#stanza
“stanza” like “camera”, in Italian,
means room,
the stanza is a room, avail&able
for any purpose,
but I understand it best as a storage place,
to be rented, renovated, refurbished and
redecorated, a part of your building,
and even, eventually, demolished…
the poetry is not lost on me, though I feel
foolish for my illiteracy, the last to know,
the obvious symmetry of a perfect latent metaphorical meta physicality…
then, for a stanza to run free is an
impossibility, for what purpose is it
containment functionality if it were
to run forever, failing to demarcate
needed boundaries, open to the outdoors
of air and light, allowing its contents
to escape freely…
or worse
go on endlessly…
so I reconfigure my entirety as mansion,
each poem a dwelling unit, each stanza,
a room there in, purposed, and oft connected
to an adjacent adjoining neighbor, througjh
an empty spacing, a camera if you will, to
vision a connective conjunction, a separate tissue bit of similar original cells
Mar 25, 2025
Mar 25, 2025 at 3:57 PM UTC
******* of suckling cheeks
taste of wine gone vinegar
left out too long exposed
to sunlight
twice ways between nowhere
we drank a bottle or four
before resigning ourselves
to defeat
we woke so many mornings
in drawn shade sunlight
with our heads split twain
by buzzing
we'd never known what it
was to taste hurt or defeat
until we likened our arguments
to chemistry
Feb 16, 2023
Feb 16, 2023 at 10:52 PM UTC
Desiccated youth has bones like cork,
So porous strong in cells.
Lost time perfuses emptiness.
And heavy dolor quells.
Jul 23, 2021
Jul 23, 2021 at 12:52 PM UTC
Supine, roads sprawl so lazily
That they collapse to planes,
Not aiding stumbling travelers
As knotted sinews strain.
Jul 15, 2021
Jul 15, 2021 at 10:23 PM UTC
The trouble started on the day
After the day before.
Youth and hope and love decay,
And regret won’t restore.
It seems this old and weary world
Holds much more bad than good.
I’d have assayed, but I was hurled
In this life before I could.
A world of cloud and bitterness,
A life of scrape and thorn,
So who would ever acquiesce
Ever to be born?
Because briars outnumber flowers
By ten to one at least,
Weakness humbles mighty powers.
Famine goes before the feast.
But feasts are more than fillings ups,
And hunger’s just a pinch.
And emptiness can’t stopper cups,
And straitening can’t cinch.
Bounty and joy are plenitude,
And destitution lack,
So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,
No loss can take it back.
A single flower fortifies
To brush away the burs.
Striving wins because it tries.
Forlorn despairing errs.
Jul 9, 2021
Jul 9, 2021 at 1:00 AM UTC
Badinage and Persiflage
Make such a merry pair,
Chatting and bantering all day.
No spiteful gossip there.
Each goes without acquaintances.
Each has one single friend.
As solitary sprites, they speak
Of words, without an end.
Jul 1, 2021
Jul 1, 2021 at 10:47 PM UTC
Some thieves have burgled every house;
The rich are sorrowing
At sacrilege and heirlooms lost,
Spoons, silks and sapphire rings.
The poorer tenants mourn as well;
Their losses are their doom.
Without the coin for food or rent,
Hunger and eviction loom.
Just down the street, a misanthrope
Who lives in an old tub
Cackles at their lamentations,
And gives his hands a rub.
He used to own a battered cup,
That and a bowl for alms,
But then he saw an urchin drink
Right out of his cupped palms.
He learned that cups were luxury,
And threw the thing away.
He’s happier in poverty,
And that’s just how he’ll stay.
He boasts to passers-by he’s safe,
Since thieves can never steal
Knowledge or virtue from the good.
Wisdom alone is real.
How better for that mendicant
If thieves could somehow take
Self-satisfaction from such prigs.
Oh mellow him for pity’s sake.
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 11:17 PM UTC
A drunkard’s guzzled several days,
And staggering outside,
Dull and disoriented, seeks,
But cannot find, a guide.
The hour proclaimed is even six,
Twice daily otium.
The arrow hangs at bottom rim
Like a dead pendulum.
The birth and dying of the light
Are symmetry in dim.
The day is leaching into night,
Or morning’s failing him.
Jun 18, 2021
Jun 18, 2021 at 12:02 PM UTC
1-2-1-2-When you have pollen allergies,
Your first reaction when you sneeze isn't to chop down all the trees;
it's to move out of the breeze,
you see.
Jun 11, 2021
Jun 11, 2021 at 10:37 AM UTC
Black shadows are all sycophants
That mimic every shape.
White shadows seal their bearers up,
And bury what they ape.
Black shadows curl off thick sunlight,
And launch themselves from dust.
White shadows flake from winter’s breath,
Congealed as vapor’s rust.
In two dimensions, or in three,
Shade and snow are booleans,
Dark in intersection tracing truth.
And snow in difference.
Jun 3, 2021
Jun 3, 2021 at 4:57 PM UTC
The crystals groan, whenever crushed
Under a melting tread.
Snow faithfully fulfilled its oath,
And did just what it said.
In recompense for stinging cold,
This mantle vowed to be
Finer than the finest of white sands
And never slippery.
Jun 3, 2021
Jun 3, 2021 at 4:54 PM UTC
The elevator’s sealed its lips.
It keeps its secrets well.
Inside might hunch a nameless face,
I really cannot tell.
To stand, a pair, so silently,
Bound in an unvoiced pact,
Is sore and heavy awkwardness
Light coughing can’t redact.
An almost empty iron box
Is crushing loneliness,
Better to take on dozens next,
Shame smothered in that press.
Anonymity’s a heavy weight
To carry between two,
But shrouded multitudes can share
Whatever burdens you.
May 19, 2021
May 19, 2021 at 9:19 PM UTC
King David was a righteous king,
A shepherd loved by God,
And Joab did the ugly work
Without a single nod.
A principal can stroll the halls,
Grandfatherly and kind.
His number two’s the children’s bane,
Reviled in student mind.
The highest of the high can shine,
All warmth and lenity,
Their trusted second is the sting.
Cursed in synecdoche.
Every Adama needs a Tigh,
All discipline and screeds,
Since troops can sooner love a chief
Untainted by cruel deeds.
May 19, 2021
May 19, 2021 at 9:18 PM UTC
An hour-glass stands up nice and straight
On a flat, polished end,
While bells suspend like carrion
On rods that never bend.
Grains of sand in a transparent bulb,
Mustered in a smooth cone,
Slip through a graceful crystal neck
To toll in silky tones.
But as bells swing and clang, they gulp
From a meridian,
One sideways to the zenith zone,
And fill themselves again.
A bell will always know the time,
But still politely wait
For eager hands to yank their cord,
Even when slightly late.
But a depleted hour-glass sits
Until impatient hands
Can flip it over on its crown
And fill its heads with sand.
May 11, 2021
May 11, 2021 at 5:20 PM UTC
The moon is grim and sly, and keeps
Pale secrets from her twin.
She hides the darkest of her blushes
Behind a slivered grin.
Her greater, fertile, sister earth,
Greater in girth, not age,
Knows a pallid, pock-marked cheek
But not a shaded rage.
A barren spinster, gray from birth,
Can scarcely bear to see
From callous sister such a show
Of broad fecundity.
May 1, 2021
May 1, 2021 at 11:06 PM UTC
Let scarlet feathers go
as love does exiled too
One hundred leagues
One hundred Roman feet
One hundred prosody
For Augustus' dreams
condemns me treacherously
and I cannot breathe
Each gasp for life is death
Each death a new stanza
Let scarlet feathers go
as love does in exile, too
across white cloudy fields
beneath the asphalt sea
Let scarlet feathers go free
Apr 27, 2021
Apr 27, 2021 at 7:08 PM UTC
What tempted me to join the queue?
It must be some great treat.
Only delight could keep these souls
Shuffling on blistered feet.
I turned a corner hours ago,
Quite perpendicular,
But as I count the corners off
I’ve tallied five so far.
The walls are clean, but they’re not bright,
Scrubbed to sobriety.
I passed a blotch I’d seen before,
But it might lie to me.
This line may loop into a square,
And no one’s first or last,
And all who’ve shuffled patiently
Are doomed to lose the past.
Did I ascend to this closed floor
By staircase or by lift?
Outside must lie some wider world,
Denied a precious gift.
The walls are bare of openings,
But we need only one.
Quiet can’t be the sole reward
For everything we’ve done.
Apr 23, 2021
Apr 23, 2021 at 1:09 PM UTC
The sheets and blankets are too big
For such a little bed.
They drape their fringes on the floor,
And dribble dreams with red.
The brain can’t sluice the nightmares out
Though a grate stopped with cloth.
Thick curtains collect spiderwebs
And flutterings of moths.
Apr 23, 2021
Apr 23, 2021 at 1:07 PM UTC
The ocean waves are murmuring,
And some who walk the shore
May pause to hear some wisdom there,
And linger more and more.
The seas are older than the old,
And jealous of regret.
Their murmurs wash out memory,
And make a soul forget.
Apr 9, 2021
Apr 9, 2021 at 12:54 AM UTC
Dour duty may seem cruel
To novices, but rasped
To callouses by some hair shirt,
Skin glories in its clasp.
A rougher kiss is sweetest bliss
To scourged and toughened hides,
Until abraded to a scar
Where stunted dullness bides.
Mar 31, 2021
Mar 31, 2021 at 8:38 PM UTC
Words can wriggle through the cracks
Where grosser largeness blocks,
And even with no aperture
Huskless speech can seep through locks.
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021 at 6:19 PM UTC
Life’s a very busy thing
And rushes by so fast,
And since inertia rules this world
It cannot help but last.
Transactions plonk the daylight hours,
And revels blot the dark.
There is a grimy window near
That looks on a glum park.
Mar 16, 2021
Mar 16, 2021 at 8:52 PM UTC
The town shone cleanest in the mist.
The clerk rushed for his train,
And if he dallied on his course,
The mist would clot to rain.
Because he didn’t know the time,
He couldn’t find the way.
The tower clock was crowing six,
But spires lead clerks astray.
Humbler clocks are best for humble folk;
A fob swung by his flank.
But he’d forgotten to wind his watch,
And so the dial lay blank.
Mar 16, 2021
Mar 16, 2021 at 8:52 PM UTC
I felt so much better after I vomited you in every stanza.
Dec 14, 2020
Dec 14, 2020 at 5:50 AM UTC