Fifing the Closets

Leave the closet doors open Like a trap to entice monsters To come out and play. I live here for the moment, In this moment I would crouch and snarfle Like something from behind Those creaky sliding doors But soon I go elsewhere To find new temporary closets; These ones are to be bulldozed. Do [...]

Chloe Dancing

A feeling I caught, awash in sand and sea Bringing back some faint, foolish memory: Chloe and stickman and rockman and I In love for an evening because we were high. Iceplant and kindling on the Santa Barbara sand A stage built for my improvised puppets and hands. Under the star-patched, moon-cloudy sky We loved [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Wading Through the Cattails

I went to find my childhood buried in the morass of my memory; discarded in a moment of adolescence trying to be an adult before I knew what that was about. So me and a shovel and a dream go wading through the cattails and the frogs, looking under lilypads and scouring the undersides of [...]

Hush

you asked me once upon a time if I could hear the speech of the sea. I said yes and that was where are agreement ended; you heard eulogies, laments, cries of change and supportive flesh, the echoes of watery hands drumming on cliffsides, rolling rocks into its stomach, a maelstrom of creative fury controlled [...]

On a Driveway at Midnight

I this poetry, on this midnight runs through my veins: all this hurting, my purple pen is my blood, each word a corpuscle – and to let it out to the world, sometimes my poetry is simple: blood, cut from my flesh, bleeding my emotions free. Self destructive so that I can leave the world [...]

By Yellow Moonlight

I commissioned a cloak black but lined with elf-eyes to be able to stand still in the graveyards I wished to wander. The wind confers in my ears then tugs like awkward bridesmaids at my hem making parachute ripples in the fabric while I ignore them, another statue in this washed out moonlight a faint [...]

My Mother in the Ocean

it is something, standing by the sea, feeling my heart and my blood fashioned rudely out of ocean-salt and the milk of beach-foam. I feel the pull of the moon on the tide standing here, examining the sky in the sheen of the wet sand, in the surface of the water. I smell the wet [...]

Cat Hide

I am the prickle which makes your mother start and cover your eyes as if you, being young don’t know the fear of the closet. I am the voice that whispers through the crack; all that’s left when the door is shut tight, caressing you with words from a green foot-long tongue, slithering out from [...]

La Cascada

Water falls as the hair and voices Of nymphs at La Cascada. Removing my shirt and glasses, I place my eyes and nose Through the surface of the pool To be bathed by hands of water, Falls like silver tinsel Or ribbons of moonshine And moss-maiden hair Perpetually combed By the white fingers of La [...]

Depeche Mode Imitation

I saw a star in the sky, Watching, a flickering eye. I felt your breath in the storm. I shiver and try to keep warm. I touched the moon in the flood Of words like the coursing of blood. In the rose warmth of your gaze, I could have watched you for days. An eagle [...]

I Take Time to Tell You

I saw the moon come From behind a cloudbank. It took time to see this; I take time to tell you. My pipe glows cherry-red Deep inside; smoke drifts apart. I watch it fall away, Clasping this time to me. Faces twist in the veils of smoke From the cauldron of my pipe Melting to [...]

Untitled Poem #131

I slunk from the sea late last night to stand in a moon-dappled room under a broad-leafed tree to write these words from the ocean, dripping and streamered with ribbons of seaweed, leaving the smell of wet salt and wind behind for the forest whose paper this is.

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 [...]

Jacuzzi Poet

the squiggles of the moon in the water ‘round your feet is how powerful you are. when I close my eyes, I can see Alex flying.

Antelope

I I beat a trash can like a drum in the alley behind your house at night when the stray cats gather on the fence around my feet. we are all going to fly to the dark side of the moon. II I see the big sack of your skin, hung up as if in [...]

Midion

mud from the river-bottom sieves through my heart and dries brown tile upon the sunny corridors of hope. shaken by the fist of my own excitement I feel my lungs fill with salt left by the cataracts of beautiful plants breathing. to hold all of you for one moment would be to watch it crumble [...]

Snakecharmer

from nothing to green to water to serpents, the moon-eyed piper played on. his tune coiled around my ears, writhing with the tides of a thousand shallow seas. – the wail of his eerie pipes are misleading tendrils of smoke green curling, a wreath for his hair. fog twisting from the mane of the moon [...]

Imitation of Sylvia Plath: The Everlasting Monday

“Thou shalt have an everlasting Monday And stand on the moon.” oh please, oh please, break the monotony of my mundane Monday; let me stand, I pray, upon the dusty moon to escape my current gloom. anything would be better than this letter after letter reading, writing; boring me, I’d rather be exploring the empty [...]

Untitled Poem #108 and 1/2

I am clear. the moon, branches crosshatch her light. shot, I bleed. I rot. waving my arms about to fling the blood. I’ve bled.

Imitations of Izumi no Shikibu

Shikibu Imitation One (serious Buddha remix) the mountains at the edge of the moon shine wetly. they have the viscosity of freshly spilled blood. the mountains have been torn and thrown down from the sky. they sit still, meditating, slowly settling in the mud. Shikibu Imitation Two (silly dance version) I am a mountain showered [...]

Emulation Three

Oh, what can I do? Ah, distracted again as I leave quickly to the night on my mind: signs of you, sleeping peacefully in dreams, fears gone. cheaper than anything, even free have and hold you forever tears gone, rarer than the blue magic moon even you grow thoughtful, aching for someone you should have.

Memory Lane

gorilla man lopes about the streets. I look into your windows, just a shadow to you, looking around the corner. I see what you do. I grin in the darkness. I gibber sadly at the moon.

Stuck

Michael is stuck in his own little world others can only look in through the bars like a curious ape that scientists can’t explain. I throw gorilla chips at you. – - – if I don’t have it in my own little world, I will make it or dream it up somehow. incomprehensible, yes; to [...]