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 [...]

Ray of Light

There is a hole in my heart, and I can’t contain the light that is pouring out. This is the brilliance of truth and the refraction of soul. This is the damage that is done to a human being when you are betrayed, blinded, backstabbed, and belittled for trying to be more understanding than is [...]

Listening In

Sometimes I try to identify The vehicles passing beneath the windows By the sound their tires make Through the twin dips of the intersection. Smooth ride or clanking trailer, Singing brakes before the stoplight Or acceleration hum to beat the amber. Twenty seconds to guess at the conversation taking place Inside the latest idling monster, [...]

Lights Out

Lights out – time to go to sleep That delicious feeling of getting horizontal On a marshmallow futon, Under familiar blankets, Next to worn dinosaurs and bears; Room to sprawl and do battle In the night realm of dreams.

Crown of Twelve Trees

Returning from the western desert oasis, I have found the autumn fading Gone into the palest blue sky of grey vapors. I smell far off snow on this blustering wind Spraying the later leaves from the hardwood branches. Twelve trees are a protective crown around my cabin; She’s enchanted to see me back again. Fill [...]

In My Basement

I am trying to find god in my basement. In my own house (well, that I rent) – To tell you the truth, it’s money well spent – But in this wash of club fog, These hyperkinetic lights, This irrepressible sugar pop sound, It swears to me that life is sweet. Maybe only in moments [...]

Floodgate

Closing my eyes against this real light, I see warm red through my eyelids And if I stretch my hand out blind like this I can imagine caressing your face, Turning your chin up to taste your full lips And the salt tang of the sea That has faerie dusted them. Hanging out in trees [...]

Becoming

A winter white sheet covers me As I sit in this chair, unmoving. My breaths are shallow and I can’t see Whether to move or stay very still: I am hung on that decision Like a meathook. The longer I wait, the more my weight tears me To get off is still more painful But [...]

A Dream on My Couch

In a dream that plucked me From the couch that I slept on, I walked, ant sized, through the growth In my garden, Shaking nasturtium stems To feel the dewdrops like rain, And climbing mountains And ferns Like a child with no friends. Reminiscing like a fool, These dreams torment like reminders; Gleans of silver [...]

coming calling

The snow has touched the mountaintops And the leaves drift on the ground. My breath is grey before my face As I’m walking into town. I left my car parked in the drive; I wished to go on foot. A whim the moon brought to my thoughts When I laced my father’s boots. When I [...]

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 [...]

A Christmas Vision

Quietly now, the children are sleeping While we two are creeping to bite cookies and leave them. Practical worries about the yearly tour of duty: Every floorboard creaks, every giggle recognizeable; Make sure the flat of the hearth is newly sooty, Make sure the stockings are equally full. Finally finished, our excitement diminished By the [...]

Treaty

I’ve hated myself for so long for other people other opinions, other lives: here goes my hair – look in the mirror, watch your steely blue eyes wink: lighthouses to steer ships by. Bring them home. Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter, home from the hill. home to your heart. [...]

A Plea for Relaxation

People treat themselves like natural resources (yes we are as part of the ecosystem – we can be useful) but expenditure like the burning of a ton of coal to light one lightbulb? I ask if this is necessary; there is a chorus of affirmatives from the millions who know no better, who know nothing [...]

Nitrogen is to Plants as Poetry is to the Mind

I I love you most when you are sleeping and around the corner I am peeping, shadow in the box of light that falls from the living room; I hear the rain is coming soon from the whish of the wind ‘round the corner of the front porch lifting the edges of your hair while [...]

Untitled Poem #170

lost in the dark, sometimes I sit down wherever I am and wait for the morning to come, stealing through the thick air and lightening the darkness, like highlights in your hair.

Opossum

on my driveway in Point Loma, smoking 3 cigarettes, I thought it was my cat Ferguson cracking bird-bones at four in the morning, but the white and grey patchy creature was a shiny eyed opossum, who moved off as fast as it could back down the sidewalk after discovering its way back to its lair [...]

No Trees

he started to dream less of landscapes and found himself a city that was tall and bleak with ordered rows of houses and buildings to support the orangish skies of perpetual twilight, one with distant violence that would echo through the straight streets, cries of hope being lost in a concrete strangulation.

Musings in the Night Aire

perching like a poet – I found a table and a bench tucked away on a second story walkway of the Arts building just for me. a yellow magnesium light shines down on this paper turning letters into dancing figures that say something important to me so I can pretend I am a poet. a [...]

Las Vegas

one all these slot machines are screaming at me, hurling forth these awful noises like upright pinball machines amplified and winking with infernally fueled lights, glowering metal goblins hunkered in military rows. zombies run them, magnetized to the pull-bars. coin after coin after coin fed like morsels to squat and greedy quadripalegics to be digested [...]

Untitled Poem #160

what is life without a smoke and a beer freely given and freely recieved like the love from your friends? life’s little joys to be consumed and forgotten in the moment. happiness tends to be transitory like the light zipping past you from the sun or one smoke and one beer when they’re done.

Another Song for a Cure

when the sun sets and the lights come out in the beachfront homes I walk alone to clear my head and cut the sting of the thoughts the end of the day brings they swim alongside my walk, my pace a school of dolphins who splash my face; I don’t always enjoy what they do [...]

Song for a Bedsheet

I am really wondering if I’m lying to myself – you see I’m good at what I do and that’s lying to myself. Oh I hurt and I’m torn and don’t know what to I can do I need to talk-to-a-certain-someone and that one is myself when does it end? all the questions and waiting [...]

Untitled Poem #155

I now I know I love you when I heard you sad because of me; I realize things too late and make due with writing poetry to read or think on when I cannot call or hold you with me; my thoughts may wander briefly but I will always love you truly. II when did [...]

Untitled Poem #149

A Druid has stood In the green of my woods, A forest of lines of verse. The light from her eyes Has given me my eagles Which soar through my nighttime skies. I hunt for the words As mice run from an owl And stand them in bowls; Bouquets of flowers to please me.