Even if my memory
Has lagged from inactivity,
I never let my entrails free
To dwale about their cavity,
So what must this contrition be,
If not a lack of gravity?
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 1:54 AM UTC
Warmth
Swirling
From outside
Seeps through my skin
And makes me weightless
To carry me away
To a place with no logic,
Where madness is the only law
And time is but a faint memory
Of the world it is somehow anchored to.
Aug 23, 2012
Aug 23, 2012 at 4:35 PM UTC
Sestina
Since time’s morning we all have seen the tower
In the far corners of each eye—
Its shape, its presence, was constant
And dark and cold as its steel pillars,
Which linked the earth to the aloft
As it left its hidden peak among the clouds.
How light and fragile seemed those clouds,
Yet how strong, as they embraced the pillars
Far above the common watcher’s eye
As if their undulations were what kept aloft
The gray, unmoving tower,
The only scaffolds to hold it constant.
But nothing in the cosmos is truly constant,
And nothing in the earth stays perpetually aloft,
Even the pillars
Of the groaning tower
As the wisps of the clouds
Began to pull away from the reach of the tower’s eye.
And how it burst, that eye
Of the suddenly trembling tower
As, from their place aloft
The fading clouds
Heard a promise of “I have always been constant”
From the hoarse vibrations of the mercury pillars.
But the wisps could not be persuaded, and the pillars
Erupted in a terrible shriek as the clouds
Strove to leave the tower
With a peaceful message as the constant
Jettisons from the tower’s erupting eye
Could not remain aloft.
Built, shaped, constructed to hold itself aloft,
No one considered that the tower could not stay constant
Upon the dissipation of those clouds—
First fell, screaming, the eye
And then the buckled, madly clawing pillars,
And so collapsed the tower.
And still the tower’s wreckage remains at the edge of our eye,
The constant twisting, twitching of the pillars,
As they feebly reach to the aloft and the faded strands of the clouds.
Villanelle
This is the tower’s story,
Witnessed by my truthful kin,
Such as it was told to me.
A desperate pursuit made he
After his love, to save him
This. Is the tower’s story
More than it had seemed to be?
What’s about’s seldom within,
Such as it was told to me.
Even though an elegy,
A tale of truth beneath skin
This is. The tower’s story
Is harsh memento mori
For a soul who’s always been—
Such as it was told to me.
Was such a thing meant to be?
Surely, not to have been seen.
This is the tower’s story,
Such as it was told to me.
Sonnet
I heard recountings of profound despair,
About a man with eye and tongue of brass.
The day before, I’d seen his icy stare;
The evening next, his story came to pass.
How strange, distressing, were those words to hear
Of how his love accepted death’s kind call;
The screaméd pleas and how he drew her near—
Unheard, unseen, his anguish wrings my soul.
The image of his twisted countenance
Within my mind—his visage turned to red—
Invades my every thought. What cruel romance,
How he caressed her hands as she lay dead.
And how that icy stare seems now to me—
What once was brass is naught but mercury.
Pantoum
He would do all to be with her
As he pleaded,
Clinging to her arms
Like a lost child.
And he pleaded,
His eyes streaming
Like a lost child’s,
And told her,
“Is my screaming
Not enough to stop you?”
And, bolder,
“I can’t let you go.”
“What’s enough to stop you
From telling me,
‘I can’t let you know?’”
She starkly asked.
“You’re telling me
What I have never said;
Be stark—we basked
In trust and love;
What have I ever said
That burns enough to turn
Our trust and love
To pain and death?”
“The worlds so roughly turn—
We could not stop the dread machines
Of pain and death
As long as we live.”
He could not stop the dread machines—
Clinging to her arms,
How long could he live?
He would do all to be with her.
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012 at 9:02 PM UTC
A single speck of red
Among the bobbing green of the maple tree,
once like the thin crusts on a ***** palette
but made fresh again with swirls of silver-gray and heavy, platting strokes,
Flashes in and out of view
As the branches sway like a chorus of hands,
blocking the red
which is as brilliant as an answer called out
because he who spoke out of turn not only
knows
the answer, but feels it
and could say it so much that perhaps after a while you'd feel it also
But never quite as much
as the one who has a single chance to say the name
of the lost, forbidden, resonant oak
so elegantly dancing tantalizing inches away,
The kind that tear the sinews in the reaching past them,
snap the bark in a shriek and let forth torrents into the open plain
until there is nothing
but drowning
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 9, 2011 at 11:01 PM UTC
Gored,
Broken,
Bleeding Hand
Reaches forward,
Beckons from Chaos,
And grasps fragile fingers
Whose twins loosely hold Order
With a stagnant, reluctant grip
That is released to find strange beauty
Of the sort unknown by those who fear death.
May 25, 2011
May 25, 2011 at 4:25 PM UTC
I've heard of a place where it only rains
Between the dawns and dusks
So lilac, red, and orange hues
Can stream across the sky.
I know of a place where the thunderstorms
Are hushed and far away
So children can be lulled to dream
Of lions--placid, calm.
I've been to a place where there are no floods,
No torrents, and no hail,
Where lovers sit in the drizzle-falls
And dream in the pleasant chill.
I live in a place where the rain is sweet
And the river gently rolls
Where wind's eternal lazy glide
Turns fields to wide jade seas.
I'll rest in a place where the rain is light
And bluebirds greet the sun,
And the days that passed my windowsill
I'll see yet from my tomb.
May 25, 2011
May 25, 2011 at 4:25 PM UTC
As I sip my bitter tea I stare beyond the ***** window
at the dying land that I would call my home.
Now I focus even closer at the window glass before me,
at the winged ant that's trapped between the sheets.
Should I tell her of mortality? Futility? Fragility?
Or should I be content to let her ignorance remain?
Is it best to let her live in fear or die without the knowledge why?
I simply pour a small tribute of ice-cold bitter tea.
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 3:39 PM UTC
Men,
Sitting,
Dressed in suits
On the subway
With gray newspapers
All at the same section,
Eyes darting over black lines
Like they're chasing an escaped ant
That has just reached the lower corner,
And they turn the pages at the same time
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 3:31 PM UTC
This
Music
From my mind
Swirls around me
And summons shadows.
I spread my worn fingers
To let in the desperate notes
That sound like the best kind of curse
And fill me with visions of power
And the motivation to fulfill them.
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 3:30 PM UTC
One
Moment
In one day
Can change it all
Even if it's small
Just one thing is set off
A chain reaction begins
And everything falls into place
Like a giant Rube Goldberg machine
And the final result is a new life
Oct 10, 2010
Oct 10, 2010 at 3:28 PM UTC