The meadows near God’s country
stretched out along cold asphalt
to Toledo, where we caught a bus,
where a mill burned twenty years before.
If the car won’t run, I’ll walk
in all these backward directions,
moving deeper into the deaf night
before stumbling through seasons clamoring
to be remembered outside the rain.
Still you wrote me poems, pictures
I had never heard, floating on your breath
as it charged the cool of April
and your hand trembled like a tree,
finding justice in the leaves that had fallen.
May 12
May 12, 2026 at 8:15 PM UTC
Every morning I put on the face
in the mirror, not the one
my lover sees when she rises
and I am on the edge of a dream:
that face filled with need, addicted
to wanting love, like a voice
yelling from the edge of a cliff
terrified hoping to hear an echo.
I brush the hair from my eyes
to illuminate unformed mass -- turn
the faucet handle -- fill the sink --
before I carve my face
with each glide of the blade
across my cheek, the razor drags
from tired skin another layer
of concession in the forming
of my face; the tap of the razor
on porcelain releases last evening
deforming the voice: what remains is
digested by the mirror, edited down
to a smile in the right light;
the weight the reflection carries
makes the face underneath fragile
and craving shade in the morning.
The mirror does not want the face
to evolve, even slightly, jealously
afraid of the words that it had
fended off; the quiet doubting
inaffirmation is a strange avatar,
a worn path's held space: the real story
is told in seconds when the mask
slips; tightening lips, the corner
of an eye that darts or the nose
that wrinkles. I want to tell
the face it can rest, call down
a strange angel to give voice
to a parched throat, to say it is okay
if no one recognizes this face
as it walks by other faces put on
at other mirrors above other sinks.
May 11
May 11, 2026 at 4:44 PM UTC
Above and ocean
somewhere out of sight,
flight on a moonless night
We rise like gods
You call out
a rising tide -
Pull
I peel back clouds
and pile them
out on the shore
like a blanket
for sand."
May 10
May 10, 2026 at 11:52 AM UTC
The wind is glorious to the leaves.
The tree's branches are glorious to birds,
offering a short respite to freedom,
sleep, an echo of nuisance. new-ance
The rain forming in the cloud is glorious
to the roots of the tree.
The roots are glorious to worms.
The words written about it are glorious
to the page and the hand.
The pen is similarly glorious,
perhaps more glorious than pencils
which are glorious to erasers.
The notebook is glorious to the eye
but not at all glorious to the desk.
I want to be glorious to rain and wind
that will conjure when I sleep
clouds for the morning
gloriously hiding a red hot sun.
I want to be glorious notoriously
as if the trees and rain and leaves would gossip about me
for no reason beyond I am recounting their tears.
May 9
May 9, 2026 at 7:26 AM UTC
She is not perfect, not
a mandala or yantra, more
a rock on a cliff worn smooth
by rain and snow in their innocent falling;
a victim of gravity
She is unsymmetrical, one breast
slightly larger, a birthmark on her left hip.
The eye jumps and holds each
beautiful imperfection, tracing
an outline; a gospel of soul
She is perfectly imperfect
as she untwirls the towel, her hair
quietly falling, a drop of water shadowing
the same silhouette; undefined
as she crosses the kitchen
One would not want her to be
perfect, carved with chisel and awl,
carefully curated among the dead
in a museum or garden. She is
perfection in her imperfection.
May 8
May 8, 2026 at 6:25 PM UTC
There were a couple of books I would read over and over
one of them told a story about how God didn’t write poetry.
He gave man language and the devil taught them metaphor.
God was amused that Adam wrote poetry, but didn’t pay the snake no mind.
Well, it was the only thing Adam and Eve took from the Garden
as God cried tears and the couple felt naked in the cold land.
‘I hope they know I love them, but they broke the contract,
now they’ll know what it feels like to have to face the eternal dying’.
I kept reading that book and felt the devil pushing my pen
forcing me to love the people I know will hurt me in the end.
It’s hard to see past the dust rising off the old road.
You still consume me as I try to head back to the highway.
I’ll never forget the night I called and never left;
you draped in alcohol and oxy, calling me to your bedroom.
I still wonder why you asked me to join you on that journey
but I won’t ever forget how we rode hard, fast and for truth.
We traveled the backroads where we were alone to love each other.
We found comfort in the stolen light of the sun as it moved like mercury.
One night you went to get beer and I haven’t seen you since
but I can’t go after you when I am the father of our greatest achievement.
Yes we loved the moon and danced in the twilight, sleeping past the dawn,
There will never be one who can be you, but maybe she will slide into my heart.
It just hurts too much to even think that once we ran and I was your man.
She’ll only hope I can forget. so we can move on down a new road.
I guess I’ll keep moving, take this new friend with me to the end
Or at least somewhere near Oklahoma or Tennessee.
Places no one else really want to go,
It could be Oregon or even Vermont,
they’re all the same, some are just devoid of memories.
Maybe she’ll say turn around and say that I am already home.
It really is that book that keeps haunting me, how we were Adam and Eve
or maybe you were God and I was the Devil.
The one thing that sticks with me, though, is that it was poetry
The one thing I have left that really can pin down love.
May 8
May 8, 2026 at 4:43 AM UTC
I spoke to The Master
last night, she told me
a story of Pittsburgh;
the strange dark that fell
covering the next scene
after Adam and Eve.
There are birds
in these hills, ready
to flee the cold of October.
I wanted to kiss her,
crawling through cracks below
the open window,
through the first time
we met. “Anyway, there is
an equation of dancing and ***
“Ever since I can remember."
May 7
May 7, 2026 at 6:17 PM UTC
There was a question that refused
an answer the rain knows, just outside
the town of thatched roof homes
and gardens: the key to dispell
the mornings grief, secret beauty,
this vista showing the one
safe route - the river wilder
and full of noise - unafraid
of the night; on a boat made of bones
the water laps and the bank towers
above home, sick with frost and snow
in the vast spaces under the sky.
Heaven struggles, offers cover, against
protean earth carved by heavy rain.
May 7
May 7, 2026 at 7:43 AM UTC