Spelunking Club and I lead myself through the Scottish bogs under a sky liberally sprinkled with the Milky Way galaxy. Wet shoes and grey spirits, feather boa fog tendrils bathing my sock-tops, no compass points me to my Holy Grail. Two kittens [...]

Balancing Act

When does it all come crashing down; a sawed-through tree trunk, an old building downtown – this balancing act of teacups and champagne flutes, china, crystal, candles, coffee, coriander and cinnamon. Sanity on low wattage wire heating up in the house walls threatening to start a fire when the force of gravity falls.

The Cataclysm of the Mirror

I’m looking at myself in the mirror and wondering who the fuck I am – wire-rim glasses, two day old growth of beard; cigarette dangling from my lower lip. FUCKING POETRY – I’ve been gone so long, writing to myself, watching my pen bleed from word to word across the page, tasting every letter, thinking [...]

I Can’t Breathe

why can’t I just be another guy? but I’m a person with a snake-sharp tongue and I’m a ripped flannel… I shoot my mouth like a shotgun. riddles and rhyming and rhythm, not taken seriously enough to stay honest just another number in the GTE phone list. I lie and I lie and I lie [...]

An Ill-Made Candle

you almost caught your room on fire with an ill-made candle; but forever with me is the image I have when you explained that you rushed it outside burning your hands naked and dripping from the bath and dashed it to the ground. all I came by to see was a broken ceramic plate and [...]

Black Jack

I and when the madness comes she creeps around the corridors, pausing to stomp on cats’ tails pausing to drive in rusty nails and slam subconscious doors behind my eyes. II it would be easy one day to fall down and stay, not moving, wherever I was and not respond to my rescuers; to get [...]

The Prince of Spring

for all of my twenty years I have had one healthy fear: that Love will find me cold and dry for being a Prince and held so high, but my heart longs for fiery blood, wide-open eyes and Love, true Love, not courtships played to gain the hand of the Princess with the tracts of [...]

Imitation of the Goshin Traveller’s Spell

“I invoke thee, thou diamond fiery very majestic star” from your bed of night-pillows and molten stardust; your gaze may guide my deerlike footsteps through the overgrown gardens of my lover’s distrust.

Untitled Poem #151

there’s a shadow who lays on my windowsill from the crow who sits on the telephone wires and if I wasn’t home reading up your poetry I’d be out in a forest setting fires.

Untitled Poem #147

I can only know that time will tell me when I can be in love again – meanwhile, what do I do? love has struck me down and lifts me higher and higher each day is consumed in fire but I’m not quite sure for who. I am a poet – I dream and emotions [...]

Sorcery

I have never felt power like this: the strength to bear people’s friendship without the artifices of forging my emotions like the signatures of the dead on a current document. I find I’m liked for who I am not everything I claim to be or wish I was; pretense has always dampened the fires that [...]

Inkslinger

my ink gleams wetly before it dries; my love burns fiercely before it dies or so it seems, disappears to surface in flying dreams. love long corridors of paisley flowers love perfect fires and books for hours space and time, meter and rhyme, still my ink flows on and across a purple crayon for my [...]

A Short, Balding Dwarvish Bard

It was a time of Dragon’s fire; Twas then the souls of Kings were born From darkness, fear of Demon’s ire There rose a hope for those forlorn. The simple men whose lives were led With doors barred shut and fires high: Those women who did fear to tread After the dark had seized the [...]

Without Trying

I I can wish as hard as I want without trying. Maybe it takes a nervous breakdown To examine the croak of a frog. A rich man tapes his hands to his sides Drowning in treasures but refusing to decide Which pearls he wants to wear for eyes. II To the grey lands to search [...]

Hoka Hey

A candle Burns With a certain virtue: Demon, saint Hesitate; Damnation speaks I am Revealed in Flickering shadow Heaven Slender shining Tear streaked Patience beast Dancing To the sense Of smell Sing praise To the arch To the pedestal Nod the fire Dream the sleep Of kings.