When words **** the feeling,
  any pregnancy is wrong

Delivery most premature,
  verdict quick—sentence long

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2016)

Quantifying Art,
quality by the pound

Feelings like hair part,
—separation profound

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2015)

There’s a voice deep inside me
  still trying to get out

Ignoring my pleadings,
  it screams and it shouts

Its call is the loudest
  on those darkest of nights

When my mind seeks new refuge
  from Seraph’s delight

I toss and I turn,
  but it speaks louder still

As its words start to age
  from new vision distilled

No barter or denial
  will turn back its call

The Muse is on fire
  —my pen not to stall

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)

There’s a voice deep inside me
  still trying to get out

Ignoring my pleadings,
  it screams and it shouts

Its call is the loudest
  on those darkest of nights

When my mind seeks new refuge
  from Seraph’s delight

I toss and I turn,
  but it speaks louder still

As its words start to burn
  from new vision distilled

No barter or denial
  will turn back its call

The Muse is on fire
  —my pen not to stall

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)

Poets,
Special Forces
Of the literary world

Rescuing confusion,
And then
Setting it free

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2017)

The emptiness between Hemingway’s words is a
  hollow sound that stays in your mind

The space creates distance as the Old Man wanted,
  from the reader and the ****** of pain

“Distance from the day he fought and struggled
   to land that one great fish

“Distance from a soldier’s final battle, calling out
   from beyond his reach

“Distance from the arena where the horns got close,
   with death again denied

“And distance from the many women he tried to
   desperately love and failed”

Each city his refuge: Paris, Havana, and Ketchum,
  but in no place were his memories home

And giving in to the distance, setting the ghost free
   —his bell tolled one last time

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)

Like a vase containing flowers,
  a writer becomes a vessel for words

Beyond seconds, minutes, and hours,
  displaying lines set to bloom in what’s heard

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2018)

Shadows…
  of a former self

Shadows…
  of that no longer felt

Shadows…
  memories hide in sin

Shadows…
  the future-past within

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2015)

Late September holds onto the summer
  like that promise you made
    —you can never forget

Late September holds onto the summer
  as shadows fall distant
    —and memory regrets

(Amherst Massachusetts- September, 2013)

Let others inside you
  as reflection begins

Your truth like a mirror
  that calls from within

(Villanova Pennsylvania: November, 2018)

She's familiar...
ain't that the blues

(Written at Kingston Mines in Chicago—1985)

We should be freeing and emancipating
   the poor with opportunity
    —not underwriting their poverty with welfare

(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)

In Concert

Tilting my words
—the meaning bends inside

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2017)
  


            The Stain Of Ink

If you’re not being taken seriously
—write it down

(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2017)