Category: poetry
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Blue Shoe
The blue shoe on the side of the road had me wondering who it belonged to. Yes, shoes are made for journeying, poised for leaping not yet taken. They shine with this potential right off the factory line. Yet, this orphan once so stiff when young, once a tender, warming friend…
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Cairns and Crows
The cairns are mothered by murders of crows— four stones as black as raven eggs, others sky blue with specks of black, pointing this way to heaven, pointing this way to hell, or is it to Tecumseh’s grave, the bones of all buffaloes? But then crows are great tricksters, erecting…
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Sea Church
Rising from the watery mist the grey sea church blesses the waves and prays to the sky, lonely, unadorned, a silver carven wing, folded in limbo, as its sea bells peel out the redemption of sand and stone. Its three pillars drawn from sea’s breath are stained aquamarine, and on its grey stone altar,…
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La Isla de Munecas: A Day of the Dead Poem
Orphaned from the girl who bought and loved them the dolls were packed tightly into a suitcase and floated gently down the canals of Xochimico to the Isla de Munecas and into the waiting embrace of Don Julian Santana Barrera. In the unpacking, a girl doll, a life-size two-year-old, with a dress, hand-work all…
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Piano Fade
The piano player has already been shot. He is no longer a musician, less one that sold-out halls. Once he turned the river’s chant into a jazz so fine that fish weeped. Now, he plays only right-handed counterpoint. His left is still paralyzed, even after a year of PT. He only…
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Breaking Horsepower
The black stallion runs onto the tracks headlong into the train’s cycloptic light attempting to break its horsepower. He refuses to yield to gravity touching his feet and grounding him into mammal again: sweat, hair, lungfuls of air, refuses to slip his nose through another hard halter. His head and hind legs…
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Clutter
It soothes me to keep the clutter of the past in picture albums on my cell phone: mother’s yellow dresses, ashes in weighted urns, brittle birth and death certificates, enough heirlooms to make a portable history, things heavy enough to resist memory’s drift, for when the hills blaze up and I have to evacuate, leave…
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The Cursed Land
Long the land watches for death or harvest amongst the lulling black mounds a slumber in piles, huddled so neatly without blankets from the shivering wind blowing meanly under the sway of the killing night’s climb. Underneath are all bones, life clutching the long tilled soil, the farmer’s harlot oft despoiled, denied wages, seeds…
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The Great Horned Night Owl Screeches My Name
The Great Horned Night Owl screeches my name and I whisper back that it’s wrong. Look around the block, across the coast there is the soul that you seek. She shifts to the closest oak limb tapping just outside my window. Bruja Buho both witch and owl my grandmother called her, …
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Drownings
It’s easy for them to slip into the ice, the big crack of nonjudgmental water, absorbed entirely in the joy of now. First winter blankets them, then the frost, the quiet, until the last of their woolens, the black and red squares of their scarves, their blue and pink pompoms trailing down become the…
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The Blue Lurch of Train in Time
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Black Pieta
Strange fruit lives in the bones of black mothers, the blood of their sons, marrow of their daughters. Blue winds drift by full of poplar scents, aromas that never leave the maternal soul. They exhort their sons to be careful, be safe, make it back home. They know they…
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Living in the Mermaid’s Shadow
I watch my love, almost a mermaid, standing in the kiss of shoreline and ocean, washing sand from her glistening form. In the pause between tides I tie a hope line, strong as my inglorious life, to her toe. She swims through it, hardly noticing my intent, only her friends crowding around, reflecting…
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Heartbreak (poem)
Losing a child never known a mother known love found love lost memories remembered memories not remembered old man’s tears grief in womanly rags heartbreak
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Flowers
The only choice is blossoming in the terra cotta …
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Orphans
1. The motherless-fatherless God orphans the world in His own image, His experience, His own elevated thoughts. Yet He is unsatisfied, unhappy for His creation is not perfect enough. Even the little man with His breath-spark is an unfulfilling design, in tun dissatisfied. Everything has weight but nothing has fullness. …
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Moths
Luna moths flutter in the captive night light of early December, strong, determined to mate their way to the electric crackle (invisible as a secret trapped in the soul) emitting from the machine in the eaves. Their disintegration illuminates the dark with ultraviolet pulses and heavy musk drifting to mouthless, abandoned mates, antennae feeling…
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Paper
There is a certain satisfaction that comes with shrinking language and imagination to a rectangle, fitting black-and-white words into a prescribed length and width given human depth through inscription. The filled sheet of paper almost transcends its smoothness and thinness, its very blank expression and dullness. It reveals exactly what it is meant…
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River Ode
The lavender skin river whispered with a maiden’s call. Bonnet curls kissed her banks in a flush of forgiving tears for the trawlers bruising her mercy and calm, each departing an oily scar that dispersed in the flow, for the water is never mean this cold season to those that whip her …
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Casting
1. If there is wild moving water there is a trout in it waiting for the cast, the whip of line in air splashing a weigthless fly on the mirror surface luring the rainbow fish to break the heavy air for the angler’s fantasia. 2. The Rogue…
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The Yellow Bus Stop
The earth is black on both sides. The yellow bus taking the living away passes pile after pile of rubble, of signs that were once there: the Harley Davidson store, The Rogue Action Center- a nonprofit climate change group, the community bank – it’s vault the only thing standing. Indistinguishable from the ash is…
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The Dead Mother’s Children Kneeling in Love
White and red roses defend the mother’s coffin: cherry stained, her interlocked hands in prayer draped in veil gauze, her gold dress the same she married in, as the procession of her children grieves in a black and white flow. In a black and white flow, each child lights a votive candle that…
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Memory Monster
The memory monster haunted Mavette on the platform, the gym, pass the graveyard, scolding her for leaving the tiniest remains of food on her plate, scourged her for reading that dirty Jew, Levi. The swastikas chased her in her dreams. In her hole in the earth the dogs and stamping black boots would pass…
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Pareiodolia
The sand holds our faces. Every thousand grains forms a man, a woman, a child. Every millionth there is your mother- young, stunning, beauty mark perfectly spotted on right cheek. Every billionth adds a little weight, gray, tears and beaches of separation. Every trillionth might be the dirt blown away at…
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Plum Juice Runs Happy
You worked hard for the plum, to bite into the Mariposa before the heat comes and it rots. Its purple plumpness pulsates with juice, so dark and clear through and through. The comfort is not startling. It’s the taste you know from a thousand memories, What takes you back is the shock…
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The Blue Fish
I watched in the swirl, the blue fish paddle steadily away from the boat, knowing that it had been hooked before, the wound protruding wormlike from his jaw. Today would not be his last fight. He would not be a photo prize. He wanted not the weight of air, just the restless, endless flow…
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Take a Stand
https://twitter.com/i/status/1304186433054420992 With the start of NFL football yesterday, I must salute those brave and patriotic players and teams who take a stand against police brutality of black people. I must share this poem and video that my Miami Dolphins posted on Twitter. I stand in complete solidarity with the Dolphins on this issue. https://twitter.com/i/status/1304186433054420992 It…
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Smashing Glass
Smash the glass if you must, yet do it gently using soft hammers. Catch the fury in your breath and release its image on the pane. The goal is not destruction but creation, to leave behind something cracked yet still whole, hanging precariously together, a reminder that we are all shards about to fall. Tap…
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Abandoned Boat
The Little Bessy molts its white chipped, dull letters out to waves it cannot use. Capsized on the rocky Maine beach, where it once fished for lobster in richer anchors, the peapod displays its tattered nets on its hull while the Man O War, filled with a haul of tourists, bruises the gentle waves…
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The Chair and the Light Pulsing on Its Rails
Abandoned in the middle of the blasted field, its arms shredded, legs battered, the chair exists in broken splendor catching the best of the speckled light dancing in the quivering shadows. Lines of the seated father stain the backrest, motherly molds are left behind in the seat foam, the relentless kicks, tattoos of children’s feet…
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Living With a Rusty Christ
The clean church Christ hangs on rusty nails, dozen-fold years denied a resurrection, tied to everlasting pain and death, heaven denied, mortal redemption denied because the flesh, existing between hope and despair, refuses the soul’s release. The congregation is dead to peace, only knowing the scrapping of their knuckles on the smooth stone- dead…
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The Driver
The bus driver sees people as they really are: survivors & corpses going for regular treatment, shadows & lights moving in a tunnel, loved & loveless reflections in a rear view mirror, like him, the sufferers of whole-body vibrations of the potholes & uneven pavements of the road, the sedentary motion breaking their backs until…
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Growing the Forest
When your mother dies you grieve, vow to change, say a prayer, plant a memory tree. When your father dies you swallow hard, set yourself square, curse all his mistakes, and seed an oak. When your brother/sister dies you cry for the good times, regret their bad ones, carve their dreams in evergreens.…
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Touch
Lovers dream of cuddling, laying flat under the sky, hand to chin, chin to wrist, eyes never opening to harsh light, feet caressing toes among the daisies sway. In the past they loved erect, pulling close in multicolor hugs, their hands around waist in almost interlocking circles hoping for the full union of own…
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The Cursing Stones
Ariana, adopted the old Greek ways, when Nikos died diving for sponges. She encased her curses into two lead stones: smuggling one into his coffin, dropping the other into Naxos deepest well. She made sure Nikos soul would carry her curse to the underworld before it ascended to heaven, or activated fully on the river…
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Pieta
Perfection can only be seen in the descent, the glow of spotlights colliding to true whiteness, the realization that grief touches the ground. Mary, they say, you never experienced birth pains, but the linen folded eternally beneath your son shows that his final blessing transferred all to you. Your tears wash his feet,…
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Washing the Corpses
–After Rainier Maria Rilke The washers have lived with death as they have with the lamp, the flame and the dark, the nameless rinsing of limbs, the even more unnameable nameless. without histories relative to them. Their sponges dipped the water then the silent throat, trickled rivulets on their faces, waiting for it…
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Soft Body Memories of Our Grief
We exist in unkeepable bodies and in the bending over we decompose for we are are but the memory of grief that soft bodies leave when they die.
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After the Sun Has Gone
Oh, when the sun yields child to the soft caress of the night After the sun has gone. After the sun has gone. That lifts the wind after the sun has gone. The last of wonder and awe That turns life from a beach shell echo to a cornucopia after the…
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The Boy Who Dances in the Light
Shout into the eyes of sunlight of the boy who dances in the light. Every dragon’s death foretells this child onto even the smallest realm. The Phoenix is an ally to the boy who forges worlds. The stars proclaim his shine this boy who dances in the light. He is the…
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Rainy Weather Laughter
The rain chuckles on the rooftop and the sound carry’s down the house. The oaks in their amber raincoats hiss in the water’s tickle. Their sinuses suckle the drops to veins then shiver off the excess. The wild summer streams are beginning their running joke. The drought retreats with a frown…
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The Whale
We turned around and she was there stranded between shore and sea, beach filled with the oily smell of whale, her dark tonnage serenading the waves for the comforting echoes of others, her great fins offering sand flowers to the Great Ocean God for her salvation. We mistook her motion for the final dance,…
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A Very Hot Afternoon
The heat is a pendejo querida a street full of melda de vaca, mi amor steaming, stinking, like a hungry puta who takes mi dinero and gives me crabs. Sleep with me chica. Cool me down in el rio de su chocha. Por favor. Por favor. Mariposa de su womb. Pajaro en mi boca. Do…
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The Art of Dying
The Pandemic has closed the theaters and cinemas. On stage a lone actor commits suicide in the loneliness. On screen the two lovers run to each other against the march of soldiers. The actor’s death is an extravagant fake, a nod to the art of dying a good stage death. The…
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Dr. Faustus Thanks the Devil and the Word
The poem rumbles in my brain and wakes me at three in the morning as if my devil branded me with his pitchfork reminding me of our inspired bargain My nemesis love calls me to the fiery sheet his impish pride burning praise in me that swears fealty with bloody words Oh poetry…
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Beyond the Dying Cloud
When a cloud dies doves and eagles dip their wings in mournful ‘memberance. When the sky dies it rots black in despairing soot of ash and pain. When the moon dies it’s mourned by the elliptical kisses of the planets beyond. When a planet dies the universe gently cradles it and lullaby’s…
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Painfully Clear
I tried to bargain away all the sickness and death in my life with the skies and mountains. They refused to disperse my pain in the sunlight and clouds. The void rejected my life, eternity denied my love. The moon stayed its silent course watching my fate fade away in the night. Time denied my…
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On this Acre of Unspoiled Comfort
On this acre of unspoiled comfort the hard winds blow once again now. Through this acre of unspoiled comfort the house falls once again now. This acre of unspoiled comfort so unlike a broken cry. This acre of unspoiled comfort once so sun caressed with smiles. This acre of unspoiled comfort once standing on unburied…
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The Weight of Words
A woman’s beauty is light on the eyes, best pinned in thoughts, not weighed down by beautiful lines that cannot halt wrinkles. The dying frost of dawn does not feel sorry for the gravity of the nest knowing the wrens inside can fly. The ode is limited to its chilling beauty. The sublime…
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The Other Blessing Before the Curse
Before audaciously flying in the strangled gleaming of the last glory of extinct clouds rising I asked my soul what is the purpose of having the last thought of mankind or any dreams Oh Jinn give back the last of me stolen and not yours The Jinn replied they blessed you don’t you remember…
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Do Not Silence My Words That You Hear
Don’t take away my words by not repeating my poems inside. My poetry is revolutionary as a floating feather. Close your eyes and catch it knowing the vision is in its flight and not where it falls. Pick it up from the floor and it becomes a Cobra spitting, aiming to poison you.
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A Very Shaggy Wake
Outside of town a man died naked beneath a nice tree. Some said he was old and that the tree was an elm. Some said he was young and that it was an oak. Others, that he was a child and that it was a magnolia. The only thing they agreed on: that…
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For You, the Unnecessary Dead of the American Dream
You were unburied 10 years before I was born, pulled from the Arie riverbed the day Nagasaki burned. You died like a samurai in your daughter’s arms, bowels flowing, head severed cleanly, falling to the water amidst the silence of dead human trees with their bark skin turned inside out, among the screams of the…
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Everything
Everything’s broken, diseased, sold and resold. The pandemic’s breath blows on us. Everything’s is devoured in a hunger never filled. So why do I see a glistening in the distance? In the day dream, a forest appears on the border. The scent of lavender and lilies exhales out. In the nightmare, the zodiac…
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Seeing Jaws Again
Her name you may or may not recall. It was Chrissie, the body in the sand dune. You do remember the shark, the blood on the water, death spreading like a virus in the town of Amity. You do remember that the beaches should have been closed but Amity was a summer town…
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A Prayer on Walking a Small Part of the Trail of Tears
What is the land but dust but mountains but forrest but mud but lost sorrow What is sorrow but torn soul but wounded skin but a trail of tears. This day the Chickasaw Choctaw Creek Seminole Cherokee wipe the white mans dirt off their right foot with their left foot wipe…
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Messing With the Sky
The light was so bad I made some clouds— little cotton balls taped to helium balloons drifting up to the heavens. The first were the standard balloon animals: dogs, sheep, horses, giraffes, lions. They folded conventionally but became much more creative creatures with more cotton piled on. The orange poodle became a bison,…
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Soul Cleansing
This soul is not a drip-dry thing. It’s needs constant washing and wringing to function cleanly. It needs to tumble on high heat to wear just right. Hand wash it and it will shrink in protest. Line dry it and you might think it will smell of heaven but it is the rancid smell of…
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My Voice Should Die on Land
I am not a sailor. I am meant to die on land, ahes spread above sea level, or in a coddled urn above the hearth. My voice is paper and where I choose to exist, a white world that is not sky— this voice of mine. I have no ensign. My heart beats soft, beautiful…
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Still Life
It’s in the shading. It’s the way the light is written. It’s the way the observer takes it all in. It’s the way it convinces one that the world will last. It’s the way it plants a seed in the mind, the way it touches one inside, lives inside the streets of memory, inhabits…
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The Killer Poem
Poetry can kill you when you shut yourself inside of it. It doesn’t want you looking for better words in other poems. It wants to cage you to the corners of a sheet of paper. It doesn’t want you to breathe the thing it won’t allow. It wants you to use…
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A Helping Hand
The seed planted with our small help becomes a crop. The flame carefully kindled by us ignites civilization. Now we must weed our blighted hearts to feed the moral fire of our hungry minds.
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Wings
Man has a map of the galaxy for his body, a map of his genes that are his universe. He has a defense or attack for every chess move housed in Watson’s memory. But precious of all, he has the ability to grow crops, to put water in the hands of the thirsty, to make…
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The Last Piece of Cake
There once was a race of cake men equally divided between birthday and wedding types, each born into whatever flavor was selling that day— usually chocolate or vanilla, but towards the end Neapolitan- whose faith was strong. They succumbed to the next door country of cake eaters, who reveled in their two week long…
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Dead Poem
What will happen when we stop writing poems? What will poetry become when we stop inspiring and the beauty of words is silenced or rejected? We will leave the writing table and descend into the valley to find new sounds and laughter. We will drink the last water from thirsty mountains. …
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Eating Sky With Henny Penny
When the giant bagel fell from the sky everyone complained when it blocked the road. Even when children cut it into pieces and passed it out, lathered with shmear and lox the town folks refused to eat the manna. A host of angels descended to clean up the mess. The town folks rushed to the…
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Soul Tailoring
I asked the haberdasher to make me a new soul. something inexpensive and lighter than 21 grams with a loose fit. He made it, draped me in it then disappeared. I went home and hung it in the closet . The next day I couldn’t figure out how to put it on. So,…
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Open the Door
I am scared, mommy like I was in the summer storm many months ago. I tremble in my feet and hands as I was in the deep puddle, eyes open, screaming, shaking, mommy, dark words want to come off my tongue. Mommy, I am shaking as I come down the stairs, light as a ghost.…
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The Minotaur’s Triumph
Gone in the labyrinth is the thin golden clew that is the salvation out for the gathering of lost poets. The thread doesn’t exit to the center, to meaning, just a thick grove of forest where they meander forever in the definitions all around them, each footfall erased in the revision of those before.
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The Deaf Listen to Their Poetry
The poet signs his words to the deaf. The screen behind exposes his faulty hands. He is silent. His hands a fire. He knows there will be unintended words, new meanings to old and familiar lines. The muddle is his creation, their new meaning, new poem, both treachery and rebirth, their dawn and twilight,…
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Remembering Prayer
There will be a time when God leaves you. Maybe summer. Maybe winter. The last thing he will say: Keep searching. Keep finding. Seek me in the trash, the womb lungs and heart. He will leave you agape and stirring, just a memory prayer to say as the sun rises and you wonder whether winter…
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Dig, Dig, Dig
The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth. Walk with me. Fall with me. Be the helmet light in the tunnel. Hold my feet less I fall into the abyss. Shackle your friends to you, foot to foot, arm to arm. The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.…
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El Lenguaje de los Fantasmas
Mommy, esta di descubrí el lenguaje de los fantasmas Ghost talk? What are you talking about, Jonny? Si mommy. En serio descubrí. Escúchame. Ghost talk? What do they say? Para saludar dicen: hoo hoo. Para decir que sí, dicen: Hoo And how do they say goodbye? No lo sé. They haven’t left yet. Mama, today…
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My Poetry Is Like This
Writing poetry for me is like fishing in the wind: You shoot your arrow-net into the air and after many failures you snag an ugly bird that you make beautiful the more you see that it really resembles you.
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Earth’s Trick
The world is the ultimate trick It grants man thunder yet steals his lightning every time. It makes him think he has the sweetest smell of every thing even that his shit does not stink that taming fire was his best theft of all time that a caged dove heralds peace in our time the…
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BTW
I gawked at her nine mind years hooked three heart weeks later btw f’ed a year before the day btw three dogs, no kids but she can really cook so we lived happy btw friends, church, family, dogs, house, night, day, time all slipped away btw yes, we aged, grew old-er btw fell into cancer,…
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Blindspot
God, do not send the sunshine down in thoughtless torrents. Please do not obsess on light falling on all of your making, graciously falling everything on earth. For we are things of the shade, and the light falls too…
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Bless
Bless the blessings. Bless the moon for bestowing dreams that illuminate the soul. Bless its beams. Bless the way it reveals revelations in the dark, black letters inked on white vellum daring to be read that release the heaviness of the mind in the lightness of eternity. Bless the idea that frees, not oppresses. Bless…
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Caught in the Prayer Storm
The hot night rain drenches me in sleep opening a bow to prayer amidst the lunatic birds swarming in the dark heat. Magnolias are split in dreams heavy with bolts and tears, flowing in the cascade of cracked mirrors. All is unmoored from my memory, surviving on communion. Dear Jesus am I not more profound…
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Earth Rejects All Man’s Anagrams
From form vile evil in the shade of hades sire and rise the lived devil, the tornado donator that is the heart of the earth. God denying, dog hating, it listens for silence, the license to edit the tide to its whim and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.
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Today, I Will Be the Promise
Today I will be an apple bringer, a sower of Job’s tears, a healer of grief. Today I will be the tarty sweet fruit passed hand to hand in the peace caravan. Today I will be the cooing melody among a flight of doves. Today I will be the candle of the…
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Facing It
The tears fade in the screaming inside howling brick. It is our cancer swirling around, stone, flesh and home. Our history is in its eye, our profile in this wild night of carnage slouching towards mornings. We turn away and the brick frees us. We turn back and are inside our granite selves forming in…
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A Day for Love
Pick a day. The random date generator chose: January 13, 1835 There are still generations formed from those that fell in love, married, birthed sons and daughters on that day. Each an unrepeatable existence. Family lore and crests enshrine the first kiss, the birds that soared the sky, the color of flowers in his/her hand,…
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Wind Shear
The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off their nuts, swallows and squirrels upwards to a dark fearful sky that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises of the swirling winds. Night breaks night— smashing every compass point in impatience. Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf in mournful woe. …
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Waiting for the Hungry Ocean
I am oxygen for you are the sky. We exist only because rain has formed the sea. Our memory is buried in every tide. Its waters swim inside the roots of our blood. The fluid of our language, rippling stories in the school of words. The bits of dreaming are…
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Shelter in Place
My dog finds a conch nestled in the sand- half dead, half alive- in the foaming tide, She paws at its exposed pinkness ignoring the hermit crab seeking shelter. The conch shrivels beyond its lip the scent of dead flowers pouring out, my dog in a frenzy to taste its exotic flesh, this beautiful creature…
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Hymn for Our Past and Future
For my reversal and recovery, For my wife’s lost womb, For a future free of cancers, For the old brick house toppled in the wolf tornado, For the new cradle being raised on an ancient cry of earth, For the mothers who died never seeing their children wed, For rescued memories stuck on cardboard, For…
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Collecting Beach Glass After the Storm
I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind. My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells. She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out, her pulse…
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On Seeing My Old Crooked Tree Uprooted After the Tornado
I loved this old crooked tree that refused to grow straight with the sky but willed itself to stretch with the horizon, limbs resisting what every oak near it wanted— to kiss the sun. It had a brother, long since cut down, its stump never uprooted, ground to chips. Decades of weeping, trying to…
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My Preop Wish
One night when skies have donned their stars And parted the lunar drapes Scattering silent bats to afar To huddle with their mates, We’ll fix our eyes northward, my dear, To distant lush Spring realms Where musicians play songs with cheer And nothing overwhelms. And we shall travail lovely streets With restaurants and bakeries, Serving…
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Waiting on the Promise
Wait, I spoke to the highest star. It winked and bowed to dawn. Wait, I spoke to the low sun that set. Wait, moon. It just glowed on, gracing, gifting me with bright words. Wait, I spoke to my sad heart. It beat as a heart does, disobedient less it stop trembling…
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Ode to a Peanut Butter Elvis
Elvis loved his peanut butter. Gladys, who loved him the most, as all good mothers love their children, would feed him grilled Hawaiian bread sandwich after sandwich of peanut butter with chopped caramelized bananas, or gently mashed fork bananas, sometimes with bacon, sometimes without. He dreamed of peanut butter and Gladys would feed…
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The History of the Stone from David’s Sling
Five smooth stones David culled from Elah’s brook, Shepherd knowing dense ones to fit sling’s crook. He released the first on Goliath’s shright the giant falling back dead with the smite. Goliath gazing into David’s eyes felt his blade render head for David’s prize. Head held high, high and tight, in David’s…
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Footballs Are Made for Running, Tossing and Fumbling
Footballs always dazzled me, composed boxes on the shelf, like pigskin half moons and suns needing tees from toppling down, a kick or a toss to send them hurling to human planets. The long run, perfect spiral is inherent in its form, as is carnage, grace, error. Its life is moving forward in the…
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Accident
The rear view mirror showed the car on fire. Metal no protection for burning flesh— burning down to the color of the night— a bright reversal reflected in white. Maybe charred bone? Not hell. Neither heaven. Police, EMTs too late to save the tissues smelling like pan steak, fatty pork— blood emitting its metallic compounds—…
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Trying to Sing in Italian
The virus news carries me from room to room. A Verdi aria breaks the solemn chant of the rising death tolls in my brain as Italians sing to the sick below, voice to voice forming a single line of hope, that filters down to the lonely windows, my electric screen, all the world’s tablets. The…
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She Is the Way They Left Her
She is the way they left her: silent, shuttered, composed amidst disarray, the waiting chair unmoved, her body draped in final coverings, spider rays webbing the room, the overhead light unused, the bed sagging forever in the center after this, the sun fighting with the weight of shadows on her bedspread. The corners of her…
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Spring Knows the Rose’s Scream
The rose has thorns because it cares not to be touched. Its color is a warning for animals to stay away. Its scent is a scream and not a delight for us to own. bending only for the sun. The scientist knows this having heard its sub audible howl with delicate machines that probe its…
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The World Is Full of Missing Things
The world is full of missing images and sounds. In heaven the blind and deaf will meet: one will show the other the pictures never seen, the other will share the songs they never heard. That is why, what and where, are part of the essential questions every one asks.
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The Missing Sock Always Knows Where the Other Is
I lose one sock every other washing. The wisdom of the washer and dryer says that God is stockpiling the lost one to be reunited with the other in heaven. Does that mean those with perfectly mated, never separated pairs, are doomed to the spin dry of eternal hell? But then, it’s Smart of God,…